The annual Holland Festival in Long Beach has permanently moved to Labor Day Weekend and will be celebrated this year on Sunday, September 4th, 2022. For many Southern California Indos, Memorial Day weekend in May was synonymous with the Holland Festival. The Holland Festival is an annual event celebrated at the P.O.A. Gemmrig Park in…
On May 4th the Netherlands commemorates victims of war; on May 5th the people celebrate the fact that they live in freedom. The National Committee helps determine how meaning is given to commemorating and celebrating the memory of the Second World War. The national observance of Remembrance Day in the Netherlands takes place on May…
An Editorial on the Introduction to Over de grens by Inez Hollander, Ph.D. Director Emeritus for The Indo Project and Author of Silence Voices/Verstilde stemmen en verzwegen levens I apologize to you, dear reader. I was going to read the recently published decolonization research anthology Over de grens: Nederlands extreme geweld in de Indonesische onafhankelijkheidsoorlog,…
The official opening of the exhibition Ons Land – decolonization, generations and stories, was February 8th, 2022. Representatives of The Indo Project were invited to take a sneak peek at the Sophiahof Museum in The Hague. ‘Ons Land’ is Dutch for Our Country. This exhibition is about Dutch colonial history in the East and how…
We’ve all been there. Just go back in time and think of your elementary school antics. In the schoolyard someone lashes out and says But you’re a moron. The answer that may come back when there is no good answer: No, you’re a moron. And then there is always that line of last resort and…
The Back Story In light of the upcoming REVOLUSI exhibit at the Rijksmuseum which deals with the independence struggle of Indonesia, one of the Indonesian curators, Bonnie Triyana, publicly announced that the word “bersiap” should be (and was going to be) omitted from the exhibit. He argued that the term, when used by Dutch people,…
A look back at The Indo Project’s top stories and news articles of 2021. Did your favorites TIP articles make the top five lists? Top Five Indo Stories #5 An Indo Profile: Hannie Blaauw – Camp Stories and More Read TIP’s Indo Profile about war camp survivor and musician Hannie Blaauw. #4 Living Monuments of…
Where Appearance Meets Identity by Willem-Jan Brederode Is it possible to have flaming red hair, freckles, fair skin but also an Indo-Dutch identity? Of course it is, you will think! Well, that is, if you fully understand both the genetics behind redheadedness and the genealogy of being Indo-Dutch. In 2020 Armando Ello and I interviewed…
by David Bebelaar Finding a Box of Letters Searching for information about my grandparents led me to a box of letters they had written to each other. The correspondence documented their lives as a young couple and all of the experiences they had to navigate together. Their relocation from the Netherlands to the Dutch East…
After nearly two years of absence, this year’s Holland Festival drew more people than expected. Due to the pandemic, the United Netherlands Organizations (non-profit organization) had to cancel the last two festivals. The community was ready and eager to come together again, looking at their responses on social media. And they did on this beautiful…