I find this problematic in many, many ways.

Jenkins writes “Imagine if a museum was established, with public money (the NMAI is federally funded), where white people from one geographical area – sometimes only white men with status – were given the authority to decide what exhibits visitors could and couldn’t see.” The ‘imagine’ she starts out with is wholly unwarranted, since this is precisely what has been happening for the last how many years. Though indigenous people may not have been explicitly barred from such institutions, I doubt whether e.g. many Aboriginal Australians have historically had the opportunity to visit institutions like the British Museum (for reasons traceable to the dispossession and abuses of British colonialism in the Antipodes). Giving back control of artefacts could perhaps be likened to affirmative action. It is a step toward equality by acknowledging and seeking to ameliorate the historical damages done to one group by another, by distributing privileges in such a way those who have been disadvantaged in the past receive some extra in the present. And decolonising museums only reinforces racial discourses (Jenkins’ next point) if we continue to have this discussion in reductive terms. In fact a considered anthropological debate on this issue would go a long way to dispelling myths of cultural fixity/homogeneity by bringing some complexity to the issues of history and power that Jenkins so readily glosses over.

I suppose what I take away from this piece is that, if we can’t go some way to understanding and appreciating other cultures without sequestering their material heritage in (usually post-colonial) museums, then perhaps museums are not doing the job they ought to be doing, or are slowly becoming irrelevant. Maybe the idea that we should be able to go to one place to learn about the world’s diverse people and practices needs challenging in itself.

Courtney Addison

Written by Courtney Addison