I only discovered about 10 years ago that my parents came to the United States as refugees. Until then, I hadn’t thought much about how or why they came to America in 1959—I just knew they had left the Netherlands for a new life. It wasn’t until later that I discovered they immigrated under a law called the Pastore–Walter Act, a piece of Cold War-era legislation that opened a narrow door for families like mine.
That question—the story behind their journey—sat quietly in the back of my mind until a recent visit to the Wereldmuseum in Amsterdam. In the heart of Amsterdam-Oost, a diverse and lively district where the streets hum with languages from around the world, I wandered into an exhibit titled “Our Colonial Inheritance.” It explores the Netherlands’ colonial past in places like the Dutch East Indies. In the same place, my family’s Indo story began.
The exhibit was as thought-provoking as it was uncomfortable. It forced me to reflect not just on what colonialism meant for the people who lived under it but also on what it meant for descendants like me—people shaped by that complicated legacy in ways we don’t always recognize.
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Carla Gerardu-Low | Family Stories & Roots 