Transformative Opportunities through Decolonizing and Indigenizing Museums: People, Collections, Exhibitions
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Authors
Phillips, Laura
Date
Type
thesis
Language
eng
Keyword
Decolonizing Museums , Indigizenizing Museums , Settler Colonialism , Geology , Museum Studies , Geology Museum , Enlightenment Era , Curatorial Practice , Abolition Dream Mapping , Perpetual Conciliation , Reconciliation , UNDRIP United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples , TRC Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action
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Abstract
The postponement of a new definition for the word museum at the International Council of Museums conference in September 2019, along with growing societal interest and attention to museums, memory institutions, and heritage spaces as locations for decolonizing opportunities, suggests that the first quarter of the 21st century has unsettled aspects of our world that were formerly taken for granted by some. Museums’ inheritance from past generations of assumed authority is being critically evaluated from multiple perspectives. Yet within the profession, aside from inclusive gestures like sharing authority for exhibition content about Indigenous topics with Indigenous experts, some museum staff, policies, and procedures remain firmly embedded in an ethos of colonial entitlement.
In what is now known as Canada, the worldviews of white, Euro-descended, settler populations tend to be presented as the norm, or assumed to be the perspective from which museum texts are written and consumed. This default position relies on the mistaken assumption that Euro-centric, Enlightenment-era worldviews, behaviours, and tendencies are the only ways through which the world can be observed, named, and ordered. As I demonstrate throughout this thesis, these beliefs foreclose upon and erase other possibilities of seeing, being, and living-in-relation with. My research presents decolonizing and Indigenizing approaches to ways of being and working in museums primarily for settler museum professionals; a case study of concealed power and authority in a museum using semi-structured community-based research interviews; and, aspirational imaginings of a geology museum in decolonizing and Indigenizing futures.
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States
ProQuest PhD and Master's Theses International Dissemination Agreement
Intellectual Property Guidelines at Queen's University
Copying and Preserving Your Thesis
This publication is made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws without written authority from the copyright owner.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States