Content Warning

This website contains material that may be distressing to some visitors. It includes prejudiced language and depictions of violence found in historical documents, illustrations, and artifacts.

Slavery was and remains a violent system built on the inhumane belief that one person could own another. These records and representations reflect that brutality, including family separation, forced labor, branding, and rape.

The colonial archive and museum preserve and reproduce many of these harms. These records are fallible and shaped by the biases and ethnocentrism of those who created them, often silencing the most marginalized.

As Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith reminds us, “In order to decolonize our histories, we must revisit site by site.” Recovering this history requires engaging with these materials, and with the traumas they hold, with care, respect, and critical awareness.