Contributors
Maria Camila Arbelaez I am a junior studying Ethnic Studies focusing on issues of migration and borders. I hail from Bogotá, Colombia. I left because of violence exacerbated by U.S. imperialism, paradoxically becoming a new settler in the settler colonial society that harmed my own. I am humbled to have worked with and learned from indigenous peoples from Taiwan and the Americas, and to have had a space to imagine what decolonization might look like. I hope to continue these world building conversations as resist my unwanted role, and the cruel oppression of colonial structures.
Stella Chong. I am first-generation college student from a low-income, Malaysian-Chinese immigrant family in New York. I am a senior concentrating in Anthropology and Health & Human Biology. I aspire to pursue a career in community health in order to address the social determinants of health and to achieve health equity in marginalized communities. I chose to concentrate in Anthropology because I am interested in hearing people’s narratives. I believe that everyone has a story - one that is unique to themselves and constructed by history, culture, and living experiences. For this reason, I decided to take this course, Decolonizing Museums to understand how ethnographic objects can tell a narrative of their own, reflect the voices of the unheard, and to ultimately honor and celebrate Indigenous survival.
Asante Crews I am a Brown University undergraduate studying Archaeology and Biology. I have done internships at several institutions including the National Museum of Natural History, the Fernbank Museum of Natural History, and the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University. I am interested in learning more about global indigeneity, cultural heritage, human-environment interactions, and museums as institutions. I am passionate about public education and making knowledge accessible. I continue to learn more about indigenous research frameworks in her studies.
Sierra Edd. I am a Diné (Navajo) student at Brown University concentrating in Ethnic Studies. As a Mellon Mays fellow, I have research interests in border theory, anti-colonial studies, and Indigenous studies, with a project investigating racial violence in border-town communities on the Navajo reservation. I grew up in a borderland, living with my Diné community yet existing on the cusp of reservation and broader society. This world in the borderland also describes where I stand as a student often feeling divided between my Diné homeland while attending an elite institution. With this in mind, I have worked to challenge colonialism and the erasure of Indigenous peoples with my work in this class. I have approached this class and writing my object biography using an interdisciplinary framework to center Indigenous resistance in remembering.
Axel Getz. I am a senior studying archaeology and environmental studies. Always interested in the management of heritage, I was impressed and challenged when coming to terms with the complicated relationships between museums and indigenous people. Although I believe these institutions have a ways to go until they can be considered decolonized, A remain hopeful that one day the trauma created by museums will be addressed appropriately and maybe one see these spaces become places of healing.
Yang Guo. I am a senior at Brown University concentrating in East Asian History. I grew up in Beijing, China and lived in Vancouver, Canada before coming to Brown. I have been a part of Brown University Strait Talk for 3 years, a youth-led grassroots initiative that advocates a peaceful future across the Taiwan Strait. Throughout my Strait Talk experience, I became increasingly interested in the process of identity formation in Taiwan, and how political and historical factors influence and mold individual and collective memories and identities. As a global citizen with various national backgrounds myself, I empathize with Taiwan's struggle of constructing a cohesive national narrative while piecing together different eras of its colonial history. In "Decolonizing Museums", I explored Taiwanese history through the Indigenous peoples' narrative and deconstructed many of my own prejudices and misconceptions. Our current societies are the products of exploitative colonial histories. We need to always remind ourselves of these histories of violence and exploitation and view our social institutions using such a critical gaze. I hope this virtual museum is a first step among many steps in the effort to gradually decolonize more spaces and institutions within our societies. With this new perspective and understanding of Taiwanese history, I also hope to further my contribution to cross-strait conversation and collaboration.
Alyxandra Todich'ii'ni Lawson I identify and am an Indigenous person. I am likewise a writer and artist, centering storytelling and poetry in my expressions. My name is Alyxandra Todich’ii’ni Lawson. I am white-passing and hold the power to assert my whiteness. I claim this whiteness in acknowledgement of my power and the domination it holds, moreover my performance as a womxn and all the history that works to protect and uphold white femininity. I identify as queer, genderqueer, and a survivor of physical, verbal, and sexual violence. My history of surviving abuse is interwoven and integrated into my worldview, understandings and actualizations of love, (un)learning and (un)knowing, and imaginations of present and future possibilities. My pronouns are they, them, their. I battle depression, anxiety, and PTSD. My experiences shape my understanding of what it means to be Indigenous, specifically Diné, and a student at Brown University.
