Museum Collections and Their Legacies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindy Allen
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Museum Collections ◽  
Cultural Patrimony ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

Museums continue to be cast as anachronistic—‘weary’, ‘tired’, and ‘out of touch’—trophy houses embedded in the colonial past, with object collections considered hollow remnants of that past. This article contests this notion and reveals how museums have emerged over the past fifty years as active field sites where Indigenous communities, scholars, artists, and artisans in the Pacific have been and are engaging with their cultural patrimony. This approach has seen new meanings and readings of, and new life breathed into, these collections in ways never imagined or anticipated. The museum is a space where differing epistemologies have engaged, conflicted, and negotiated, enabling the reshaping and recovery of meanings within the things held in collections; a process that sits at the centre of the current decolonizing discourse. For Indigenous people, these museum holdings are a unique and tangible link to the past that can perhaps be found only in memory. This article provides a nuanced understanding of the complexities associated with museum collections and their enduring legacies realized through the engagement of Indigenous people with their cultural patrimony.

scholarly journals Seeing Themselves: Jean Barman’s French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest as a Resource for the Region’s People

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-135
Author(s):  
Stacy Nation-Knapper
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Indigenous Women ◽  
French Canadians ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
The Past ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Columbia River Plateau ◽  
Complicated Nature

Dr. Barman’s award-winning study is a resource to the Indigenous and non-Indigenous people of the Columbia River Plateau and the Pacific Northwest, an environmentally and culturally diverse region that now encompasses two countries, two provinces, three states, and many Indigenous communities. For Indigenous communities of the region, French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest provides an important context of colonialism, global economics, and the complicated nature of cross-cultural encounters. For non-Indigenous communities, the book also encourages an appreciation for the complexities of history often overlooked by celebratory histories of colonization. French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest is a resource in which people see themselves and their families in a complicated, accessible, and inspiring story of the past.

Universities as the Gatekeepers of the Intellectual Property of Indigenous People's Medical Knowledge

2008 ◽  
Vol 37 (S1) ◽  
pp. 34-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Kavelin
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Academic Capitalism ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Policy Context ◽  
Law And Policy

AbstractThis paper will explore the role of universities as one of the most important gatekeepers that facilitate the appropriation of Indigenous medical knowledge (IMK) from Indigenous communities to transnational pharmaceutical corporations. The first section will deconstruct the “denial of dependency” upon IMK. Using case studies, the critique will demonstrate a complex mystification of Indigenous knowledge and labour, and a de-identification of Indigenous people and nature as the source of the medicines appropriated. The last section will analyse the law and policy context of the past 20 years that is responsible for creating a process of academic capitalism that has strengthened this phenomenon.

The context and potential sustainability of traditional terrestrial periodic tambu areas: insights from Manus Island, Papua New Guinea

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Whitmore ◽  
John Lamaris ◽  
Wallace Takendu ◽  
Daniel Charles ◽  
Terence Chuwek ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Resource Use ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Management Tool ◽  
Vital Rates ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Governance Practices

Within the Pacific over the last two decades there has been greater recognition of the pre-existing tools within indigenous communities for natural resource management. Periodic tambu (Tok Pisin: a prohibition) is an indigenous resource management tool often used across Papua New Guinea. On Manus Island terrestrial periodic tambu areas are characterised by a cycle of resource closure followed by instantaneous harvest. We examine the differing application of periodic tambu areas by three different clans who are using the technique to restock areas with the Admiralty cuscus (Phalangeridae: Spilocuscus kraemeri), an arboreal possum-like marsupial. We examined the plausibility of cuscus population recovery over differing closure periods at three different harvest rates using a composite female-only population projection matrix approach based on the vital rates of closely related phalangerid surrogates. The resultant trajectories suggest that commonly used closure durations may allow recovery at low to medium harvest rates (10–30%) but not at high harvest rates (50%). From this we infer that periodic tambu areas may be a sustainable strategy for customary resource use of Admiralty cuscus at low to medium harvest rates. We found periodic tambu management on Manus Island to be culturally dynamic with clans differing with respect to their purpose, adherence to tradition, and hybridisation with modern land governance practices. Given the past difficulties of imposing exogenous conservation systems in Papua New Guinea, we advocate greater exploration of the merits of endogenous systems such as periodic tambu areas.

