Restorative History: Redefining Museum Practice for Community Healing

[00:06:31]hello everyone and welcome we are excited to have you here for today's webinar restoring the past perspectives from the center for restorative history my name is jonathan schwartz associate director at the zaire institute for restorative justice here at eastern mennonite university in harrisonburg virginia and want to welcome you to to this webinar um i'm going to be going over our agenda uh as well as helping with the online platform today um so just a bit about what's ahead um our host uh tarek will uh in a little bit will introduce the topic and our guest speakers there will be some time for presentation by the speakers and then some q a moderated by the host and then i'll have some announcements related to some of the events of this air institute uh and of the center for justice and peace building and then we'll kick it back to to tariq for some final words for some closing words so at this point i will pass it to tariq for introducing our um for hosting and introducing our presenters for today thank you john hello everyone welcome it's a pleasure to be here um so we have two individuals i'm happy to present from the new center for restorative history at the smithsonian's national museum of american history the first is tsion world michael uh curator of the african american social justice history at the smithsonian where she also serves as the director for the center of restorative history focusing on redress and restorative justice in museums and innovative approaches to community engagement collections management and so forth zion has a wide international experience and you can find out more on the there institute website where the full bio is posted and then we also have with us nancy burka who is also a curator of political history at the national museum of american history and deputy director at the new center for restorative history her workforce focuses on creating space for histories that are excluded from national narratives and she's got experience exhibiting a wide variety or curating a wide variety of exhibits again refer you to the in-depth bio that's on the zaire institute website um today's topic is on restoring the past we're going to get perspectives from both tiona and nancy from the center for restorative history before we do that i wanted to quote the prolific writer across many many many different mediums um intellectual visionary james baldwin who said people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them and i wondered if in museums doing the work of restoring history the history that is trapped in all of us they are also doing the work of freeing us from the ways that history binds us so we're going to be talking about the role what does he mean to engage historical redress and restart of justice in the context of museums and curatorial work what role do historically harmed communities have in this process what are the challenges and the potentials for using national museum spaces like the national museum of american history so without further ado i'm happy to pass it over to tion and we'll have her speak for about 25 minutes or so then we'll be opening up to a discussion and so if you do have questions um you can find the comment function on whatever platform you're using and send them over to us thank you so much seon take it away thanks so much tarek and good afternoon everyone um thanks so much for allowing nancy and i this opportunity to present to you all um as was mentioned my name is ceon walden michael and i'm a curator of african american social justice history and also director of the center for restorative history at the national museum of american history um it's really a pleasure to share with you today the work of the center which is dedicated to creating museum and community based practice that's grounded in the principles of restorative justice and we'll spend some time together thinking through what it means to not just look at history through a restorative lens but what it also means to actually do history or do museum practice through this lens as well um so i'm waiting for the slide show to come up i'm not sure if it's up for other folks perfect great and we can flip to the next slide thanks so much so we want to begin by framing out museum work especially for those of you who may be less familiar there are several types of museum work which you see listed here many of which actually intersect these include working curatorial collections work and that includes research and care and stewardship of the collection and can even include actions like repatriation um you know we have educators we have folks who specialize in programming digital engagement fundraising and pr um administrative work of course and um the important work of priming those who will be the future of the field through internships and fellowships as well and in our field there are unfortunate and inaccurate hierarchies assigned to museum work so typically um you know with curators um work being seen as primary and traditionally holding the most authority and work in some of these other areas as being seen as secondary or supplementary or somehow less specialized and we'll share more in a bit about how our work really seeks to disrupt these categories and hierarchies next slide with regard to museum practice there are many approaches but we wanted to outline three here um the first two so deia and decolonization have really gained traction in the field with mixed results and sometimes frankly unclear definitions as a team this is really where we wanted to start our research in developing a different kind of museum practice so trying to really study existing approaches and um you know when unclear turning to definitions led by bypoc uh communities two approaches listed here in particular decolonization and restorative justice push for a paradigm shift in museum practice and we found restorative justice especially compelling and we hadn't yet seen it applied to history in a concrete way with a clear methodology for museum workers next slide but we want to start by telling you a bit about how we personally arrived at this line of work nancy and i came to the national museum of american history after years of