Honoring History

CCC Board members gave a special tour before the museum opened to the public. Pictured left to right: Judy Jonna, Francis Boji, Hani Mio, Bishop Ibrahim, Raad Kathawa, Bishop Francis, Mary Romaya, Hanna Shina, and Victor Saroki.

Birth of the Chaldean Cultural Center

By Cal Abbo

When Chaldeans first came to Detroit, they struggled to integrate into American society and learn the language. They had their own unique culture, one that was different from that of other Americans and most immigrants.

At first, this was a point of pride for Chaldeans. Their faith, family values, tight-knit community, and work ethic ultimately led to success in a foreign land. Chaldeans raised their families in the same traditions that they came from and passed down their culture successfully.

At the same time, the children of the original immigrants were forced to acculturate to some extent. There were no Chaldean schools in Detroit at the time. Chaldean children often attended Roman Catholic or public schools. They learned English as their native language and began to Americanize in order to live, work, and play in a modern and diverse world.

As time passed, fewer Chaldeans came from the homeland. Yet more were born in the United States, some even representing the second generation of American-born Chaldeans, many of whom don’t speak Sureth. This new perspective and way of life led to a concern that Chaldeans would lose their culture. Thus was born the urge for Detroit’s Chaldean population to preserve their culture and the idea for Chaldean Cultural Center (CCC).

Mary Romaya is one of the CCC’s founders, and she served as its executive director for six years until her retirement in 2017. Ever since, she’s kept the organization on track when it needs her and assisted in the CCC’s move to the new Chaldean Community Foundation’s West Campus that is currently under construction.

According to Romaya, the idea for the CCC was conceived around 2003 in the famed and nostalgic rooms of Southfield Manor. “When I started with the CCC, I was the secretary and a founding board member,” she said. In March of 2003, the concept was there, a full two years before Shenandoah Country Club was purchased and opened.

Shenandoah Country Club was purchased by the Chaldean Iraqi American Association of Michigan (CIAAM), a social organization that also ran Southfield Manor. As it was being renovated, CIAAM designed the club so that the CCC would have around 2,000 sq. feet of space for cultural programming and, eventually, a museum.

“We were just a fledgling group,” Romaya said about the CCC. “We had no money. So we were not in a position to buy a building or rent a space. We knew we needed to preserve our heritage. By 2003, the Chaldeans had been here for more than a century.”

According to stories Romaya heard from her own father, Chaldeans were discussing how to maintain and preserve their identity as early as the 1920s. “They certainly didn’t want to lose the faith or the language,” she said about discussions her father had with other Chaldean pioneers.

Her parents’ generation feared that their children who were born in America or brought here at a young age would become assimilated and integrated into American society and lose their unique Chaldean identity. As the generations became more Americanized, they would speak more English and eventually forget Sureth. For that reason, Romaya’s parents spoke Sureth to her. “I understand the language, but I would answer in English,” she said.

There were no Chaldean schools back then. Most children went to Roman Catholic schools in the archdiocese of Detroit. Chaldeans are known for making up large portions of metro Detroit’s Catholic schools as well as funding them generously. Just last year, John, Jeff, and Chris Denha gave a generous donation of $500,000 to Brother Rice, a high school the brothers attended in the 1980s. They gave in honor of their parents, Nedal and Mike Denha. Today, nearly 30% of Marian High School’s students are Chaldean. These are only two recent examples of the impact Chaldeans have on Catholic schools in the metro Detroit area.

The Chaldean pioneers were happy to live and raise their families in America, away from the hardship and persecution that plagued them in the Middle East. They didn’t, however, want to lose the tight-knit community that went along with the ethnic group.

Romaya identifies as Chaldean-American. She desperately wanted her community to stay intact because she valued the rich, meaningful life it gave her. To that end, she and others created youth groups, which she attended throughout her 20s and early 30s, designed to intentionally stay together and maintain the community they were blessed with. “They encouraged us to marry within the community and socialize with other Chaldeans,” Romaya said about the generation of Chaldean pioneers. “If we didn’t, they hoped we would still marry a Catholic.”

Until the birth of the CCC, most of the work Chaldeans did to preserve their culture, aside from attending and expanding the Church, revolved around creating social groups and gathering places. There were few, if any, organized efforts to archive cultural items and revive what had been lost for families who arrived in Michigan decades ago.

As the CCC grew comfortable in its new space at Shenandoah, the board began planning programs to accomplish its goal. “The CCC celebrates and explores the extraordinary history, arts, traditions, and contributions of the Chaldean people from ancient times to the present, serving as a repository for our collected history and stories…” the mission statement reads.

The CCC had a board of directors chaired by the late Rosemary Anton. The first executive director was Josephine Sarafa, a bilingual teacher in Birmingham Public Schools for 27 years. Her pilot program was one of community outreach and cultural sensitivity training.

