Remembering Stories

What is a decolonized museum?

We believe that anthropology museums must eliminate elitism and return authorship, if not collections, back to source communities. They can move from hallowed national temples to inclusive public forums by first acknowledging their complicity, as a Euro-American institution, in the colonial processes responsible for their collections and objectifying interpretations.  The collections and displays in our museums reveal as much about the collectors and the museum staff as about Indigenous peoples, yet the collectors and curators are occluded from view as are the dominant assumptions framing the exhibit narrative. As objects are displayed, who controls the narrative?  

"The key problem, as I see it, lies deeper—deep in the assumptions and practices that constitute the museum in the past and today....The museum as a site of accumulation, as a gatekeeper of authority and expert accounts, as the ultimate caretaker of the object...as its documenter and even as educator, has to be completely redrafted."
                                                                                                                                               -- Robin Boast, archaeologist

According to Amy Lonetree, museums can serve as sites of decolonization by "honoring Indigenous knowledge and worldviews, challenging the stereotypical representations of Native people produced in the past [and present], serving as sites of knowledge making and remembering for their own communities and the public, and discussing the hard truths of colonialism." (Lonetree, 2012, 25)


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