Recipient of the 2020 Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Museums: History Alive!
The Saskatchewan Doukhobor Living Book Project
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A message from award sponsor |
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| Congratulations to everyone involved in bringing The Saskatchewan Doukhobor Living Book Project, to life. Their collaboration, drive and passion in both celebrating and raising awareness of the Doukhobor community in Saskatchewan is truly impressive. | |
Presented in partnership |
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The Doukhobors, a group of Christians who believe in peace and equality, defied Russian military conscription during the 1700 and 1800s escaping years of torture, imprisonment, and dispossession, by journeying to Western Canada.
Today they pride themselves in their community involvement by singing together in prayer and by baking bread in wood-burning ovens to sell to those attending Pion-Era and the Saskatoon Exhibition.
120 years since their journey from Russia, curator Dr. Elizabeth Scott of the Western Development Museum (WDM), Founder and manager Ryan Androsoff of Spirit Wrestler Productions (SWP) and Assistant Professor of History Dr. Ashleigh Androsoff of the University of Saskatchewan banded together to document Doukhobor history in Canada through a documentary, museum exhibit with artifacts and a soundscape, and a website.
And the work has won the Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Museums: History Alive!
“We are honoured to have been chosen as this year’s winners of the Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Museums which recognizes our work in preserving and making accessible intangible cultural heritage in Canada through a unique partnership between members of the Doukhobor community, the University of Saskatchewan, and the Western Development Museum,” says Dr. Scott, Ryan, and Dr. Ashleigh Androsoff.
The documentation of the Doukhobors’ history came through collaboration with the community today and the SWP; a partnership which Dr. Scott recalls as being very seamless:
“What was wonderful about [it] was when we came together in 2018 so much of the work had been done, the community was on board with everything that Ryan and Dr. Ashleigh, Androsoff had envisioned that they could share in a museum experience,” says Dr. Scott on a YouTube video accompanying an article on canadahistory.ca.
The work Dr. Scott alludes to is the interviewing of 30 members of the Doukhobor community in Saskatchewan “ranging in ages from eight-years-old to 95-years old,” says Ryan Androsoff in the same YouTube video.
The exhibit also showed off exciting technical elements in a soundscape of the unique choral harmonization of the traditional Doukhobor ‘Moleniye’ prayer service.
Ryan Androsoff shares that through the help of local audio and visual experts the soundscape had 30 separate audio tracks for each of the participants of a recorded prayer service in Blaine Lake, Saskatchewan.
In the exhibit each member was then represented by a speaker positioned where they would have been standing for the original recording, and accompanying videos were displayed along the walls.
“It provided this really unique immersive installation where visitors who may have never had the opportunity to visit a Doukhobor prayer home to [..] experience the power of the Doukhobor harmony,” says Ryan Androsoff.
For Dr. Ashleigh Androsoff, their work has felt most rewarding in the reactions of their visitors. She recounts overhearing a visitor realize how little they knew about the Doukhobor community they’d lived beside all their life.
“To be able to provide members of the public with an opportunity to learn about this this group that they’ve heard so much about, and to be able to provide the Doukhobor community with an opportunity to see themselves represented in ways that actually reflect the way that they understand themselves to the public was very, very, special.” M
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