A Roundup of Decolonization News
The popularity of last week’s guest post by Frank Howarth on decolonizing the museum mind prompts me to share a round-up of some of the stories I’ve been collecting on efforts to decolonize museum practice. The following abstracts and …
Decolonizing the Museum Mind
At the heart of modern museum work is the tension between our mission to preserve the past, and a moral obligation to confront the bias and inequities entangled with that inheritance. The history, mindset, and material culture of …
Confronting Canada
This article originally appeared in the September/October 2018 issue of Museum magazine. In celebrating Canada’s 150th anniversary, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights attempts to tell the full story of the country’s history and treatment …
A Conversation with Hallie Winter
Hallie Winter, curator at the Osage Nation Museum in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, is the recipient of the 2018 Nancy Hanks Memorial Award for Professional Excellence, which honors a museum professional with less than 10 years’ experience in the …
Keynote Speakers Donovan Livingston & Frank Waln
Award-winning educator Donovan Livingston and Sicangu Lakota hip hop artist Frank Waln explore what a decolonized system of education would look like and how museums can p…
Museopunks Episode 27: #MuseumsAreNotNeutral
With a reticence towards partisan politics, museums are sometimes perceived to be neutral institutions, many avoiding taking a visible stand on issues. But can they really avoid being political when making choices about the allocation of …
Museopunks Episode 26: Decolonize the Museum!
The vision of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine, describes how the museum “will reflect and realize the values of decolonization in all of its practices, working with the Wabanaki Nations to share their stories, history, and culture …
Fostering Truth and Reconciliation One Generation at a Time
In his story for Museum 2040, Omar Eaton-Martinez posits a future in which the United States establishes its own Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to deal with the “atrocities and long-term impact of the genocide of First Nation …
We must decolonize our museums!
“Museums can be very painful sites for Native peoples, as they are intimately tied to the colonization process,” writes Ho-Chunk scholar Amy Lonetree. Reading this passage for the first time in 2012 stopped me in my tracks and forced me …
Crafting courageous truths: The creation and philosophy of MASS Action: Museum As Site for Social Action
Today, Porchia Moore, Aletheia Wittman, Elisabeth Callihan, nikhil trivedi, Janeen Bryant, and Sage Morgan-Hubbard share thoughts on the recent MASS Action convening. Here they outline the vision for the three-year project and describe the …
