Closing

Abstract

These pages summarise my feelings about being a guest editor on this special issue, as a white settler of British ancestry taking up space on stolen lands. I share my thoughts on where this volume fits into the bigger picture of decolonizing work taking place in museums and in our daily lives.

These words were written from Ka’tarohkwi/Kingston, on lands stolen from the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabek Nations.

I was extremely honored and grateful to have been invited to join this volume as a guest editor when the focus issue theme was conceived in Spring 2020, but I was hesitant to accept. As a white settler of British ancestry living on stolen lands in what is now known as Canada, my (recent) work and Ph.D. research focuses on having conversations with my fellow settlers about what we benefit from and are complicit with because of the on-going colonial structures that surround us.

On one hand, I was very drawn to the idea of a volume that would put current conversations around decolonizing work in collections (especially contributions from Indigenous scholars and curators working with collections extracted from their home Nations), into a format that would help curators in Europe understand the contemporary contexts related to these collections. On the other hand, accepting the position of guest editor for a volume on Indigenous Collections seemed hypocritical when I am trying to take up LESS space, as a white, cis-gendered woman of settler ancestry, and is exactly the type of action I try to avoid. When I read the words of Unangax̂ scholar Eve Tuck, proclaiming her impatience for white settlers constantly asking for “to do” lists to achieve decolonization, instead of internalizing this as a new way of being, seeing, and acting on a scale of totality, from personal and home life to work life, I try to take these directives to heart and check in with myself frequently to “not be that person.” ¹

I’m still sitting in a space of discomfort being a guest editor, but what made me accept was the opportunity to help shape new conversations, and to possibly counter some of the ways that well intentioned museum professionals inadvertently contribute to erasure and further colonial containment.

I understand myself as a white settler using the definition provided by Dylan Robinson (Stó:lō):

. . .a statement of positionality that seeks to make visible the ways by which non-Indigenous people have benefitted from colonial policy such as the Indian Act in Canada and the genocidal policies of Indian Residential Schools. . .the term “settler” has been adopted as a form of self-identification by those who were not, historically, the first settlers of the already occupied Indigenous lands now known as Canada, but nevertheless understand their complicity in and benefit from ongoing colonial policies that continue to constrain Indigenous rights and resurgence.. . . ²

With this understanding I hope to work in ways that counter ongoing colonial policies and actions inflicted across this land. ³ I attempt to perform my research in non-extractive and un-hungry ways, though upon reflection, this is not always successful. I constantly question my approach and check in with publications by the many Indigenous scholars whose work guides these approaches. ⁴ While being mindful of my desire to purposely turn away from centering settler needs, my research as a settler does require deep consideration of the settler state of mind as a first step to finding strategies that might reduce settler dominance and/or over-presence. Part of this work necessitates a critical understanding of whiteness, and the largely unspoken aspects of white supremacy in Canada that shore up all manner of privilege—observed and felt by all, yet until recently, widely unacknowledged by the main benefactors.

To position myself professionally, I moved to England, my ancestral homeland, in 2000 and worked in museums and heritage spaces from 2001 to 2010. I worked in Qatar and Miami, then arrived back in Canada in 2014 to take up the position as Consultant for Collections & Exhibitions at Aanischaaukamikw Cree Cultural Centre. By that time, I had lived outside of Canada for almost fifteen years. Living and working in Ouje-Bougoumou Cree Nation, alongside a multitude of incredibly generous, kind, and wise Eeyou colleagues and neighbors, opened my eyes to the strength, truths and resilience of the original ways of this land. I undertook my Ph.D. in 2017 to understand more about the conversations that need to happen to reduce settler over-presence, and to be part of the transformation taking place as we work to reduce ongoing colonial structures, especially in museums and colonial heritage spaces.