Sarafa first contacted different police departments and their leaders to teach them about the Chaldean community. When a Chaldean person was pulled over, for example, there was often a language barrier between the officer and the driver. Other times, when someone got in trouble, they would send their father or a community leader to speak with the police.

In addition, Sarafa approached school principals, superintendents, and teachers to visit the CCC and learn about the Chaldean culture so they can better accommodate their students. Previously, few efforts had been made to explain who the Chaldeans are to the rest of the world.

Soon after these initial programs, the CCC created classes to restore lost traditions and encourage cultural continuity. Live cooking classes featured rich recipes and foods like Dolma, Baklawa, Kibbeh, and more. The CCC began to teach Sureth classes so Chaldean-Americans who grew up speaking English could learn their ethnic language as adults.

As these plans unfolded and gave the organization confidence in their early successes, the CCC continued to expand its mission. Whereas the earliest programs focused on explaining Chaldean culture to the wider metro Detroit community, the CCC understood its duty to preserve the stories, traditions, and documents that show who Chaldeans are.

This series is perhaps the CCC’s greatest treasure, according to Romaya. It began interviewing Chaldean pioneers, some of whom immigrated to the United States before the 1920s. “They started interviewing people, the pioneers, before they all passed away,” Romaya said. “We recorded their voices, and we have physical cassette tapes. Some spoke in English and some in Sureth.”

What was it like, coming to America? Where did you sleep on that very first night? These are the kinds of questions posed by the interviewers to Chaldean pioneers.

“Basically, it was a bus ride from New York to Detroit,” Romaya answered, based on her understanding of the interviews. “One Chaldean woman ran a boarding house where you could sleep and eat for five dollars per week. The women would do your laundry and feed you until you got a job and could find your own place to live.”

As a result of this digging, the CCC began collecting dozens of historic documents from their subjects that they could keep and preserve. Passports, immigration papers, or deeds to some of the first Chaldean stores were very common. Romaya said she doesn’t remember who came up with the idea, but eventually, the group realized they needed a museum to house and show off their collection.

Nowadays, visitors see the museum as the main feature of the CCC because of its beauty and glamor. It didn’t open until 2017, however, and the CCC was plenty busy before that. “The CCC is more than just a museum,” Romaya said. “We consider ourselves the archivists for the Chaldean community.”

A hologram in the Village Gallery in which Hanna Shina, a founding board member, is portraying a grandfather showing his grandson how to use a slingshot.

The CCC wanted a real museum to honor and preserve the Chaldean culture. As far as Romaya knew, they were the first in the community to ever build a museum. The group ventured locally to the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Arab-American Museum, and the Holocaust Memorial Center. They travelled as far as Washington, DC to see the Smithsonian Museums and the National Museum of the American Indian. They went to Virginia to see how professionals warehouse artifacts and how to preserve them properly. It was diligent study and hard work like this that led to the grand accomplishment that is the museum embedded in the CCC.

As they completed their initial discovery, the next step for the CCC was to find a firm to build the museum. In the process, they hired a creator, Sanan Media, who produces high-tech exhibits and engaging video.

The CCC was close to finalizing the museum when the Great Recession wrecked the global economy. According to Romaya, “Funding dried up. People who were willing to give us money were now struggling to hang on to their own businesses,” she said. “I heard many stories of people who were barely surviving. Banks were calling in their loans. So, we totally stopped.”

Around the same time, the CCC ran into an even larger problem. Shenandoah Country Club as a whole could not meet its financial obligations as a result of the downturn. According to the terms of its loan, the club had to maintain a certain number of members, otherwise the bank could call it in and look for a new buyer to purchase the club.

As the recession drew on, several interested buyers presented themselves, but the CCC’s presence helped save the club and keep it in the Chaldean community. When Shenandoah was initially purchased, CIAAM added the CCC to the deed of the property. This meant that any future owners would need to keep the CCC inside, since this organization did not have any obligation to the bank. According to Romaya, this deterred multiple potential buyers from closing a deal.

After it was clear nobody would buy Shenandoah while the CCC remained, its loan was greatly reduced. “Shenandoah survived, therefore, we survived,” Romaya said. They began actively constructing the museum around 2013.

The CCC’s current museum consists of five exhibits: Ancient Mesopotamia, Faith and Church, Village Life, Journey to America, and Chaldeans Today. Each displays a significant portion of Chaldean history and uses interesting and unique forms to tell the story of the Chaldeans.

The Ancient Mesopotamia exhibit displays authentic replicas as well as original artifacts retrieved from ancient cities. The main feature is a replica of the Stele of Hammurabi as well as a digital interactive that translates a few of the laws encoded on the stele.

