The Home of Indian Culture and Other Stories in the Museum, Essay Example

North American museums have hitherto developed in an idiosyncratic fashion that widely diverges from museums and other cultural institutions in Europe. Unfortunately, North American museums have emulated European modes of representation of indigenous peoples rendered subaltern in a variety of fashions. During the nineteenth century, assumptions about the technological and intellectual inferiority of aboriginals , which would result in their eventual disappearance and extinction, were ubiquitous in public discourses. This forecasting of the eventual extinction of indigenous peoples merely validated the creation of museum collections in order to preserve the remnants of an antiquated past. As such, western museums in North America became perceived as the stewards and preservers of the material culture of the indigenous peoples living here.  This skewed perception of indigenous cultures as vanishing and inferior unequivocally impacted how museums collected and displayed certain artifacts. The notion of authenticity was of paramount importance, as authentic aboriginals were put on display as part and parcel of life prior to the arrival of  the Europeans and western technologies. In doing so, indigenous peoples were discursively framed as living remnants of a loss of culture despite the fact that museums viewed themselves as the preservers of what was authentic and real about aboriginal peoples. Virtually no exhibitions positioned the aboriginal peoples within the contemporary world, resulting in the discursive framing of Canadian indigenous peoples as remnants of an underdeveloped past that lacked technology and pertinence in the modern world.  Such attitudes towards and perceptions of indigenous peoples shaped official discourses both in Canada and the United States, thereby underscoring the necessity of indigenous involvement in their contemporary representation.

Thus, indigenous museum curators are charged with the responsibility of constructing a counter-narrative through exhibition and display that accurately represents aboriginal culture. Indeed, indigenous peoples must have agency in the interpretation of their own history and culture as displayed by various institutions. As such, aboriginals must have better access to museum collections on their own cultures. Collaboration and collection management are two critical aspects of representational methodologies deployed by museums that seek to put on display the material culture of indigenous peoples. Cultural centers managed by indigenous peoples are charged with the responsibility of subverting the official discourse that renders Aboriginal peoples and cultures inferior, subaltern, and anti-modern. Moreover, they must engage with the Aboriginal community in order to create a viable counter-narrative and initiate change.  Aboriginal-run cultural centers have opened up an alternative forum and avenue for the dissemination of cultural knowledge that call for local indigenous cultures to actively participate in various activities. One facility in Alberta exhibited the currency of including local indigenous culture at every stage of development, interpretation, and the delivery of a program. These centers underscore cultural continuity and relevance by utilizing both gallery space and the tradition modes of display of artifacts and artwork. These institutions will continue to develop and emerge as integral facets of the cultural landscape in Canada today. Exhibits and cultural modes of display that represent indigenous life created out of collaboration, research, and engaging the indigenous community are unequivocally different in the message they convey than those propagated by non-indigenous museum curators.

References

Doxtator, D. (1988). The home of Indian culture and other stories in the museum. Muse, 4 (3), 26-28.

Hill, T. (2002). A First Nations perspective: the AGO or the Woodland Cultural Centre? in Lynda Jessup with Shannon Bagg (eds). On Aboriginal Representation in the Gallery. Hull: Canadian Museum of Civilization, Mercury Series Paper 135: 9-16.

Martin, L. (2002). An/Other one: Aboriginal art, curators, and art museums, in Catherine  Thomas (ed.) The Edge of Everything: reflections on curatorial practice. Banff: The Banff  Centre Press.
Nason, J.D. (2000). ‘“Our” Indians: The unidimensional Indian in the disembodied local past, in Kawasaki, A. (ed.) The Changing Presentation of the American Indian: Museums and Native Cultures, Washington D.C. and Seattle: NMAI, Smithsonian Institution in association with the University of Washington Press.