The hard work of decolonizing museum spaces is only in its infancy. Part of this requires making the oppressive structures visible. Applying decolonizing principles in practice, through self-reflection by both individuals and institutions can move us towards understandings of how these spaces can be transformed. In post Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Canada (2015), and in this era of working through the implications of the United Nations Declaration for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples [UNDRIP] (2007), discussions around decolonization call for increasing our settler accountabilities. ⁵ An essential first step to this process is educating or re-educating the existing workforce, many of whom are settlers educated in eras before the TRC, and who may (unwittingly) be promoting white supremacist and/or colonial centered views by presenting these without critique or the requisite specificity of language in museums and gallery spaces, which then contributes to erasure. ⁶ The prerequisite to this work is for people working within these spaces to understand the limitations of what is currently on offer, the extent to which our Enlightenment era inheritances continue to shape museology, and how to internalize decolonizing principles within ourselves and museum structures to re-conceptualize museum-like spaces. ⁷

Settler-focused narratives have been critiqued by Indigenous scholars for decades if not centuries. ⁸ Despite this, many museums continue to ignore the ongoing presence and resilience of Indigenous communities, Nations, and individuals. Alternatives to European and settler-centric perspectives have existed for millennia, shared through Indigenous oral histories, documented in colonial archives and yet, mainstream museum interpretation tended to overwrite Indigenous presence with narrow views that assume consumption by settler audiences. ⁹

To me, the bigger picture this volume fits within is the current conversation around defining what a museum is (or should be). This means accepting that institutions like museums and universities are shaped and constructed by the people within them—we are policy writers, action takers, and interpreters. People are responsible for everything that happens within and outside of museums, so any discussion around calls for decolonizing these spaces must start with us. An essential first step to this process is educating or re-educating the existing museum workforce—in what is now known as the Americas but most especially in Europe. European museums contain extracted belongings and populations as a direct result of colonial activities—many of which are on-going, albeit in different forms. In my experience, there is somewhat of a disconnect between conversations taking place in the Americas (and certainly different conversations depending on which area of the Americas we are speaking of) and the conversations in Europe.

There were many incredible contributions for us to select from for this issue—that in itself was an incredible privilege, to actually be picking the articles that we felt best answered the principles we collectively laid out in the Call for Papers at the head of this issue of the journal (distributed in February 2021). Many of the submissions took the guidance to heart and sent in proposals that activated the concepts that were listed in the call.

What I see in many parts of the so-called Americas is settlers reckoning with the realization that our education is and was centered on continuing norms of settler colonial dominance, and slowly understanding that basically everything we were taught by settler colonial forms of education is but one world view (Eurocentric, Enlightenment), which has been imposed on lands that already had (and continue to have) complex and vibrant world views, languages, societies, religions, communities, nations, beliefs, and so on. Europeans, on the other hand, are not necessarily living on stolen land in the same way that we are in the Americas, and will hopefully appreciate how these contributions put their care for Indigenous belongings and populations into conversation with ongoing acts of epistemic violence found in museological practices. ¹⁰

As I am writing what is intended to close the volume, again a true honor for me, I am hoping that readers of this issue will agree that these selections present new inspirations for decolonizing work with the projects and case studies shared. All of the contributions are meant to embody the decolonizing principles we aspire to, whether or not these are actually conceptually addressed in each chapter. I hope readers reflect on the contributions, note the ways that words are used, how people refer to themselves and others, what the authors have brought attention to, the historic and present contexts that these authors write from, and how they position their work in relation to themselves, the Land, institutions, policies, procedures, communities, and all of Creation. The specificity of what we use text to discuss, rather than more malleable formats, means we need to pay attention to the words we use, and what these words can imply or erase. I admit my editing work is particularly critical, for the purpose of bringing precision, specificity and focus on what and how we write about our work, to promote better and more respectful ways for caring for Indigenous collections, belongings, and populations.

What I love the most about the contributions in this volume is the way they activate Indigenous resilience, resistance, and presence, without necessarily saying “we are decolonizing”—this lack of centering colonial structures is present in many of the projects shared here—these scholars simply present Indigenous ways of being, thinking, and knowing as their norms. Other contributions from scholars working within and beyond colonial institutions show methods of countering colonial foundations and ongoing efforts of containment using approaches grounded in relational and reciprocal approaches to their projects.

To all of the contributors, I thank you for your words and your work and I hope this volume helps to unsettle museology so that we can shape it in new ways.