working at the national museum of african american history and culture also a part of the smithsonian institution where we created the slavery and freedom exhibit along with co-curator mary elliott and at the time there were no major collections for the museum it was brand new right no building and um there still was no comprehensive national narrative on slavery at a smithsonian museum and to be frank the subject was still very controversial um for that reason and through our work there um we really learned best practices in community engagement and exhibit development related to some of our nation's most challenging subject matter nancy and i are incredibly proud of that work especially for the ways it engaged communities around the country and really transformed american understandings of slavery next slide now to do that work we had to develop deep practices in community engagement since we began our work again with no collections we had to really grow our object count by creating strong ties with communities and local organizations and individuals across the country pictured here for instance is the community of edisto island south carolina where we brought together descendants of both enslaved and slave holders to bring rare objects like this slave cabin into our collection part of this work is also about gaining and building trust so we had to show a genuine commitment to truth-telling and redressing aspects of our national narrative that have been exclusionary and so these are the practices and concerns that we've brought to our work at the national museum of american history also called nmah um and i should say i made the transition to nmah um as did nancy with the challenge of seeing if we could make one of the units at the smithsonian that's perpetuated some of the most harm actually pivot and so that along with a desire to hone this regressive community-engaged curatorial practice into a theory and method is what really led us to develop the center for restorative history next slide this center comes at a critical moment where our museum has a new director a new strategic plan and a new tactical plan along with a new mission that you see here dedicated to creating a more just and compassionate future through the study of history um it's a really exciting time at our museum we're in this tremendous period of growth and transition as one of the units of the smithsonian and i think we've seen especially over the last few years the way that those same transitions are true for our country as well and at nmah we have this special opportunity and of course with it this profound responsibility to document and tell american history in the most inclusive and relevant and intersectional way possible and we have a particular responsibility to those that we have left out of our national story many of our museum's most cutting edge projects are coming from a similar intellectual framework and this center really brings those focused on piloting a specific type of redress work with historically harmed communities into conversation with one another and under one roof next slide our challenge though at nmah is not just relationship building with historically harmed communities it is also in our institution's own history made visible on the museum floor as you see here so when thinking about how to address these problems holistically we concluded that redress work was the most appropriate and the most honest point of intervention so having a real accounting of harms and change structures and museum practices um and in our research we've especially found restorative justice to be an incredibly helpful model next slide but before we get into the practices and the center details we want to introduce you to our staff and define some of our terms our composition of the composition of our staff is unusual for a museum work um and for our center of uh our kind um and so you know all of this was quite intentional our staff is majority people of color with representation from every department of the museum and among us we have expertise in education programming collections management archiving oral histories curation and internship development next slide and part of what's so exciting is that we're working together to create a lab-like space a place for us to really experiment with new methods and prototype new ways of working with each other um without the usual silos um silos that could mean research is only supposed to be done by a certain group of museum professionals and instead we're doing this work together bringing our collective expertise and doing so under the umbrella of redress and restorative justice work next slide so what is this concept and terminology of restorative history that we're proposing well it comes out of the 50-year long practice of restorative justice which many of you here already know well is the process of seeking resolution to an injustice by redressing the harm done to victims holding offending parties accountable for their actions and engaging the community in the meaningful resolution of that conflict so in an effort to put things as right as possible we were really inspired by these questions that restorative justice asks about who has been harmed what are their needs whose obligation is it next slide we define restorative history as a theoretical approach to museum work that uses the power of history as a tool to address the harms of exclusion from our national story in multiple ways we've come up with this explicit theory and method for doing regressive practice understanding that one doesn't currently exist in the field this isn't just a novel term that we're proposing for the field of public history it's really a practical methodology that we've rigorously piloted with communities and ongoing consultation with domestic and international leaders in the field and what we found is that part of our unique contribution to this work as public historians is that we can do something that folks in the restorative justice community admit that they sometimes struggle with and that's to have the time and space to have a serious examination of root causes and to offer that important historical context using the principles of restorative justice then our methodology specifically brings communities together