A new exhibit is giving visitors to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) a chance to peer into four different time periods in Canadian history using interactive technology.

Rights of Passage: Canada at 150 opened at the museum just in time for International Human Rights Day on Sunday Dec. 10, 2017, when the CMHR was also offering free admission.

The exhibit includes wampum beads shifting into designs created by art students at Children of the Earth High School, a dress made from fibre optic fabric, laser wire and LED lights that changes colours when you step on a "hashtag" on the floor and a Victorian-era "magic lantern" that projects images of early human rights struggles.

Visitors to the exhibit can also check out war-time broadcasts on a period radio set and explore other older technology, like a 1970's vintage TV and experience Indigenous oral traditions.

The exhibit is divided into four time zones and a fifth zone dealing with indigenous perspectives that is not time bound. Each zone displays different modes of communication from that time period, according to Curator Karine Duhamel.

Karine Duhamel

"There's been a lot of really innovative technological work involved with this exhibition," Duhamel said. "Our fabricators have worked very hard to adapt old technologies to what we use today. So for example, moulding a new screen for a tube TV that can work with a projected iPad and coding thousands individual beads drawn by students into a projection that reacts to the sound of your voice."

"There's been a lot of work in making these technologies work within this exhibition in this context." Duhamel says with all the technology involved, staff at the CMHR have been working on the exhibition for a number of years.

The official opening of the exhibit took place at 2:00 pm in the Bonnie & John Buhler hall, which included drumming by Inuit Elder David Serkoak, a survivor of the 1950's force relocation of the Ahiarmiut people in the Far North.

Duhamel and Design and Production Manager, Rob Vincent, also led a discussion on the exhibit later in the day.

The festivities officially kicked off at 11:00 am with kids activities, a Canadian citizenship ceremony and a performance by the Winnipeg Youth Chorus.

Duhamel says we've come a long way in the fight for human rights, but there is always more that can be done.

"We can be proud of some of the achievements we've made in the progress of women's rights and the rights of LGTBQ people and newcomers to Canada but we still have work to do," Duhamel said. "The fact that people from Shoal Lake still don't have running water or women are walking around with keys in their knuckles so they don't get assaulted is a hint of the battle that's left in Canada."

"If we can ever say we've won the battle, I don't think we're looking far enough ahead."

Rights of Passage is located in the Level 6 Expressions gallery.