The scholar–practitioner expanded: an indigenous and museum research network

Krmpotich, Cara; Peers, Laura

doi:10.1080/09647775.2011.621729

Cited by 9 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…In 2009, a delegation of Haida researchers also looked for 'Haida things' in the British Museum, but for them, the search was an opportunity for 'reconnecting to these objects and to the ancestors who made them after their long separation from the community'. 77 A century-long period of absence coincided with the objects' classification in the material, legal, and discursive registers of the society that had acquired them, and with the classification of the Haida as Indigenous. 78 Some Haida delegates to the museum related to the objects as kin, displaced or in diaspora.…”

Section: Categorisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

When is a Haida sphinx: thinking about law with things

Painter

2017

NILQ

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The ‘law and . . .’ field of legal scholarship verges on consensus about the co-constitution between law and nearly everything else. Co-constitution raises questions about how to differentiate law from other things. The contemporary turn from words towards the material brings fresh perspective on these questions by suggesting that law’s differentiation is fabricated through materiality. This article considers whether and how material techniques that differentiate law might fabricate the difference of a thing not commonly understood by Western law as law. Its focus is an object created in Haida Gwaii in the late nineteenth century and now displayed in the British Museum. It shows that while techniques common to Western law differentiate this thing, competing materialities are also at work. Furthermore, jurisdictional choices are embedded in the fabrication of this thing’s difference. Understanding law as differentiated materially does not escape the social and jurisdictional forces that underpin how the matter of law comes to matter.

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Section: Categorisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

When is a Haida sphinx: thinking about law with things

Painter

2017

NILQ

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“…In all my courses, I am influenced by my own collections‐based employment and research that approaches artifacts in museums as potential teachers—as catalysts for the telling of oral histories, language and vocabulary, family stories and memories, artistic techniques, modes of production, historic relations, and shifting worldviews (Krmpotich and Peers ; Krmpotich and Romanek ). However, this approach comes from a collections perspective more so than a curatorial perspective.…”

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confidence: 99%

Teaching Collections Management Anthropologically

Krmpotich

2015

Museum Anthropology

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This article documents the creation of a teaching collection intended to teach and equally interrogate collections management practices and values to graduate-level museum studies students. The collection is being used to convey to students the ways collections management is an embodied practice and an active area for research. The creation of the collection is discussed as an iterative process through the lens of material culture and museum anthropological analysis, taking into account the objects in the collection, the practices of collections management, and the interactions between students and the growing collection. The iterative process is likewise presented in waves of challenges and partial solutions. [collections management, material culture, museum anthropology] My background is in museum anthropology and material culture studies. I now teach within a Museum Studies professional master's program at the University of Toronto that takes seriously the interrelatedness of practice and theory and aims to create students who are "fluent" across multiple museum roles. The students come from diverse disciplines including history, archaeology, classics, biology, literature, art history, and anthropology, while others are returning to university from professional positions within museums, galleries, zoos, education, contract archaeology, communications, translation, or other fields. Among the courses I teach is Collections Management, a required course that introduces students to the processes that transform objects into museum artifacts and the long-term physical and intellectual care of museum collections. I strive for students to be keenly aware of the people for whom museums steward collections and the people who are affected by collections management decisions. Within my course, I also want students to understand collections management as a site for active research within museums and museum studies. The course requires students to expand their knowledge of the theories at the foundation of collections best practices and the resources available to support collections activities. It also provides opportunities for "practice-based learning" so that students' bodies will come to know what it feels like to practice collections management-to embody best and emerging practices through repetitive physical handling of museum artifacts and by monitoring one's bodily movements within museum spaces. Our bodily interactions with museum collections are distinct from our interactions with non-museum objects, and it takes practice and repetition for this manner of working to become "natural." Although my students have various levels of exposure to anthropological methods and theories, anthropology's interest in the relations made through objects and their exchange (Appadurai 1988; Buchli 2002;Edwards et al. 2006;Harrison et al. 2013; Strathern 1988), in isolating cultural epistemologies (Fabian 2007; Moore and Saunders 2014; Toren and de Pina-Cabral 2011), and in embodied and engendered cultural practices (C...