to identify harms needs and obligations but it's also using the study of history to identify identify root causes and in the case of a national museum really changes our national narrative to be more accurate to be more community based and more inclusive restorative history does this by working with communities to expose uh silenced truths to really redefine notions of belonging and change our institutions to be civically responsible and move us towards a path of redress and healing pictured here for instance is the emmett tillmarker which is placed in memoriam at till's lynching site and is continually defaced and shot at to this day each time the marker was shot the community of tallahatchie county mississippi lobbied and pieced together funds to put up a new marker until they finally had to install a bulletproof sign we've co-curated an exhibit with the community on this sensitive and incredibly powerful object that they say to them holds as much meaning as till's very body beginning last fall the marker was put on display in flag hall which is an atrium area of the museum that's typically not an exhibitionary space and is right underneath the star-spangled banner exhibition um i should say that this is a space that the museum hasn't showcased an object since 1998 and this work has allowed us to not only bring in a sacred object that really speaks to our nation's present as much as its past but it's also allowed us to help the community do what they want most which was first to really foreground till's local mississippi story which is an incredible story of black organizers in the 70s fighting to put black history on the political docket at a time when till's memory was virtually erased in tallahatchie county and this was because they really saw black history's preservation as a fundamental right on par with things like clean water and fair housing and their decades of organizing really culminated in these markers being placed throughout the landscape and secondly what the community wanted most was to bring resources to develop a local community center that really serves the black community there and how we arrive at this important work begins with asking those questions that center restorative practice next slide so in essence um and and as you see pictured here this is the final uh exhibition um so in essence when we apply restorative history we're really striving to address the gap in examining root causes really confronting the legacies of injustice that our institutions have perpetuated and it pushes us to attempt to write those wrongs together with the communities that are most impacted it amplifies the practice of community engagement and co-curation giving communities greater access and control to the ways that their stories are told on the national stage it calls for a reassessment of our collections which is so key in museum work and that's including the type of terminology that we use to classify them and it requires that we do mutual capacity building that involves real resource exchange so in practice restorative history really requires sustained engagement with underserved communities it's about furthering critical dialogue on race and equity and generating scholarships scholarship with communities and it requires strategic partnerships with underrepresented groups and under-resourced organizations so this isn't about one-off projects it's not just about race it's about fundamentally reorienting work towards redress and the legacy of our institution next slide our center's eight pilots are organized under four areas that you see pictured here um community engagement collections strategic partnerships that's inclusive of our internships program and engaged scholarship most of which we'll touch on in a bit but i should mention part of what makes this project special is that we have a designated research arm providing focused study and consultation on best practices next slide as you can see from where we're working many of these projects are multi-year and multi-site in fact we already are connected to over 100 individuals and organizations around the country who are our community partners in this work next slide and in terms of how we work community engagement and co-creation is at our foundation which really requires genuinely listening to and learning from partners to build that long-term foundation of trust and respect this work takes time up to two to three years which we've mapped out into roughly four stages you see on the right focused on learning collaborating collecting and mutual capacity building and during the q a we can talk a little bit more about how this approach to and timeline for community engagement work and mutual capacity building um really upends some of the more traditional approaches to um to doing this type of work in museums internally we've embraced the ethos of a startup and have intentionally kept a lab-like feel as a space for prototyping and experimentation and that being said we're also working on creating a center culture too and that's really meant thinking about less hierarchical work models consensus-based decision-making and really experimenting with simultaneous work across departments in a single setting next slide so we'd like to now briefly introduce you to some of the center's projects all of which feed the mission and methodology of the center focused on building collections and intersectional histories is the nation of sanctuary project it engages asian latin american native and african-american communities that have experienced displacement to examine the complicated history of sanctuary politics in the u.s and this work um really provides critical insight into how unique but sometimes shared histories of displacement and settlement have shaped these lasting ideas of protection and belonging and exclusion in our country next slide the undocumented project is a three-year collecting initiative uh dedicated to chrono chronicling undocumented organizing across six sites part of what's so exciting i think about this project is that there have really only been a few signature moments in the nation's history when people who didn't have citizenship or voting rights changed government policy so it happened during emancipation and women's suffrage and civil