Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous Perspectives (review)

Until fairly recently, Indigenous peoples and museums have had an uneven relationship. In the past, museums warehoused and displayed cultural items and even peoples and presented edited versions of history told from one side. They presented half-told histories about the West's progress and development as if Indigenous peoples played no role in shaping local communities or even the United States and other settler nations. Indigenous peoples were merely reminders of a bygone era, and museums displayed their so-called primitiveness and presumed deficiencies. Thus, museums were rhetorical devices that reinforced stereotypes until Indigenous communities used their own cultural practices to curate exhibits or to create their own museums. Susan Sleeper-Smith's edited collection, Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous Perspectives, contains twelve essays that examine alternative perspectives of museums, their history, and their relationship to the nation-state. Therefore, this collection becomes a corrective to the half-told stories about Indigenous peoples and their own ways of sharing their histories.

Contesting Knowledge is divided into three sections. The essays in the first section, "Ethnography and the Cultural Practices of Museums," examine ethnography's influence on the developing cultural practices of museums. These include the creation of archival material, human displays or theatrical arenas, and preservation of disappearing peoples. The nation-state regarded ethnographers as expert observers of Indigenous cultures, and their work influenced the state's responses to Indigenous communities. As ethnographic work became archived, later generations continued to turn to accounts of contact for information. Early stories of cannibalism would justify violence, and later, it would determine how Brazil displayed Indigenous peoples in museums. When Indigenous bodies became the objects of display in what were known as ethnographic showcases, ethnography continued to justify conquest and support notions of white supremacy. At the same time that these "human dioramas" were displayed as signs of difference, the Indigenous peoples on display also began to talk back and resist their exploitation. Another practice museums cultivated was based on the erroneous notion that they were preserving the cultural materials of a presumably dying people. How then should Indigenous peoples interpret the role of early collectors such as George Gustav Heye, whose collection deprives Indigenous communities of their patrimony? How do museums work with Indigenous communities to avoid engaging in colonial exhibition strategies associated with assumptions taken from the past?

Essays in the second section, "Curatorial Practices: Voices, Values, Languages, and Traditions," move forward in time to present modern curatorial practices. The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) showcases contemporary forms of Indigenous self-representation and exhibition. Indigenous communities are involved in the process as cocurators empowered to display their culture for the public. At the same time, however, the NMAI engages in museological practices from the past that remain problematic because of the ongoing involvement of non-Indigenous individuals and organizations. In a different museum, an exhibit of Métis culture in Saskatchewan moved away from the traditional methods of curating when museum representatives, academic scholars, and Métis communities formed collaborative relationships. In other words, the Aboriginal community was involved in every step of the curatorial process so that the final exhibit reflected their own worldviews. In a similar manner, the Huichols use museum space in ways beneficial to their people because their self-representation makes cultural, territorial, and historical claims on land. These museological land claims became legal strategies the Huichols used in court to regain land.

Essays in the final section, "Tribal Museums and the Heterogeneity of the Nation-State," highlight the agendas of tribal museums. Visually, they represent Indigenous understandings of space and place, such as displaying a longhouse and what it means to the Oneidas as an aspect of their spiritual, political, and cultural philosophies. As such, they challenge official histories because they tell tribal nation's histories. Tribal museums emphasize tribal nationalism and generate community discussion over competing viewpoints about the use and representation of self in museum space. Developing and managing their...