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“…Although numerous authors have explored a multiplicity of aspects of the museumsource community relationship, with the exception of the authors in Harrison et al (2013) as noted, few have applied theoretical models (Kelly, Cook, and Gordon 2006, Krmpotich and Peers 2011, Onciul 2011. Additionally, it is my contention that regional or community museums have far greater ability to develop innovative methods of power-sharing with regard to cultural heritage and that this is a direct result of social inclusion, relationship-building (face-to-face and ongoing) and empowerment through access to knowledge (collections and collection records).…”

Section: Indigenous Community-museum Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are notable exceptions (Brown, Peers, and Richardson 2012, Krmpotich and Peers 2011, Peers and Brown 2009. The staff are recognised for the range of publications they produce on different museum collections with theoretical and broader museological content.…”

Section: Contemporary Practice At the Pitt Rivers Museummentioning

confidence: 99%

Worlds Apart: Indigenous Re-engagement with Museum-held Heritage: A New Zealand - United Kingdom Case Study

Horwood¹

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<p>For several decades a decolonised museology has been manifest within Western museum practice through, among other things, enhanced indigenous engagement with museums. Even so, indigenous communities still fail to access their cultural heritage housed in museums at distance, when they have no institutional affiliation which can facilitate contact and communication, and because they are often disadvantaged in terms of resources. Furthermore, the museums’ lack of online collection databases, coupled with other practical constraints centred on resources and priorities, inhibits their ability to work with indigenous communities. In post-colonial settler nations the democratisation of museum practice for indigenous collections has been one outcome of the political presence of indigenous peoples and the assertion of indigenous autonomy, as well as the proximity of indigenous communities and museums. Innovative practice has therefore differed from elsewhere as a result of the need for negotiated relationships with indigenous communities and recognition of indigenous authority. This has been the case in New Zealand where Māori epistemological frameworks are acknowledged and there is effective Māori participation within museums. This research addresses this issue of access to indigenous collections when they are held in other countries, and a corresponding gap in the literature, by exploring ways in which Māori communities can negotiate ongoing relationships with museums that hold collections of their ancestral heritage, when they are geographically remote from these collections. Using an analytical framework drawn from assemblage theory, the research has focussed on a detailed, situated New Zealand-United Kingdom case study, and is the first contextualised study over time of a heritage assemblage, comprising a collector and his collection, an indigenous community and a museum. A kaupapa Māori research methodology has enabled the acknowledgement and incorporation of Māori values into the research strategy which is an interdisciplinary approach centred on museum studies, but drawing also on related fields, indigenous knowledge systems and my own professional experience as a curator in a regional museum. The research has also employed methods such as archival research, interviews and hui/focus groups. Through the disassembly of this research assemblage I was able to document the impact of different value systems and epistemologies on access to heritage objects and clarify their meanings for specific communities. A number of entities emerged from this disassembly which were temporally and spatially contingent, and manifest as power, agency and values. Analysis of these entities has revealed their potential for beginning the task of decolonising the museum when power and authority are negotiated within this network and our difficult histories are acknowledged and communicated. Analysis of the data gathered has also reinforced the idea that taonga objectify social relationships in which they are transformed from passive ‘things’ to active actor-entities and as such are capable of enacting relationships prompting contemporary responses from human actors. The research findings show the emergence of an indigenous engagement praxis in which actor-networks are ongoing and reassembling, a process which is visible in contemporary indigenous people’s re-engagement with their museum-held heritage at distance. This praxis combines a range of developments in contemporary museum practice for community engagement which have proved effective in New Zealand and other settler colonies and has potential application elsewhere for community members, academics and museological practitioners when forging relationships based around indigenous cultural heritage collections when distance is a factor.</p>

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The scholar–practitioner expanded: an indigenous and museum research network

Cited by 9 publications

References 9 publications

When is a Haida sphinx: thinking about law with things

When is a Haida sphinx: thinking about law with things

Teaching Collections Management Anthropologically

Worlds Apart: Indigenous Re-engagement with Museum-held Heritage: A New Zealand - United Kingdom Case Study

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