With countless objects shedding new light on some of the darkest pages of history, Slavery: Ten True Stories of Dutch Colonial Slavery was brought to the United Nations by the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam.
Daniela Paredes, 18, from Cancun, Mexico, told UN News after a class visit: “I find it hard to understand how so many countries are still apologizing for slavery. “Governments are working to not ignore slavery and its condition today. It shows that society can learn from our mistakes. It gives me hope for humanity.”
The exhibit revolves around a single artifact: a heavy wooden plank brace, known as a “tronco” – Portuguese for tree trunk. Used to keep slaves for sleep or corporal punishment to prevent them from escaping, the sinister machine – carbon dating from 1700 to 1850 – was discovered in the 1960s in a warehouse in Zeeland, a town in the Netherlands.
tronco remains an important reminder that 15 million men, women and children have been the victims of a odious system of legalization for centuries, United Nations Outreach Program on the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Slaverywas established by the General Assembly in 2007, the organization that coordinates the event.
Valika Smeulders, head of the history department at the Rijksmuseum, is one of the curators of the Ten True Stories exhibition.
Valika Smeulders, one of the four curators of the exhibition and head of the history department at the museum, told UN News: “Bringing the exhibition to the United Nations connected it all. “We think it is important for the Netherlands to accept the fact that it has played an important role in colonial history. We wanted to connect people in the Netherlands with that larger story by making the exhibition truly personal.”
Ms. Paredes’ classmate, 17-year-old Alexa Bejar, marvels at learning about the world through the exhibition’s zoom lens.
“It is amazing that governments and countries are willing to talk openly and honestly,” she said.
Profiting for freedom fighters
Around the tronco, interactive boards tell the stories of people from Bangladesh, Brazil, the Netherlands, South Africa, Suriname, the Caribbean and West Africa, intertwined with the Dutch slave trade, which made an estimated one million people all over the world were enslaved. between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.
Visitors can swipe the QR code on each panel to link to today’s records of descendants and others associated with profiteers, victims and freedom fighters. Thoroughly “researched and researched”, the stories are produced by a team of experts, including historians, theater directors, interior designers, artists, Ms. Smeulders said. Doctors and biologists conducted DNA analysis.
However, curators had difficulty choosing just 10 stories out of more than a million stories, she said.
“Of course there are millions of stories, but what we want is 10 stories that give insight into the system,” she said.
From the lifestyle of the rich to the flight to freedom, the exhibition tells the story of Surapti, from Indonesia, who went from slavery to freedom fighter. Another explained that Oopjen, the concubine wife of a Dutch sugar tycoon who made a fortune from slavery, painted her portrait by Rembrandt herself.
Then there’s the brave Sapani, who hid in her braided hair small grains of rice indigenous to West Africa when she was strapped onto a ship bound for Suriname. Fleeing slavery at a plantation, she used those seeds, which became an important source of food in the nascent communities and a symbol of hard-won freedom.
A revealing look at our past
‘Not just about history’
The exhibition comes at a time when world leaders are recalculating the colonial past, attempting to make amends by, among other things, repatriating artifacts looted during the colonial era. . Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in December issued an official apology for the country’s role in the slave trade.
“It’s not just about history; it’s also about our common future,” Ms. Smeulders said. “The legacy of slavery is among us every day. We need to address that, especially given all the types of discrimination and racism that still exist.”
Having that conversation take place here at the United Nations and having the exhibit as a ‘talking stick’ to continue that conversation is “really important to us,” she said.
“Part of the solution is recognizing that it has to do with that past, and by understanding the past, we also understand society today,” she added.
At the exhibition’s opening ceremony, Melissa Fleming, head of the UN’s Global Communications Department, which organized the event, said teaching, learning and understanding this history “helps us in our work to end fragmentation. racism and injustice and building inclusive societies based on dignity and human rights for all.”
