Decolonizing Museums

In Oregon, the vast majority of community museums are history museums focusing on local history. According to the Oregon Museums Association, of the 58 museums registered with them, 52 of those museums are focused on local and regional history. These museums have largely focused on pioneer history and display how white Europeans settled the land. While this is one aspect of Oregon history, many Oregon community museums fail to display difficult histories, or history that recalls trauma, oppression and/or violence. With current museology focusing on the diversification of exhibits through the inclusion of difficult histories, there is an apparent disconnect between this research and actual practice in Oregon museums. In this survey, I critically analyze visual representations at eleven (11) Oregon community history museums through site observations, document analysis and with three (3) of the museums, through interviews of curators and/or museum directors. I argue that as important sites of history and community outreach, these museums miss opportunities to educate the public and include minorities that have largely been left out of the Oregon narrative.

Alaska faces unique challenges in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education, including limited accessibility to resources and learning opportunities, and a lack of place-based education resources. Museum education programs, traditionally focused on public outreach through docent-led tours, are playing an increasingly important role in both formal and informal aspects of STEM education to help address these challenges. The University of Alaska Museum (UAM) stands as a model in the Arctic region exemplifying how public natural history museum collections can be utilized to create active place-based learning experiences with the aim of increasing engagement in STEM literacy and building connections between museums and communities. These efforts take many forms, including the development of teaching materials involving physical objects and (or) online data from the open-access database ARCTOS, training preservice teachers, and implementing citizen science project...

The National Museums of Kenya (NMK) was originally founded by colonists in the early 1900s with a focus on natural history and pre-history that has continued to affect institutional policies and governance and undermine support of the visual arts and art-based research at the museum. However, NMK has been undergoing a process of decolonization in the twenty-first century that has centralized the role of art in the institution in unprecedented ways. This paper traces how modern and contemporary art have entered institutionalized discourse in Kenya and the importance of this shift to decolonization and the establishment of a Kenyan art history. Based on qualitative research the author conducted in Kenya intermittently over the past twenty years, the article considers art as a conduit for constructing and communicating national narratives and examines the ways that art-based research is affecting exhibition development, educational programming, public outreach and digitization of the collections at NMK.

In this article, drawing on my perspective as a settler of white Euro-Welsh/English/Irish ancestry, I discuss words and concepts that are crucial to decolonising and Indigenising museums, with a particular focus on the lands now known as Canada. Museums, heritage spaces and other memory institutions are only beginning to grapple with decolonising and Indigenising approaches that place unacknowledged and unstated colonial norms under scrutiny (despite calls for such actions from Indigenous scholars, curators and activists for many decades if not centuries). The decades of genocide attempts documented in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Report and Calls to Action (2015) amplified the need for this work. Conversations around what ‘Reconciliation’ means for non-Indigenous people are slowly gaining momentum as museums, and the wider GLAM sector, look at how to implement decolonising and Indigenising actions in meaningful ways. I discuss Nerida Blair’s concept of Lilyology and la paperson’s institutional internalisation of scyborgism as part of my discussion of how museums and museum professionals can undertake actions for decolonising and Indigenising their practices and collections.

Living in California seems to require interaction with the state's twenty-one historic Spanish missions, either by visiting them as a tourist, driving by a mission in one's neighborhood, or learning about them as a schoolchild. While the missions ostensibly celebrate California's history, many promote an anachronistic and dishonest re-telling of history that elides the devastating impact of the missions on Native communities (both historically and today). The missions operate as largely uncontested tourist attractions that promote self-serving collective memories about California's founding narrative. Rhetorical analysis, I argue, can lead to a more honest engagement with the "hard truths" of their pasts, thus enabling a decolonizing paradigm (Lonetree). Toward this end, this essay focuses on the missions' role in shaping public memory in California by comparing the rhetorical choices made at two locations: Mission

These pages summarise my feelings about being a guest editor on this special issue, as a white settler of British ancestry taking up space on stolen lands. I share my thoughts on where this volume fits into the bigger picture of decolonizing work taking place in museums and in our daily lives.

Painel no VII Congresso da Associação Portuguesa de Antropologia, Lisboa, Junho de 2019/7th APA Congress, Lisbon, Juin 2019

Resumo curto / Short abstract:
Este painel pretende convocar um conjunto de comunicações que, debruçando-se sobre casos particulares ou propondo análises mais abrangentes, examinem a condição atual da relação entre a Antropologia e os Museus e a necessidade de descolonização dos conteúdos dos Museus, reconstruindo a memória das relações entre o Ocidente e sociedades colonizadas./This panel aims to bring together a set of contributions – in the form of particular case studies or more comprehensive analyses – interested in discussing the ways Anthropology and museums currently relate. We welcome, in particular, those contributions that address the necessity to decolonize museum collections.

Museums of natural and cultural history in the 21st century hold responsibilities that are vastly different from those of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the time of many of their inceptions. No longer conceived of as cabinets of curiosities, institutional priorities are in the process of undergoing dramatic changes. This article reviews the history of the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks, Alaska, from its development in the early 1920s, describing the changing ways staff have worked with Indigenous individuals and communities. Projects like the Modern Alaska Native Material Culture and the Barter Island Project are highlighted as examples of how artifacts and the people who constructed them are no longer viewed as simply examples of material culture and Native informants but are considered partners in the acquisition, preservation, and perpetuation of traditional and scientific knowledge in Alaska. Résumé : Les musées d'histoire naturelle et culturelle au vingt et unième siècle ont des responsabilités qui diffèrent énormément du temps des musées du dix-neuvième et du début du vingtième siècle, date de fondation de plusieurs d'entre eux. Les musées ne sont plus conçus comme des cabinets de curiosités et les priorités institutionnelles sont dans le processus de subir des changements importants. Cet article passe en revue l'histoire du Musée de l'Université d'Alaska à Fairbanks en Alaska, depuis son développement au début des années 1920, décrivant l'évolution des moeurs du personnel travaillant avec des indi-vidus et des communautés indigènes. Les projets comme le « Modern Alaska Native Material Culture» et le « Barter Island Project » sont mis en évidence comme exemples du fait que des objets façonnés et les gens qui les ont fabriqués ne sont plus vus simplement comme des exemples de culture matérielle et d'informateurs autochtones, mais sont considérés comme