Resistance narratives

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 306-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivia Guntarik
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
Indigenous Resistance ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship

Narrative analysis has emerged as a central analytical force in furthering a critique of colonial discourse. This article examines the relationship between narrative and discourse, by offering a comparative analysis of indigenous narrative, in the context of Australian and Malaysian history and contemporary museum practices of representation. I argue that indigenous knowledge is underpinned by narratives that enable a radical reconceptualization of existing epistemological and philosophical practices to viewing the world. This knowledge reflects various narratives of resistance about indigeneity that challenge traditional understandings of difference, revealing the ways indigenous people make sense of the past and construct their own narratives. My intention is to explore the tensions of place, space and memory through a reflection on indigenous resistance narratives. I examine different knowledges of place and “country”, suggesting there are parallels between indigenous people’s cultural knowledge in Australia and indigenous people’s knowledge in Malaysia. Western preoccupations continue to ignore this cultural knowledge and, in doing so, they eclipse broader awareness about issues of significance for indigenous communities.

Innovation in the rangelands: the role of people

2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 535 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Chaney
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Native Title ◽  
New Ways Of Working ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World

The importance of the rangelands, economically, environmentally, and culturally to Australia, is highlighted. Australians need to be more aware of and appreciate new ways of working in pastoralism, environmental management, with Indigenous communities and mining that point the way to better social, economic, cultural and environmental outcomes. Optimism about the future role of the rangelands stems from the changes in Australia that have occurred over the past 50 years, from a country that was legally and socially segregated. Changes started with advocacy of voting rights for Indigenous people in 1961 and continued with the establishment of Aboriginal legal services, the setting up of the National Native Title Tribunal and native title representative bodies, and the founding of Reconciliation Australia. Changes have occurred because people have tried to make things better, not just for themselves but for Australia. Leadership and tireless action from Indigenous people and non-Indigenous collaborators have been powerful forces for change. However, governments continue to often fail those who live and work in areas that are distant from cities. Change needs to continue and everyone who cares about rangelands has a role, in different ways, to nudge the world of the rangelands to a better place.

Introduction: conceptualising Curatopia

Curatopia ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Schorch ◽  
Conal McCarthy ◽  
Eveline Dürr
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Future Development ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
First Century ◽  
Development Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Curatorial Practice ◽  
New Vision

As museums continue to change in the twenty-first century, the ‘figure of the curator’ is in flux. This introduction explores how curating globally is being (re)conceptualised through engagement with Indigenous people in the Pacific, and collections and exhibitions in Euro-American institutions. It provides an overview of this book, which brings together curators, scholars, and critics from a range of fields in international institutions to engage in debates about curatorial histories, theories, and practices. The introduction ponders the past, present and future of museums and curatorship. It identifies, in the plurality of approaches evident in this collection, an emerging curatorial ‘heterotopia’, a critical but ethical approach to curating. This new vision of curatorial practice, Curatopia, facilitates the reinvention of museums with ethnographic collections from the colonial period, and offers pathways for future development, research and experimentation.

Epilogue

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Coll Thrush
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Interpretation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Many ◽  
Past Half ◽  
The Way

This concluding chapter reviews the gallery “London Before London,” which is described as a vision of indigenous humanity. Upon viewing “London Before London,” one could be reminded of the many museums that have been established by Indigenous communities and nations in the past half century, in which Indigenous people have taken charge of the public interpretation of their lived history and culture, presenting themselves not as static denizens of a distant past, but as active, dynamic participants in survivance. Out of this impression, the chapter argues that this new kind of Indigenous story had percolated its way back to the center of the empire, transforming the way Londoners told stories about their own indigenous ancestors.