rights and it's happening again right now with undocumented young people so to capture this historic moment this project collects objects and oral histories and it does so in very close partnership with undocumented organizers really helping to shape the scope um so really involved in that curatorial process pictured here for instance is the project's oral historian collecting a narrative for our collection at the foundation of this work is a commitment to community engagement and co-curation i think that much is evident but it's also about prototyping mutual capacity building practices that are centered on an equal valuing of community and museum expertise so really seeing communities as sites of knowledge and sites of knowledge production not just sites of study in this way the project is really creating a true intellectual exchange enabling communities to influence museum practice and for enemy h to build community capacity as well next slide real mutual capacity building is also about resource exchange um as another example we are in the early stages of our blm collecting initiative which works closely with movement for black lives activists around the country to capture their unique local concerns and approaches to the movement from 2012 onward so together with this pro as a part of this project we will collect and co-curate and build capacity by asking what it is that we can provide organizers over the next few years in our role as a public history institution and based on their needs folks are asking for help with um really learning how to preserve their own history so things like having us donate oral histories or provide videography of personal accounts for free or offer focused trainings and last summer for instance per their request we put on a fully paid and stipended workshop showing activists how to preserve their own objects how to learn to create community archives um teaching the principles of black archival practice and also exposing folks to some of the principles of curatorial interpretation as well next slide the center also supports groundbreaking work and collections reassessments just as an example currently the museum has no effective way to identify objects relating to african-american history for instance um and that's really due to the size and age of the collection and that has a huge impact on the stories we can tell um but we have um developed a method to be able to conduct an inventory on our black political history holdings and this is a project that uses reparative strategies to make really critical decisions regarding informatics so that's um which subject headings we keep or delete or change or collapse into other categories to make these objects described in in ways that are accurate and respectful but also findable we're really proud to say that this work has been identified by the smithsonian as a prototype for increasing intellectual control over our collection of nearly 2 million objects and making findable otherwise unknown and unsearchable specialty area collections the result we hope of this project eventually being implemented will be better care stronger stewardship and increased public access to black uh history so pictured here for instance our photos from our uh our juneteenth and blm collecting in 2020 um which will become a part of this inventory as well um excited the center is also thinking about strategic local and global partnerships too essential to this work is our decolonization working group which is part of our center's research arm and provides thought leadership and focus study and ongoing education related to decolonization and redress work in the field so in addition to tracking the interpretive and archival and collections trends this group also keeps a pulse on the related work of our colleagues across the smithsonian and really the field we're at large our first year goals include community consultation on our land acknowledgement facilitating continued educational opportunities for smithsonian staff and really convening scholars and practitioners doing this work around the world and consulting on collections projects related to repatriation next slide next slide please thank you um with regard to strategic partnerships the center is also thinking about how we do restorative work for the future of the profession too so beginning last uh actually two falls ago um nmah in collaboration with the goucher prison education partnership or g-pep began providing fully paid year-long internships to formerly incarcerated g-pep alumni this is really a landmark program um it's unlike uh one that exists at any other public history institution or museum in the country and it's really piloting how to engage communities that have been neglected or even exploited by museums and how to think more expansively of the diversity that we want to see in our field i should say that this community was very intentionally selected out of recognition of the smithsonian's history and using incarcerated labor and with the interest of building trust and redressing harm this program has been as transformative for our museum as it has been for our interns who are also our close partners in shaping its scope next slide so one of our most frequently asked questions is you know how is restorative history different from the community collecting that happened uh across the smithsonian first for some time or why do this type of work at uh a national museum and i think that the answer to those questions is that this is really a legacy um in terms of the community collecting that's happened historically um at the smithsonian and and within the field um that this project is seeking to honor and build upon um you know we know that long-standing work has happened in community collecting and we really see restorative history as a tool in a broader toolbox of museum practice that's grounded in the principles of restorative justice with this clearly articulated focus on redress um you know as i mentioned similar curatorial practices have really been the bedrock of um the smithsonian institution for for decades um but what i think the center offers is something that's more coordinated so not only are we naming concrete modality for how to do restorative community-based work where one doesn't