Indigenous curation, museums, and intangible cultural heritage

Abstract

Fifteen to 20 years ago, few curators working in an American museum housing Native American collections would have questioned their right to open and handle the contents of a sacred medicine bundle, to put an Iroquois false face mask on display, or to mount an exhibition without consulting representatives from the source community. These were the taken-for-granted, exclusive roles and responsibilities of curators working within professional guidelines and ethics of the time. However, as museums have been making efforts to become responsive to the needs and interests of their diverse constituencies, especially minority and Indigenous communities, they have become more inclusive of diverse perspectives and sensitive to the rights of people to have a voice in how their cultures are represented and their heritage curated. Today, collaboration between museums and source communities and the co-curation of collections and exhibitions has become commonplace in many museums (see Peers and Brown 2003). These activities have also inspired the development of more culturally relative and appropriate approaches to curatorial work (see Kreps 2008). Collaboration and co-curation has also revealed how many Indigenous communities have their own curatorial traditions, or ways of perceiving, valuing, handling, caring for, interpreting, and preserving their cultural heritage. What we have learned is that just as museums are diverse in the multiple voices, perspectives, and identities they represent so too are approaches to curation and cultural heritage preservation. While the recognition of Indigenous or non-Western approaches to cura- tion has become de rigueur in some mainstream museums, Western-based and professionally oriented museological theory and practice continues to dominate the museum world. Indigenous curatorial traditions and approaches to heritage preservation are unique cultural expressions. As such, they should be recognised and preserved in their own right as part of a people’s cultural heritage. They also, however, contribute to world, cultural diversity and have much to contribute to our understanding of museological behaviour cross-culturally, in addition to the formulation of new museological paradigms.

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