Edward Li. I am a first-generation, low-income Chinese American. I am also a junior concentrating in Computer Science and I am extremely interested in the intersection of technology and media. I took "Decolonizing Museums" because I am intrigued by the ways that indigenous peoples are represented in cultural institutions like museums. The course taught me important lessons about naming the impact of colonialism and the power of indigenous survivance. I can say for certain that I will never look at objects in museums the same way again, and I will be sure to critically question the origins of those objects and whether or not they need to be there in the first place.
Daniel Motley. I am a sophomore at Brown University studying Ethnic Studies and Public Policy. I am also a citizen of the Tohono O’odham Nation in Arizona. In my short years at Brown, I have taken a huge interest in transnational Indigeneity. As someone who comes from a Native American tribe whose traditional lands exist in the United States and Mexico, being in this class has been extremely important for me. I have used my own experiences and the knowledge that I have gained from this course in order to critically analyze Indigenous focused museums with an open mind.
Kara Roanhorse. I am Diné from the reservation community To’hajiilee, NM. I am a senior studying Ethnic Studies with a focus on Critical Indigenous Theory and Politics, specifically environmental justice, social media activism, and tribal-federal policy as it pertains to Native Youth. As a Mellon Mays fellow, my senior thesis aims to highlight Native Youth, social media and technology, and developments for social change. I am interested in how Native Youth embody survivance (renouncement of tragedy and victimhood) and the ways we actively resist the efforts of oppressive structures online and beyond. I also hope to speak to the truths of my own journey and lived experiences, and address my identities and privileges as a Diné woman attending an Ivy League institution. My Diné teachings will be my compass and grounding for this work as I continue to grow in knowing what decolonization genuinely means for Native youth and future generations, beyond scholarly and activist definitions, and not as a metaphor. I humbled to be able to study and live upon the lands of the Wampanoag and Narragansett peoples, particularly as I reflect on settler colonialism, Indigenous (Diné) understandings, and my people’s diyogí (rug) making.
Arthur Sun I am currently a senior at Brown University. I spent much of my pre-undergraduate time in a small, desert town with my immigrant, Taiwanese-Chinese family. Coming to Brown has really exposed me to parts of my identity I did not think about when I was attending a high-school where I was the only ethnically Chinese person in my class. As also a first-generation university student, I spent much of my time here exploring the different opportunities Brown has to offer that I have not encountered before, finally settling on East Asian Studies. It became the best way for me to find parts of my history that I have never been in the right conditions to learn, and I have a natural inclination for learning about people and peoples. This class with Professor Caroline Frank, “Decolonizing Museums”, is the only class with a specific focus on Taiwan, so I felt naturally drawn to it; there has also been a gap in my Brown education in regards to classes with a direct, critical gaze on colonization. “Decolonizing Museums” has taught me more than what I expected, and I hope my engagement with the material shows through my object biography.
Jeanelle Wheeler I am a low-income white student from Worcester, Massachusetts. Growing up in a community of peace activists, working for social justice has always been part of my life. A senior at Brown, I concentrate in French & Francophone Studies as well as Literary Arts. Believing in the power of words and storytelling to uncover truths and alternative narratives, I wish to harness them as tools of healing as an aspiring educator and writer who tries to recognize both my positionality and the privilege that accompanies my whiteness. I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to be part of this course, which has framed museums as colonial institutions within a broader structure of colonialism. Seeing clearly the harmful abundance of colonial narratives in spaces both in and outside of museums, I hope to work towards dismantling colonial narratives through privileging Indigenous voices and continuing to listen.
Caroline Frank I am a white woman and have been at Brown University for nearly twenty years, as a student and faculty member, and I currently direct our International MA Program in American Studies. My area of academic focus is global Early American history, material and visual culture, and museum studies. I research international/transnational interactions on both the continental U.S.A. and abroad, with special interest in the transpacific. In teaching I am committed to transnational American Studies, and in the MA program, I seek to promote a transnational group of engaged scholars. Some of the most innovative work in disrupting the all-pervasive Western museum paradigm today is being done among Indigenous communities. The first step in forging a new model for ethnographic museums is to acknowledge the colonialist history of which they have been a part.