currently exist in our field but we're also trying to bring the diverse knowledge of those doing this work across the institution across these various fields together in a sustained way and as one of the units of the smithsonian that has uh the longest history of harm we think it's really fitting that this methodology is coming out of nmah from a team comprised of a majority of specialists of color um and you know another point that i think sets this work apart is that we focus on uh communities that our institution has participated in harming and we develop that minimum two to three year commitment to do redress of work and long-term mutual capacity building um you know this type of multi-year engagement um that is long-term is something rare at the smithsonian and really museums in general because it's really hard to to sustain um but we really see this as an incredible opportunity and together with communities we we work to identify those harms the needs the obligations of our institution and additionally we commit ourselves to a critical examination of root causes in our products whether that's our exhibitions our programs our collecting initiatives internships etc next slide so as a result of the center we will build trust with communities that we have really wronged we continue to build our new intellectual framework most recently um this summer we just hosted a series of convenings of leaders in the field to tackle the theory and method of restorative history and create a shared language we hope to be a site to help support and guide best museum practice be it in collections community engagement or co-curation and we also hope to continue to create these partnerships with at-risk communities and global consortiums examining issues of redress and lastly you know we think what we offer is a functional framework for overlapping interests with other smithsonian units and centers so as the national museum of american history we want to support not replicate the missions of the national museum of the american indian or the national museum of african american history and culture our latino center for instance but we want to to do that while also offering a new point of orientation for the broader institution and i can't really stress that enough i think to be clear the role of um highly specialized identify identity based museums is something that can't be understated nancy and i come from one right um so we know their importance firsthand but if our broader institutions don't shift right the paradigm doesn't either and that's why approaching our work in a way that is integrative and intersectional is so urgent especially i think in this moment that we find ourselves in as a country and it's why with this center the smithsonian can be really positioned we hope as one of the leading voices in doing this work to repair harm in the field and also work to transform it um next slide again thank you for allowing us the opportunity to present to you all today and we really look forward to our discussion thank you um so i uh want to remind folks if you have questions um then use the comment function on the platform that you are at and we will make sure those questions get fed into this con into this discussion um and while we waiting for some of those questions or comments to come up i'd like to start it off you mentioned that the the smithsonian national museums are themselves or have been themselves a source of harm and i wonder if either of you could go into greater depth or perhaps give an example and then i wonder if you could paint a picture of um as an institution how do you how do you do redress for harms like that well i can take some of the history of the institution um so the institution was formed um back in 1848 and that's the same time that the united states was really involved in empire building and some of the earliest collections that came into the museum were a result of kind of imperial conquest so lots of objects from different indigenous people were stolen people's bodies were dug up and sent to the smithsonian and so it's this is really part of all museums most museums especially national museums is that really as different wars and different conquests and different empires are built the museum becomes the repository for understanding and then classifying others so museums were really built on these hierarchies they were seen as a good public institution where people could learn so you didn't necessarily need to go to a school you could just walk into a public museum and you could actually see the relationship between different peoples because they would be actually displayed in a hierarchy same with plants and animals and the like so it's part of this general classification system and i think it's something that museums are grappling with and have been grappling with for some time um so we've really been inspired by museums around the world who are trying to redress this kind of practice and we're happy to talk about that more but that just gives you some insight and i'll just add um tark you had a question about an example of how we concretely go about um redressing some of those harms through our museum practice and through history so part of this process as nancy alluded to is reflecting on ourself not just as a field or a set of disciplines but also as an institution um as well and in that process you know in in knowing that history we know that the smithsonian for instance as i mentioned during the presentation has made use of incarcerated labor and much you know similar to many other museums and even universities today maintains preferred contracts with places like unicor for instance and so in thinking about how do we think about the diversity of our field how do we think about inclusion through a regressive lens and a reparative lens we said this is a community that we clearly need to um engage and you know have be a part of have a voice in terms of the work that's happening across museums so we developed this program in partnership with the goucher prison education partnership which is located in just outside of baltimore maryland so in our backyard and the majority of folks who come through goucher's program which is one of just a handful of programs in the country that offers folks who