Paper short abstract:

Using the method of "archival return," this paper reconsiders Indigenous visual culture in ethnographic collections through the lens of Indigenous family history. It examines how this approach can help to both address and undo the erasures that are produced by colonial archives.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I consider the potentials of a life history approach to colonial collections for expanding the interpretative frameworks of provenance research beyond the purview of postcolonial critique. Drawing on long-term collaborative research with the Indigenous custodians of a historical Australian collection kept at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, my discussion focuses on a set of drawings created by the Gunditjmara stockkeeper John Dawson. Offering a rare Indigenous account of colonial life in mid-19th century Southeastern Australia, Dawson’s works bear witness to his encounter with collector Eugene von Guérard, an influential landscape painter and member of Melbourne’s German community.

Employing the method of “archival return” (Barwick et al. 2020), my analysis is grounded in conversations and journeys with Dawson's descendants, Indigenous Elders whose expertise spans the fields of cultural heritage, community health, land rights, and education. In their reading, the drawings are re-articulated with Indigenous family history and its lived experience, foregrounding the existential relationship of Dawson’s image making to kin and Country – fundamental concepts of Indigenous social life and politically charged markers of difference in the context Indigenous-settler relations. Offering a dynamic approach to undoing the processes of omission that have shaped the archival record, contemporary Indigenous accounts reconfigure the collection as a record of “survivance” (Vizenor 1999) and a vital resource for strengthening Indigenous “cultural futures” (Myers & Ginsburg 2006).

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses African museum sound collections recorded in rural areas of Angola in the 50s and 60s under Portuguese colonial rule. This colonial heritage is still largely unknown inside and outside museums and has not yet been studied by decolonial and critical anthropological approaches.

Paper long abstract:

African colonial museum sound collections continue to be neglected in favor of other types of archival sources. Sound is still not really seen as a historical document equivalent to written text, photography or film. This paper seeks to overcome these limitations and methodological bias, while proposing a critical anthropological approach to African colonial museum sound collections produced by European scientific anthropological missions in overseas territories. To decolonize these collections, we need to consider the performative, epistemological, ontological, and political dimensions of sound recordings. There is an urgent need to render visible the subaltern African agencies captured in these recordings, including the plural modalities of contestation, the entangled nature of colonized and colonizer identities, and the oral memories and narratives evoked by African subjects when exposed to the recordings. This paper shares ongoing investigation from my research project on African museum sound collections recorded in the 50s and 60s in different rural territories of Angola under Portuguese colonial rule. This project is based on critical ‘thick listening’ to these recordings of African speech, language, tales, and songs, combining anthropology with history and postcolonial studies through multisited archival and collaborative fieldwork research, in Angola and Portugal. Drawing on decolonial research methodologies, this approach responds to the need to include the voices, memories and knowledge about these museum sound collections that were produced in colonial contexts of multifaceted violence. The aim is to render more visible the complexities of colonial power relations and contribute to a sense of cognitive justice and historical reparation.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will discuss the roles that diasporan African activism and collaboration in Liverpool have played in reframing a museum collection from Benin.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the roles that diasporan African activism and collaboration in Liverpool have played in reframing a museum collection from Benin. It covers the collaborative and participatory approach to exhibition making that was developed for the National Museums Liverpool’s "Benin and Liverpool" exhibit, which opened in 2021. This project was intended to update interpretation of that museum’s collection from Benin City and address the historical legacies of injustice that are associated with the collection. It involved a small group from Liverpool’s African diaspora communities being invited to participate in the redisplay process. The African diaspora participants in the project demonstrated a determination to address historical injustices and to help promote a more equitable cultural environment in Britain for their children than the one that they themselves faced while growing up in Liverpool in earlier decades. By bringing the concerns and perspectives of this external group into the exhibition making process, the project succeeded in generating a disruptive curatorial vision that brought new relevance and a more engaging and human perspective to the redisplay. The paper concludes with some broader reflections on the role of African diaspora activism and experience in shaping public discussion of restitution and reparatory representations of Africans and African cultures.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores research in provenance studies through the Trafricants Project.Critiques colonial practices in museums, focusing on the Guinean collection at the catalan Museum of Ethnology, and examines how collaborative techniques can challenge neocolonial discourses in museums and academia.

Paper long abstract:

This paper delves into the capabilities and constraints of collaborative techniques applied in provenance studies to critically examine the (neo-)colonial categories and procedures embedded within museum and academic institutions.

This paper reflects on the limitations and possibilities of collaborative research techniques applied in provenance research on ethnographic collections of colonial origin. To illustrate this, the Intercultural Dialogue Tables developed within the "(Tr)african(t)s. Museums and Collections of Catalonia in the Face of Coloniality" project are taken as an example. These tables aim to create spaces for discussion around a selection of images from the artifact and photographic collections of the Catalan museums under analysis. Specifically, the intervention focuses on the roundtables addressing the Guinean collection housed at the Museum of Ethnology and World Cultures, conducted in Barcelona, Bata, and Malabo with various key actors - artists, activists, professionals, and academics - in the diaspora and in Equatorial Guinea.

