Can human rights work in museums serve as a pathway to decolonization?

Armando Perla
Chief Curator
Toronto History Museums, City of Toronto

Armando Perla, Photo Credit: James Recine 

Having been trained as a lawyer, I started my professional journey working with refugees and asylum seekers in Canada. After graduating from law school, I worked with Haitian migrant workers in the Dominican Republic during my time in Washington D.C., children in Central America who were trafficked and sexually exploited, and children’s rights advocates from the global south in Sweden. After several years abroad, I returned to Canada to be part of the team developing the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR). It was at the CMHR that I met Métis curator and scholar Tricia Logan and began a journey of self-discovery that completely transformed the way I understood and practiced human rights. When I started working at the CMHR, over a decade had passed since my arrival in Canada as an asylum seeker. I had attended  the University of Winnipeg, where I studied political sciences, and had also completed a Bachelor of Laws at Laval University in Quebec City and a Master of Laws at Lund University in Sweden. However, I had not learned about residential schools or Indigenous history. Learning from Logan that human rights were a Western construct that had often left out Indigenous perspectives was also unsettling for me. My Canadian and European legal training had never focused on looking critically at human rights.

During the time Logan and I shared an office, a great part of our discussions focused on finding ways to reconcile the apparent dichotomy between decolonization and human rights. This is clearly articulated by Maori legal scholar Andrew Erueti when explaining the negotiations behind the drafting of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP):

The decolonization model […] speaks to a nation-to-nation relationship between Northern indigenous peoples and CANZUS states [Canada, Australia, New Zealand and United States], whereas a human rights model is directed at domestic issues of equality and political participation. The decolonization model indicated that self-determination in the Declaration offered indigenous peoples the option of independence should indigenous peoples and states fail to negotiate their terms of co-existence.[1]

Moreover, according to Unangax̂ scholar Eve Tuck and Asian-American scholar K. Wayne Yang, decolonization is not only a metaphor, as it demands the “repatriation of Indigenous land and life”[2]. Thus, at its heart, decolonization looks at dismantling the nation state, while human rights claims recognize the legitimacy of settler colonial governments to respect, protect, and fulfill the rights of its citizens under a domestic framework.

The human rights/decolonization divide is something that I have struggled to reconcile in my own museum work. As a mestizo (Nahua and Euro-Salvadoran) settler living on Indigenous land and working in the museum sector, I wanted to learn how my human rights work could be carried out in solidarity with other Indigenous people in these stolen lands and contribute to the materialization of the right to self-determination and the decolonization of museum praxis. During our conversations, Logan and I found intersections and points of convergence where our different types of knowledges would come together and build on each other. For instance, during my time in Sweden I had become familiar with and had used a human rights-based approach (HRBA) in my work related to international development. A HRBA is a conceptual framework, directed to advance human rights by fostering the participation of historically marginalized people in all processes and phases of development projects.[3] Similarly, reciprocal dialogue, community participation, consultation, and the centering of process were also principles that led Logan’s curatorial work in human rights. Logan had learned these principles from her family, her community, and other Indigenous women. For instance, I was first exposed to Indigenous littoral curation[4], and Métis kitchen table methodologies[5] through Logan’s work at the CMHR. Not having been trained as a museum professional, I had no preconceived ideas of what museum work should be. This represented an opportunity to incorporate both my legal training in human rights and to follow Logan’s example developing exhibitions.

Working with different Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities at the CMHR quickly made me realize the importance of minimizing my voice during the curatorial process and of not speaking on someone else’s behalf. I believe that a HRBA can be used as a starting point to foster the participation of historically excluded voices, so that we can create spaces for people to tell their own stories on their own terms[6]. Recognizing this part of the right to self-determination – manifested in the participation of historically marginalized people in all matters that directly affect them – is a needed step in centering the human in human rights museology.

 
 

Dancers wait to perform at the grand re-opening
of Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park, an
Indigenous-led cultural centre in Siksika, AB. 

To my delight, the United Nations’ Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) has recently affirmed that partnerships advancing a HRBA in museum practice can play an essential role in decolonizing museums.[7] In March 2020, the University of British Columbia held an expert seminar to support the work of EMRIP in drafting the report: “Repatriation of ceremonial objects, human remains and intangible cultural heritage under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in October 2020. In the report, EMRIP recommends adopting a HRBA to repatriation so that Indigenous peoples’ experiences are honoured in their own terms: “All stakeholders must take a human rights-based approach to indigenous peoples’ repatriation claims in order to effectuate remedies and promote the living cultures, religions, spiritualities, technologies and other rights of indigenous peoples”[8].

Similarly, EMRIP also states that a HRBA to museum practice already exists and has been developed between Indigenous peoples and some institutions: 

There is a wealth of examples of museums, universities and other institutions and indigenous peoples finding common ground as caretakers of ancestral remains and ceremonial objects and learning about one another’s worldviews. This has led to meaningful relationships, deep healing on both sides and the start of new collaborations through repatriation processes and cultural exchanges[9].