scholarly journals Indigenous People, Organized Crime and Natural Resources: Borders, Incentives and Relations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daan P. van Uhm ◽  
Ana G. Grigore
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Economic Incentives ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Criminological Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Organized Crime Groups ◽  
Criminal Groups

AbstractThis article explores the relationship between the Emberá–Wounaan and Akha Indigenous people and organized crime groups vying for control over natural resources in the Darién Gap of East Panama and West Colombia and the Golden Triangle (the area where the borders of Laos, Myanmar (Burma), and Thailand meet), respectively. From a southern green criminological perspective, we consider how organized crime groups trading in natural resources value Indigenous knowledge. We also examine the continued victimization of Indigenous people in relation to environmental harm and the tension between Indigenous peoples’ ecocentric values and the economic incentives presented to them for exploiting nature. By looking at the history of the coloniality and the socioeconomic context of these Indigenous communities, this article generates a discussion about the social framing of the Indigenous people as both victims and offenders in the illegal trade in natural resources, particularly considering the types of relationships established with dominant criminal groups present in their ancestral lands.

MONARCHS, TRAVELLERS AND EMPIRE IN THE PACIFIC'S AGE OF REVOLUTIONS

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 77-96
Author(s):  
Sujit Sivasundaram
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Islanders ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Global History ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Cultural Terms ◽  
The Pacific Ocean ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
A Site

AbstractThe Pacific has often been invisible in global histories written in the UK. Yet it has consistently been a site for contemplating the past and the future, even among Britons cast on its shores. In this lecture, I reconsider a critical moment of globalisation and empire, the ‘age of revolutions’ at the end of the eighteenth century and the start of the nineteenth century, by journeying with European voyagers to the Pacific Ocean. The lecture will point to what this age meant for Pacific islanders, in social, political and cultural terms. It works with a definition of the Pacific's age of revolutions as a surge of indigeneity met by a counter-revolutionary imperialism. What was involved in undertaking a European voyage changed in this era, even as one important expedition was interrupted by news from revolutionary Europe. Yet more fundamentally vocabularies and practices of monarchy were consolidated by islanders across the Pacific. This was followed by the outworkings of counter-revolutionary imperialism through agreements of alliance and alleged cessation. Such an argument allows me, for instance, to place the 1806 wreck of the Port-au-Prince within the Pacific's age of revolutions. This was an English ship used to raid French and Spanish targets in the Pacific, but which was stripped of its guns, iron, gunpowder and carronades by Tongans. To chart the trajectory from revolution and islander agency on to violence and empire is to appreciate the unsettled paths that gave rise to our modern world. This view foregrounds people who inhabited and travelled through the earth's oceanic frontiers. It is a global history from a specific place in the oceanic south, on the opposite side of the planet to Europe.

Asian Borderlands and the Legal Protection of Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expressions

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 1403-1433 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPH ANTONS
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Traditional Knowledge ◽  
Biological Diversity ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Cultural Property ◽  
World Intellectual Property Organization ◽  
Convention On Biological Diversity ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

AbstractTraditional knowledge related to biodiversity, agriculture, medicine and artistic expressions has recently attracted much interest amongst policy makers, legal academics and social scientists. Several United Nations organizations, such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the Convention on Biological Diversity under the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), have been working on international models for the protection of such knowledge held by local and indigenous communities. Relevant national, regional or provincial level legislation comes in the form of intellectual property laws and laws related to health, heritage or environmental protection. In practice, however, it has proven difficult to agree on definitions of the subject matter, to delineate local communities and territories holding the knowledge, and to clearly identify the subjects and beneficiaries of the protection. In fact, claims to ‘cultural property’ and heritage have led to conflicts and tensions between communities, regions and nations. This paper will use Southeast Asian examples and case studies to show the importance of concepts such as Zomia, ‘regions of refuge’ and mandala as well as ‘borderlands’ studies to avoid essentialized notions of communities and cultures in order to develop a nuanced understanding of the difficulties for national and international lawmaking in this field. It will also develop a few suggestions on how conflicts and tensions could be avoided or ameliorated.

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