The conservation, classification, decontextualized exhibition, and uncritical presentation of pieces in European museums are today interpreted as a continuation of the colonialist paradigm and imperial violence. Beyond the biographical traceability of the pieces, the reflection extends to fundamental aspects such as the use of colonial images, the participation and/or instrumentalization of diasporas, or the role that counter-narratives should play in the traceability of these collections and the consequent reformulation of museological discourses. Thus, the presentation addresses the capacities and impossibilities of these participatory approaches to deconstruct the colonial categories that structure neo-colonial discourses and methodologies in museums and academia.

Paper short abstract:

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ethnographic museums acquired “objects” from various parts of the world. These pieces were relocated and placed in storerooms in Europe. This paper explores how this translocation ontologically affected the “objects” and different publics.

Paper long abstract:

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ethnographic museums acquired "objects" from around the world in the context of colonialism. These pieces were relocated and placed in the storerooms of museums in Europe. The ways these collection pieces are assembled and displayed in museums of the global North mirror colonial ways of seeing, assessing and classifying non-European cultures. Amidst the critique of colonial curation, a profound question emerges: How has the relocation of these “objects” into museums affected their relationship to humans? This paper explores the complexity of ethnographic collections, focusing on the effects of violent translocation on the ontological status of “objects”. Using the example of some of the Maasai “objects” in Berlin’s Ethnological Museum, we argue that the relocation of Maasai belongings and their presence in the museum has constructed them as “unhappy objects” or ing’weni occupied by iloikop, to use the words of our interlocutors. We analyse the ways in which these ontological transformations continuously affect both communities of origin and the public in Germany, where the “objects” are now located. By deciphering this dynamic interplay between colonial violence, relocation of objects, and their subsequent existence in the museum milieu, we provide a nuanced understanding of indigenous ontologies and concepts of ownership and materiality that differ from dominant colonial-capitalist notions. We also argue that actors disputing over the ownership and restitution of the objects operate on the basis of sometimes drastically diverging, affectively grounded basic assumptions about the ontological status of the "objects".

Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on proactive provenance work concerning First Nations and Inuit ancestors. I argue partial provenance can be transformed through community collaboration and outreach. Missing provenance is not a limitation but an opportunity to seek new approaches to fill gaps and restore justice

Paper long abstract:

Edinburgh University's Anatomical Museum's "Skull Room" contains the ancestral remains of nearly 1800 people, who often have missing, fragmented or incomplete provenance. As no online catalogue exists, descendants are often unaware their ancestors are interned here. This paper reflects on the possibilities of partial archival truths and inconsistent provenance in seeking restorative justice for these people. Through the process of proactive knowledge sharing with First Nations and Inuit communities from what is now Canada, I show how provenance was strengthened through face-to-face and embodied encounters which allowed descendants, community members and repatriation officers to supplement and transform the existing colonial record. As such, missing knowledge was not seen as a limitation, but rather uncovered new directions or orientations for research. Thus, I suggest that the colonial archive is over-emphasised in provenance research, and researchers must go beyond the archive, or risk withholding knowledge from descendants. Open dialogue, honesty and humility are integral in expanding the potential of provenance research, which requires researchers to examine their responsibilities to be open about what is known, and potentially knowable within existing records. Sharing missing knowledge and inconsistent provenance through community collaboration fills gaps in the colonial record, which may lead to new care practices, understandings of identity and eventually repatriation.

Paper short abstract:

In France, provenance research is for now mainly linked to art history and heritage law. As part of the COLL-AB research program, an alternative methodology using both anthropological tools and participative approaches is being put to the test about artefacts from Benin preserved in Toulouse.

Paper long abstract:

In France, provenance research has become the favored solution used within cultural institutions face to the question of claims for restitution of artifacts looted during colonial times. Over the past two years, dedicated degree courses have been set up, linking this research to the fields of art history and heritage law. As part of the COLL-AB research program (for Collaborations - Collections from Abomey and Benin), an alternative methodology using both anthropological tools and participative approaches is being put to the test about cultural heritage preserved in Toulouse. Around twenty holders of knowledge and know-how in Benin and France are involved in sharing their insights and hypotheses: researchers but also curators, guides, traditional historians, religious leaders, crowned heads, craftsmen, contemporary artists and heritage students. Here, provenance is not only understood as an account of the path and pedigree of an artifact, but also as a way to connect dispersed sources of knowledge, at the interface of which is anthropological methodology. In this way, the focus of research cannot be reduced to the case of looted objects in preparation for their eventual restitution, but needs to include a wider and "polyphonic" revision of the narratives around all the collections. This implies breaking free of the stereotypical Western representations in which the collections are trapped, and reintroducing their vernacular designations and ontologies. Like ambassadors, the collections - returned or dispersed - will thus contribute wherever they are to the cultural outreach the Beninese government hopes to achieve on an international scale.