are incarcerated to earn a ba while inside um you know we noticed a gap in that you know folks coming out um actually were at a disadvantage because of um having pursued some college or in fact earning their bachelor's degree from a reputable liberal arts institution and that's because many of um the programs that are catered to folks who are um recently coming out are geared towards people who have a high school diploma or maybe lower um and so there was a real opportunity here in thinking about how can we create pipelines for um you know folks coming out of that program people who are predominantly from the dc maryland virginia area to be able to pursue fields in museum practice and our internship is not just based on territorial work we have folk interning areas yes african american social justice history but also in it departments you know folks who are doing project management and really building career experience the internship is fully paid long term we use federal dollars to pay for this internship and when i say long term we're talking about a minimum of one year um and in many cases there are opportunities to folks for folks to go to other museums around the institution part of this process is also not just about creating opportunities but also creating different policies as well so as you might imagine to be able to have folks be badged and credentialed at a federal federal institution like ours we had to rethink the federal background investigation process and we worked very closely with our office of protective services to create an mou to create a model that if the federal government chooses to use can be used to create more inclusive hiring practices as well so these are some of this is one you know concrete example of how we're taking the history that we know um working with communities that have been directly impacted and creating the programs but also the policy changes that um are needed as well thank you tzion um we do have a one question in the in the chat which is um i have a passion for historical redress at my local community level how can i ensure there's a repository for archives and stories at a local level either of you want to take that sure nancy did you maybe want to talk about some of the um the work that we've done with um allied work with folks who are focused on community-based archives especially in areas actively experiencing trauma yeah so one of the projects that i helped lead is the undocumented organizing collecting initiative and in doing that work you know i want to go back to the quote that you opened with that you know people are trapped in history and history is trapped in us and i feel that that people are really aware of the history that's embodied within them and so when we're doing this work it's not necessarily for us to come and say this is your particular history that you can really different communities and different agencies have begun actually creating their own manifestations of their history in these local community archives so yeah tina when you're asking a question about like how can you ensure that there's a repository for those archives and stories at a local level um there are different groups that are doing this um and one group you might look into is called doc now that's at the university of maryland and they really think about how the pros and cons the benefits of community archives there's also a community archive that i'm always really inspired by which is texas after violence which is um in texas and so i think the best place to start is to really i would say begin with doc now and kind of follow those differently in order to find some of the resources that might be available to you thank you nancy um so uh there is a question about making the slide deck available uh let's see so uh this is from someone who works with departments of corrections implementing rj processes would also like to reach out to learn more about your program involving formerly incarcerated individuals i mean perhaps this is an opportunity to say a little bit about how to be in touch or learn more about your work sure please um we we love connecting with folks and being able to share out about our work but also learn about people who are doing allied work across the country feel free to go to our website um you'll see on the staff page our course um and feel free if you have particular questions to reach out to me directly um along with uh our colleague caroline pierce who runs our intern program um i should also say that as we refer to the football are um sorry i'm hearing some feedback um uh but as we turn to the fall we are also going to be producing several tool kits um and one of those tool kits will also be geared towards like interested in creating similar internship programs um you know involving and working with um formerly incarcerated um adults and so we really look forward to putting that out please keep a close eye on our webpage for when that comes out all right thank you so i want to ask you another question you mentioned at some point that your uh upending conventional museum practices and perhaps you can give us a bit of a contrast of we heard some of what you're doing what would it look like in a more traditional museum setting yeah so i think that the um museum the process of for instance collecting an object looks really different and we can talk about um maybe nancy and i can tag team about till a little bit and how that's an example of our our very different collecting practices so typically a curator would find an object of interest or learn about an object of interest maybe they make what's known as a look-see visit um where they go for usually the span of no more than a couple of days to visit a site but oftentimes maybe not even visit at all just pick up the phone talk to whoever else might be on the other line and arranged for the shipment of a particular object to the museum and they as um you know really who's seen as the um intellectual uh the keeper of the intellectual authority of the object would then do the interpretation work which you may see on the museum floor in an exhibition but also um in terms of oftentimes dictating the type of cataloging process that happens as well we've taken a very different approach that changes fundamentally