The Faith and Church gallery traces the origins and development of the Church of the East and, eventually, the Chaldean Church. It shows how important Chaldeans were for the development of the Church and, in turn, how deeply those traditions inform our cultural identity today.

The section on Village Life gives geographic and detailed information about living in a village and where Chaldeans come from. It also draws in the audience with realistic displays and a holographic video showing Chaldean village traditions like bread-making.

The Journey to America exhibit shows documents from some of the earliest Chaldean immigrants from Iraq. It also has an audio exhibit where you can hear stories from Chaldean pioneers. Take a few steps forward to enter an old-style grocery store that Chaldeans were famous for in the early 1900s.

In the Chaldeans Today gallery, the museum explains the local and recent history of Chaldeans as well as the rest of the diaspora around the world. It showcases some of the modern Chaldean success stories and community builders in a documentary-style video at the end of the tour.

After opening the museum to the public, Romaya felt her work was done and wanted to find a suitable replacement as the CCC’s leader. “We had a museum now,” she said. “What we needed was someone who was there on a regular basis. My background is a historian and educator. We needed someone who was into programming and social media, someone who could really promote the CCC.”

It wasn’t until 2019 when the CCC found Romaya’s long-term replacement. In the spring of that year, Weam Namou, who is the current Executive Director of the CCC, received a call from Judy Jonna, who served as the CCC board’s chairperson.

Namou is a published author and filmmaker, among many other things, and had experience in the nonprofit sector working with artist organizations. Her mother had passed away recently, she said, which meant she was not looking for a job at that time, and didn’t think she would be interested in this particular role anyway. That is, however, until she stepped inside the museum.

“I felt so deeply our culture and heritage and history through my whole body, reaching out to grab my attention,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting that. I went home that day thinking about it. Like so many others, I spent a lot of time complaining that we don’t value our heritage, we don’t try to preserve it, and we don’t spend enough time doing that.”

That’s why Namou accepted the position. She worked with the CCC to premiere one of her films at the now closed Maple Theater, and soon after, began working as the executive director. “We had a gorgeous, beautiful museum, but we didn’t have any programming,” she said. To Namou, the museum was a true gem with lots to offer the community, but it hid behind the walls of Shenandoah.

Shortly after she joined the CCC’s team, an administrator left the organization, which meant a lot more work for Namou. The first thing she did was apply for a certain grant that she expected to get with relative ease. To her surprise, her application was rejected, with a long list of reasons why the CCC was unqualified.

“I literally took every single item they listed and addressed it,” she said. “A lot of it had to do with the website and our social media. There was a serious lack of activity. We needed to start posting and having activities.”

As she revamped these programs, Namou also tried her best to involve other Chaldean communities besides those in West Bloomfield to interact with the CCC. Since Namou herself was from Sterling Heights, she knew for certain that the communities living far from the CCC needed to be made aware of it and could help expand its reach.

“In the beginning, I didn’t see how far we would come,” she said. “When things got really hard, I had doubts in the back of my head. But I had this sense, deep down, that this place was very special. The meaning and significance just piled on.”

Namou is proud of the work she did from the very beginning of her tenure as the executive director. Her goal was to teach as many people about Chaldeans and their culture as she could. To that end, she contacted every school within driving distance and offered to give a presentation. To her surprise, nearly everyone accepted, and within a few months she gave these presentations to dozens of schools and thousands of students.

“I was so proud whenever I did these presentations to Chaldean students. They looked at me with wide eyes, trying to tell me they themselves were Chaldean,” she said. “These were the things that fed my spirit, seeing their reactions to the lesson about their heritage.”

The other program she restarted was the digital storytelling, which resembles the original program that began almost 20 years ago. “We went out to senior homes and had elderly Chaldeans tell us their stories and do chants that you can no longer hear unless you’re from back home because that’s how old they are,” Namou said. “We interviewed people in Australia, India, Iraq, and even Argentina. I believe this storytelling has a healing component. We had so many people shed tears because we gave them an opportunity to share things that have been stuck in their hearts.”

One of the CCC’s goals, aside from its aim to preserve and document our culture, is to forge relationships with other cultural and educational institutions and to promote a greater understanding of the Chaldean culture among other communities. To accomplish this, Namou started the virtual discussion series, with which she connects and interviews people from all cultures.

Bridging this gap and listening to others, which comes from her journalistic instincts, is crucial for fostering respect from other communities. “By reaching out to other communities, they get to learn about your heritage and you get to learn about theirs,” Namou said. “This program helps us step outside of ourselves. We can’t stay in our own bubble like we’re in Iraq.”

The beautiful museum remains the CCC’s crown jewel. Although it is not even ten years old, the organization plans to move its space and expand on the galleries at the new Chaldean Community Foundation’s West Campus.

