Special Feature: "Decolonizing Museums in Practice" - Part 2 (Stories and Objects)

In this two-part special feature we think with the Museum Ethnographer's Group conference "Decolonizing the Museum in Practice", held in April of this year . The second part focuses on the stories and objects around which much decolonizing work revolves and features a read paper by JC Niala and an interview with Laura Peers. Niala relates to us a story that illustrates, among many other insights, what is lost when indigenous perspectives are not included or even considered in museum exhibits; Peers shows us what the process of building relationships between museums and indigenous communities might look like and the challenges that must be overcome to successfully share access to and ultimately governance of museum collections. Hosted by Deborah Thomas and with interviews conducted by Chris and Cassandra Green, this two-part series on “decolonizing museums” examines the past, present, and future(s) of museum practice. Given often sordid collection histories and the strained at best or non-existent at worst relations that museums have had with communities of origin, these interviews address how we might face head-on the legacies of colonialism and empire. Full episode transcript.  Image Caption: The central gallery of the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University, UK. View from the upper mezzanine showing the gallery length-wise. The many glass cases containing artifacts from all over the world on and around the ground floor are clearly visible, while two people look on in the lower foreground. Credits:  Introduction/Conclusion: Deborah Thomas  Interviewer: Chris Green  Recorder: Cassandra Green Producers: Kyle Olson and Nooshin Sadegh-Samimi  Assistant Producer: Chris Green Featured Audio: Gingee - "Decolonize your Mind"  The University of Oxford - "Inside the Pitt Rivers Museum" Decolonize This Place - "Anti-Columbus Day: Decolonize This Museum" "Singing Haida Song" with Raven and Alex

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Anthropological Airwaves is the official podcast of American Anthropologist, the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association. It is a venue for highlighting the polyphony of voices across the discipline’s four fields and the infinite—and often overlapping—subfields within them. Through conversations, experiments in sonic ethnography, ethnographic journalism, and other (primarily but not exclusively) aural formats, Anthropological Airwaves endeavors to explore the conceptual, methodological, and pedagogical issues that shape anthropology’s past, present, and future; experiment with new ways of conversing, listening, and asking questions; and collaboratively and collectively push the boundaries of what constitutes anthropological knowledge production. Anthropological Airwaves shares the journal’s commitment to advancing research on the archaeological, biological, linguistic, and sociocultural aspects of the human experience by featuring the work of those who study and practice anthropology within and beyond the academy.