The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has a free admission policy for aboriginal people.

It’s odd and a bit shocking, considering the museum supposedly exists to promote racial and cultural equality among Canadians.

Museum officials say all aboriginals, including First Nations, Metis and Inuit, can have free access to the museum if they produce identification proving their ancestral background. They can’t really tell us why they have this policy. When asked why one group of people has free access to the facility based solely on their race and culture and not others, museum officials were unable to provide a coherent answer.

“The admissions policy at the CMHR was developed, in advance of our opening, to align with that of other national museums such as the Canadian Museum of History, where Indigenous Peoples are also admitted at no charge,” museum spokeswoman Maureen Fitzhenry wrote in an email. “It is intended to help ensure Indigenous People have access to expressions of their culture.”

That’s not really an answer.

When I asked for further clarification, Fitzhenry wrote: “This policy is one way that we are striving to foster a respectful relationship between the Museum and Indigenous Peoples that acknowledges Indigenous rights relating to cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions.”

That’s not much of an answer, either.

How does free admission for anyone foster a respectful relationship? And why would the museum choose only aboriginal people in which to foster a respectful relationship in this way and not others?

It makes no sense. I could understand if free admission or a reduced price was available on the basis of ability to pay, regardless of race, culture, gender, religion, etc.

If the museum had devised a way to provide easier access to the museum for low-income Canadians through reduced fares or free admission based on need, I would heartily congratulate them. But that’s not what they’re doing here. They have created an admission policy based on race and culture. And they want people to produce I.D. to prove their ancestral background. That doesn’t sound very Canadian to me.

If museum officials are doing this because they want to reduce barriers for specific groups of people based on their race and culture, then what they’re doing is creating a negative stereotype.

To assume the price of admission — $15 for adults and $8 for children under 18 — is a barrier to anyone based solely on their ancestral background is inaccurate and patronizing.

If the museum is providing free admission to aboriginals because of the human atrocities they or their ancestors have endured, then they would have to give free admission to the many other races and cultures who have also endured human atrocities. But they’re not. So that can’t be the reason.

And if the museum is providing free admission to aboriginals simply to give them free access to a facility that celebrates their culture, then museum officials should have the same policies for other races and cultures, too. But they don’t.

Meanwhile, it’s unclear what happens if an aboriginal person shows up and doesn’t have I.D. to prove his or her ancestral background. After all, not all aboriginals have treaty or Metis cards. I asked museum officials about that, too, but they didn’t have much of an answer.

“We do ask that Indigenous visitors present identification in order to be admitted at no charge,” wrote Fitzhenry. “If people do not have identification, we are open to having conversations with them to explore alternatives.”

What does that mean? So it’s up to a clerk in the ticket booth to determine someone’s ancestry in order to establish whether they should get in for free?

The last time I checked, treating people differently based on their race or culture is called racism.

And it’s pretty sad to see Canada’s “human rights” museum stoop to such a disgraceful low.