“It was hidden,” Namou said about the current CCC museum. “Because of that, there’s not enough traffic for regular operating hours. When we move, the goal is to have a regular, 9-5 schedule and allow people to walk through the museum at any point.”

Right when it was presented to her, Weam said, the move seemed like a perfect fit. Even members of Shenandoah who frequent the country club aren’t familiar with the CCC or the fact that there’s a museum located inside. She most looks forward to being neighbors with other organizations that have similar goals and being able to share resources.

The CCF’s new campus will feature a Radio and Television studio for the Chaldean News virtually next door to the CCC’s museum. The CCF also plans to create the Bishop Ibrahim Library, which will contain delicate manuscripts written hundreds of years ago as well as modern-day books. Finally, the building has office and meeting areas as well as a large event space available to the CCC.

The biggest addition to the museum will be the new Genocide Gallery. Namou thinks it’s a necessary addition, even though it’s an unpleasant topic. “It’s a responsibility now,” she said, adding that for a while, she didn’t want to look at the issue because it’s too painful. “I feel like I’m honoring a part of our history in a way that I never really saw before.”

There are plenty of genocides in Chaldean history that need to be addressed, taught, discussed, and remembered. Throughout most of Muslim rule in the Middle East, Christians were persecuted at varying degrees of intensity depending on the age and the leader. The Mongol invasions left many Chaldean villages ravaged and destroyed. The stories are centuries-old, but these tragic deeds still ripple through time and affect the Chaldean community today.

Other events are much more recent, including those that living Chaldeans remember vividly through their family stories. Throughout the 1800s, warlords in modern-day Iraq, Turkey, and Syria would frequently raid Chaldean villages. This kind of behavior culminated around the time of WWI in an event often called the Sayfo, or “Sword” in Sureth, or in academia, the Assyrian Genocide. Unfortunately for its victims, this genocide is often overlooked and grouped in with the Armenian Genocide, although its targeted community is entirely separate and suffered on its own.

Namou began reading a book called “Shall This Nation Die?” written by Rev. Joseph Naayem. He recounts the events of the Sayfo, as witnessed by the subjects of his books, and pleads with his audience to make this event known so that it doesn’t fall into obscurity or happen again. “We owe him that,” Namou said. “Their stories will be told in the Genocide Gallery.”

Of course, much more recent events like the ISIS invasion completely destroyed or gutted plenty of Chaldean villages and towns. Tel Keppe, the village from which most of Detroit’s Chaldeans originate, was emptied of its residents by ISIS in the summer of 2014, only ten years ago. Many Chaldeans have family or remember these events themselves.

Certain areas of the Tel Keppe were vandalized, like the churches, which ISIS used as shooting ranges. Other places were totally destroyed, like the cemetery, which featured toppled headstones and disrespected deceased ancestors. Only a few Chaldeans returned to the village, which currently holds around 50 Christian families, compared to thousands that lived there prior.

These events are fresh in the Chaldean cultural memory and need to be preserved for future generations, Namou argued. The new space will allow them to expand on the rest of the museum and include items relevant to the community and its history that happened since the CCC opened, like the ISIS invasion and the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

For Chaldeans who know about it and have toured the museum, the CCC is a treasure. It has come a long way since its humble beginnings in 2003, establishing a cultural agenda that will influence the Chaldean community for years to come.

Mary Romaya’s favorite memory of the CCC came when they filmed a promotional video of the museum. Sanan Media, which helped the organization before, asked Romaya to bring everyone she could for the shoot. She called all her friends and family until the museum was virtually at capacity.

“It was February 2017, and the museum was basically built,” she said. “The grand opening was not until September. Sanan videotaped people walking through the museum, touching interactives, and learning about Chaldean culture.” The video, which was filmed seven years ago, is still featured on the CCC’s website.

“When it was all over, my son hugged me and told me, ‘I am so proud to be a Chaldean.’ My heart just melted,” Romaya said, proving how important the museum and her own heritage are. “That is a moment in my life I will always treasure.”

Namou appeals to her Chaldean community, imploring them to spend more time understanding their heritage and reading about their history, how special it is, and what we’ve contributed throughout history.

“We have an amazing, powerful, and rich community,” she said. “Rich in history and wealth. I want us to use some of that, whether it’s time and energy or funds, to give a bit more attention to the CCC and preserving our culture in general.”

Understanding our culture, according to Namou, will give us a better understanding of who we are today in the diaspora. “I used to travel to Europe. People who live in Rome don’t care about the Colosseum because they pass it every day,” she said. “I didn’t understand it, but now, I think sometimes we too ignore what we have. I hope we don’t neglect it because this history is a very powerful and important part of who we are.”