In this Book

summary
This interdisciplinary and international collection of essays illuminates the importance and effects of Indigenous perspectives for museums. The contributors challenge and complicate the traditionally close colonialist connections between museums and nation-states and urge more activist and energized roles for museums in the decades ahead.
 
The essays in section 1 consider ethnography’s influence on how Europeans represent colonized peoples. Section 2 essays analyze curatorial practices, emphasizing how exhibitions must serve diverse masters rather than solely the curator’s own creativity and judgment, a dramatic departure from past museum culture and practice. Section 3 essays consider tribal museums that focus on contesting and critiquing colonial views of American and Canadian history while serving the varied needs of the indigenous communities.
 
The institutions examined in these pages range broadly from the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC; the Oneida Nation Museum in Oneida, Wisconsin; tribal museums in the Klamath River region in California; the tribal museum in Zuni, New Mexico; the Museum of the American Indian in New York City; and the District Six Museum in Cape Town, South Africa.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
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  1. Frontmatter
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  1. Contents
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  1. Illustrations
  2. pp. ix-x
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  1. Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous Perspectives
  2. pp. 1-6
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  1. Part 1: Ethnography and the Cultural Practices of Museums
  1. The Legacy of Ethnography
  2. pp. 9-14
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  1. 1. Elite Ethnography and Cultural Eradication: Confronting the Cannibal in Early Nineteenth-Century Brazil
  2. pp. 15-44
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  1. 2. Ethnographic Showcases as Sites of Knowledge Production and Indigenous Resistance
  2. pp. 45-64
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  1. 3. Reinventing George Heye: Nationalizing the Museum of the American Indian and Its Collections
  2. pp. 65-105
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  1. 4. Ethnographic Elaborations, Indigenous Contestations, and the Cultural Politics of Imagining Community: A View from the District Six Museum in South Africa
  2. pp. 106-126
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  1. Part 2: Curatorial Practices: Voices, Values, Languages, and Traditions
  1. Museums and Indigenous Perspectives on Curatorial Practice
  2. pp. 129-132
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  1. 5. A Dialogic Response to the Problematized Past: The National Museum of the American Indian
  2. pp. 133-155
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  1. 6. West Side Stories: The Blending of Voice and Representation through a Shared Curatorial Practice
  2. pp. 156-191
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  1. 7. Huichol Histories and Territorial Claims in Two National Anthropology Museums
  2. pp. 192-217
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  1. 8.The Construction of Native Voice at the National Museum of the American Indian
  2. pp. 218-248
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  1. Part 3: Tribal Museums and the Heterogeneity of the Nation-State
  1. Creation of the Tribal Museum
  2. pp. 251-256
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  1. 9. Tsi?niyukwaliho?ta, the Oneida Nation Museum: Creating a Space for Haudenosaunee Kinship and Identity
  2. pp. 257-283
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  1. 10. Reimagining Tribal Sovereignty through Tribal History: Museums, Libraries, and Archives in the Klamath River Region
  2. pp. 283-302
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  1. 11. Responsibilities toward Knowledge: The Zuni Museum and the Reconciling of Different Knowledge Systems
  2. pp. 303-321
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  1. 12. Museums as Sites of Decolonization: Truth Telling in National and Tribal Museums
  2. pp. 322-338
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  1. Contributors
  2. pp. 339-344
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 345-362
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