the timelines to the type of work that we do the budgets involved and also where authority lies and i think the collecting that um so for instance um nancy and i when we had first learned about the marker had reached out to um the emmett till commission to learn more about um you know the history of of the marker and he said clearly we need to make a trip down to mississippi and um we went we traveled not only throughout the state of mississippi but also into alabama over a week-long visit which we repeated again months later so two separate week-long visits talking to um not just till family members folks in tallahassee county of course to learn the local history but also talking to civil rights leaders hbcus keepers of this history um you know the state museum small local black public history um institutions asking each what it would mean for an object like this to be removed from its site you know and what would it mean for it to come to a national museum what would our obligations be of course primarily to the community of tallahassee county but also to the state as well and people who have been preserving this history at great risk to their personal safety for decades um in that process um we confronted what we often are are used to experiencing as folks who represent a national museum and a federal institution which was a healthy degree of skepticism of why we were interested in this history and whether or not we were equipped to appropriately steward it um with the sensitivity but also with the unique local knowledge that these objects are imbued with and that frankly the scholarship is just now catching up to right and so our our process was one where um we really engaged in those four steps that you saw um in the in the presentation but deep listening learning and folks were surprised like when we came back they said wow you came back we weren't expecting this you know and demonstrating our commitment this process which did not guarantee the collection of the object took months and it also took several thousands of dollars right in terms of the budget but we wanted to have the opportunity to get to know each other and to have that exchange of knowledge and information um and so in many ways part of how we're upending museum practices so much of it is fundamentally about the product that is created at the end so the object turning to exhibit and instead for us the product is the process of this exchange and engagement um and hopefully um you know if um if all parties agree being able to steward this history and its deep community knowledge um nancy did you want to add to that or talk a little bit about what some of that history was that we learned yeah i think i'd like to add just the example that cion showed the slave cabin and the presentation of when that cabin was collected by the national museum of african american history and culture and i think it was really that experience that at first the museum actually planned for the cabin just to be dismantled and packed up and taken to washington and that just didn't seem right because it was the last surviving cabin on the island and people had a direct and immediate tie and that's true with all of these objects right that they have real deep meaning to communities and to people and it's because everyone holds their history right so you can't just come and remove an object and say we're going to fit it into our category we're going to fit it into our sense of what the true historical narrative is um but what we really experienced with the dismantling of that cabin was that we got in touch we used ancestry and we got in touch with everyone who might be related to that particular cabin and we went down week early met with them but then everyone just wanted to see it being dismantled and so there are descendants of slave holders descendants of people who had been enslaved and a largely latino work group and everyone was around that particular object telling their story and so what would happen is that eventually the news media showed up and everyone would give their narrative of what the true meaning of that space and what the true history was and over the entire week um everyone really sat and listened to the stories that were being told about a thing and they were bringing their whole selves to that and based on that experience um we just really understood the power of what objects carry into a situation and the different histories that are embedded within them but also the way that they evoke that really powerful storytelling which is not just storytelling it is really the history right that and it's not truncated into this history or that history it is the many multiplicities of history and going back to the baldwin quote about you know that history is trapped in all of us what does it mean if that history is how do you process that if it's never reflected anywhere else and so um and what do you do with the fact that it's constantly and did not being denied or that no one's giving you tools to be able to express it and i think communities have really and individuals have discovered this on their own and so really what our job is is to bring that fullness into a national space and have people rethink what historical production is and to have people be able to see the fullness of themselves within a museum so how do you go about doing that and really with the tillmarker i think we were able to once again hear all of those multiplicities of stories but one thing that became really clear is that because of different funding mechanisms and just the way that the cultural climate works is that they'll be funding for a specific thing or people think history is a specific thing so with emmett till it's really about that horrible moment of his lynching but for the people in tallahatchie county it's not only that but it's the fact that that history and what enabled that history to happen is still continuing on and we can actually see that in this object and it's not something that you can just say oh that is a moment that's frozen in time and we're just going to look at that and i think what cultural institutions do is and what historians do is just say oh we're just going to look at that particular moment but you know it's the whole fact that that history has