The report also provides us with some indications of what this type of human rights work – what I call human rights museology– looks like:

[m]oving towards a human rights-based approach may therefore require a dramatic shift. In many instances, this transition begins with museums exploring cooperation with indigenous peoples as constituents, employees and stakeholders. As museums increasingly embrace indigenous peoples’ cultural rights, along with repatriation, they are also able to develop more extensive relationships, better information about collections, and collaborative programming consistent with museums’ current goals to be inclusive, diverse and relevant to today’s societies[10].

However, the question remains if decolonization can take place in inherent colonial institutions such as museums? Like other IBPOC museum workers and scholars, I remain cautious when speaking about decolonizing museums and I agree with them that museums are dangerous places for Indigenous peoples.[11] I also share the same disbelief that the museum will ever be decolonized[12].  As Maori museum professional Puawai Cairns has eloquently expressed:

I don’t want to decolonise museums either but focus on processes of reindigenising – to reMāorify the spaces where and how our stories are told. I’m not interested in rehabilitating the whole museum. Is that shocking? I don’t believe that decolonisation efforts should be diverted to merely redeem whiteness in museums. The co-option of decol as the latest trendy cultural theory and praxis by mainstream organisations run the very real danger of locking indigenous people into a death dance with colonial structures, with its demands that we work and labour until we are completely consumed.[13]

Nonetheless, I believe that meaningful human rights work in museums (human rights museology) can still make these spaces less harmful for Indigenous peoples as well as for others living outside the colonial canon. I also believe that self-determination and the autonomization of Indigenous peoples are a first step in achieving this task. This can take place in and outside museums by making decolonization and indigenisation a means to an end rather than the ultimate goal. Cairns explains:

The terms ‘decolonisation’ and ‘indigenisation’ are only a means to a more farsighted horizon, they are not our goal, but present possibly better ways of achieving a different system and environment for Indigenous people within heritage institutions. Ultimately, we are searching for a future where lived experiences of being Māori, where our relationship to our material culture, is respected and honoured in museums on our own terms. We are searching for mana motuhake – for our own cultural autonomy – within the museum realm.[14]

Museums are old colonial institutions and even as they have rushed to make grand gestures to advance goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion, particularly after the summer of 2020, there is still much work that needs to be done. Museums must stop and ask themselves how they are supporting BIPOC staff to prevent isolation sickness and burn out. When more and more BIPOC staff are entering museums, I worry more than ever about how these institutions continue to exploit these racialized workers just so that they can legitimize the colonial machinery and uphold the status quo. However, as Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s has said: “The need to tell our stories remains the powerful imperative of a powerful form of resistance”[15].

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[1] Andrew Erueti, “The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: A Mixed-Model Interpretative Approach” (PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2016), 12.

[2] Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society Vol. 1: No. 1 (2012), 1.

[3] United Nations Sustainable Development Group (UNSDG), “The Human Rights Based Approach to Development Cooperation. Towards a Common Understanding Among UN Agencies,” 2003, A/HRC/45/35. Accessed 4 April 2021 https://unsdg.un.org/resources/human-rights-based-approach-development-cooperation-towards-common-understanding-among-un

[4] Cathy Mattes, “Frontrunners as an Exploration of Indigenous Littoral Curation,” in The Routledge Companion of Indigenous Art Histories in Canada and the United States, ed. H. Igloliorte and C. Taunton (New York: Routledge, 2021).

[5] Sherry Farrell-Racette, “Kitchen Tables and Beads: Space and Gesture in Contemplative and Creative Research,” in The Routledge Companion of Indigenous Art Histories in Canada and the United States, ed. H. Igloliorte and C. Taunton (New York: Routledge, 2021).

[6] Armando Perla, “Democratizing Museum Practice Through Oral History, Digital Storytelling, and Collaborative Ethical Work,” Santander Art and Culture Law Review 2/2020 (6): 199-222.

[7] Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP), “Repatriation of ceremonial objects, human remains, and intangible resources under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Report of the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” 2020. Accessed 4 April 2021 https://undocs.org/en/A/HRC/45/35

[8] Ibid, 17.

[9] Ibid, 18.

[10] Ibid, 13.

[11a] Amy Lonetree, Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums (Chapel Hill: The University of South Carolina Press, 2012).

[11b] Puawai Cairns, “'Museums are dangerous places' – challenging history,” Te Papa Tongarewa National Museum of New Zealand Blog, 2018. Accessed 4 April 2021 https://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/2018/10/19/museums-are-dangerous-places-challenging-history/

[12a] Sumaya Kassim, “The Museum Will Not Be Decolonized,” Media Diversified, 2017. Accessed 4 April 2021 https://mediadiversified.org/2017/11/15/the-museum-will-not-be-decolonised/

[12b] Puawai Cairns, “Decolonisation: we aren’t going to save you,” American Alliance of Museums’ Centre for the Future of Museums’ Blog, 2018. Accessed 4 April 2021 https://www.aam-us.org/2018/12/17/decolonisation-we-arent-going-to-save-you/   

[13] Ibid. 

[14] Puawai Cairns, “Decolonise or Indigenise: Moving towards Sovereign Spaces and the Māorification of New Zealand Museology,” Te Papa Tongarewa National Museum of New Zealand Blog, 2020. Accessed 4 April 2021 https://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/2020/02/10/decolonise-or-indigenise-moving-towards-sovereign-spaces-and-the-maorification-of-new-zealand-museology/

[15] Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (New York: Zed Books, 1999), 35.