Zed books winnipeg8/23/2023 ![]() ![]() We need to apply decolonizing principles to all aspects of training undertaken in museum studies courses. People are responsible for everything that happens within and outside museums, so calls for decolonizing these spaces must start with the people ourselves. Institutions are shaped and constructed by the people within them-people are policy writers, action takers, and interpreters. I want to be clear from the beginning that while this article does metaphorize decolonizing work, the purpose is to help educate/reeducate the current and future museum workforce, especially settlers of European ancestry like myself who may not recognize the extent to which colonialism continues to shape contemporary societies. Actions of redress are important, but without reformulating museology and museums, we continue to be contained and constrained within the Enlightenment-era foundations of these institutions. Wayne Yang (2012), “metaphorizing decolonization.” For museums, then, nonmetaphorical decolonizing work entails researching whose stolen land the institution is situated on and doing whatever is necessary within restrictive capitalist, colonial frameworks to return the land, and second, returning collections (belongings, archives, etc.) extracted from Indigenous Nations-not keeping a copy, not giving a copy, but giving everything back freely and without conditions-and perhaps adding financial compensation for years of unconsented use museums have benefited from exhibits, displays, promotional materials, and so on. 1 Naming this means we can start to visibilize the tentacles of colonialism grasping everything around us and understand how we are held in the tenacious grip of invisible, invasive vines we have become one with.Īny discussion around decolonizing, unless it is about giving land back, is guilty of, in the words of Unangaxˆ scholar Eve Tuck and settler scholar K. Stó:lō scholar Dylan Robinson (2020: 38) defines “settler” as:Ī statement of positionality that seeks to make visible the ways by which non-Indigenous people have benefitted from colonial policy such as the Indian Act in Canada and the genocidal policies of Indian Residential Schools … The term “settler” has been adopted as a form of self-identification by those who were not, historically, the first settlers of the already occupied Indigenous lands now known as Canada, but nevertheless understand their complicity in and benefit from ongoing colonial policies that continue to constrain Indigenous rights and resurgence.Īs settlers, we are active beneficiaries of ongoing structures of colonialism, though the ways we benefit vary greatly (see Wolfe 1999, 2006.). When I call myself a “settler,” I attempt to show I understand I am not Indigenous to this place. My benefits, privileges, and ancestral tracings are entirely different from other ethnicities who are now settled on Indigenous lands. I restate that I am not intending to speak for everyone as if we benefit from colonialism in the same way-I am a white settler, of European ancestry. ![]() These include: understanding myself in relation to the land I am on visibilizing colonial structures that surround us understanding whiteness as an affliction alongside ways that we (“we” for me means white people of European ancestry) normalize white supremacy building and maintaining relationships with all Nations (people, plants, insects, animals, etc.) decentering settler needs and desires understanding limits of my authority expressing gratitude and love freely and regularly prioritizing languages, place names, plant names, animal names, ontologies, and epistemologies that are Indigenous to the land I am on, instead of imposed European systems of my ancestors and, attempting to work and live in nonextractive, reciprocal ways.Īs demonstrated by Cuban American settler artist Coco Fusco (1997) and Mexican/Chicano/American settler artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña's 1992 performance piece Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit and more recently by a 2020 survey in the UK that found 82 percent of people said they trusted curators to tell “the truth” ( Adams 2020), museums have authority in society and must use this to enact change, starting with visibilizing the ongoing colonialism around us (see Chung and Fusco 2021 Fusco 2021). During my PhD research, I assembled a nonexhaustive list of what (to me) are foundational decolonizing principles to apply to my work, research, methodologies, and, above all, my daily life.
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