this life that continues to live within us and it continues to also shape our actions and so um i think that's what we really learned from doing the deep listening to everyone in the community is how that history still is ongoing and then what is the goal of a cultural institution in that regard many people would say we've done the exhibit we're all done but really the fact that that level of terror still exists for this community is something and that they've come up with creative uh ways to uh navigate that and also to kind of um you know to live full lives that what can we do in order to support that and what they're really asking for is this community center so what can we as a cultural institution do to help that and tarik um i just want to go back to your initial question which was about changed practices or how our approach is so different and so we've just explained what you know we've elaborated on one element which is the collections process right but you can see the ways that um it's rather robust but on the back end and thinking about exhibiting the sign too there were a lot of challenges to this new approach that we were really proposing in the field of museum work people often talk about co-curation but that's not always clearly defined and our mode of co-curation is quite extensive um and that's because we really want to have the opportunity for authority to lie with communities and for first-person voices to really come forward not just in the exhibitionary work but also in the archive as well so that sort of changing in in voice and authority was very new and how do you begin to implement that so even in terms of our design decisions where the the uh marker would be located in the museum um down to the actual um you know major themes of the narrative that we put forward also reviewing of the actual writing generated all of this was done in partnership with community members from tallahassee county and also till family members that changed our timelines for things right um because we had this process of going back and forth to be able to have that review and we also had to do a great deal of advocacy saying you know the the buck doesn't stop with our voice as curators right or our our museum it really um requires that sign off from the community so again very different ways of conduct conducting the work that also had very real structural and practical implications for the way that we do our work in the timelines as well this has been fascinating i'm particularly struck by something like the till marker or the cabin both representing a history and a past point of time and then the way people have engaged with those objects as representing a history as it continues to unfold and so and how can you show both of those kind of historical perspectives the the the moment in the past and then the continual unfolding and i'm wondering with these with these um objects that you have uh such as the tillmarker uh are there plans to return them you know what is what is the long-term plan for for objects like that and and particularly the objects that was mentioned had been collected during uh the us's imperial uh adventures where will those go and what's your thinking about how how to do that yeah thanks so much for um for mentioning that um and i i think the work of redress really is the work of also unpacking the afterlifes of these histories right so it's not just having an examination of the history itself but it's seeing the ways that it plays out in the present um and that's a necessary part of the work i think what you're alluding to is something that um our institution is um exploring but struggling with um which is thinking about the idea of shared stewardship that's something that community-based museums have really been able to do in much more radical ways i think and that's in part because they're able to be more nimble um than larger institutions let alone a federal institution but um the notion of shared stewardship is really that you may co-own an object or have you know shared authority over an object with a community that's still something on the horizon that we cannot yet do legally um but it's certainly um something that we have our pulse on in terms of the folks who are able to do that work and are leading that work um you know we do have um also uh at the national museum of natural history and the national museum of the american indian re dedicated repatriation divisions as well um so there are focused offices working to identify objects in the collections that are in need of repatriation and working hand in hand with communities around the globe to make that a possibility yeah and i think the real difficulty with the museum structure and what collecting is about is that it's a legal exchange you know and so it's it's one concept of law and one concept of property ownership that's occurring and um because our institution has been built on that over several generations and centuries um it's something that is difficult for the the institution to even conceive of that language which is why it's really um you know when we go and travel the country and actually work with people and and ask exactly what it is that they expect from the institution it's really wonderful to get these different challenges that we then bring back to the institution and think about how we can actually recreate these relationships but i think it's a difficult one thank you both we have another um comment and question in the in the chat here um good afternoon i'm from haiti i know that museums are storytellers but back home in many places storytellers are actual people how do we hold a space for those people in contexts like haiti and imagine a museum with physical people who hold stories is this something this is something i always think about contributing to that is such a a wonderful question thank you so much for asking it and i can't say that there are any answers but um you know you're really speaking to one of our our dear colleagues jose centeno melendez who's our oral historian who actually went to school to get like a formal oral history background exactly because of what you're speaking of is that he grew up uh never saw his history reflected in the classroom or in any institutional spaces but he sat at the dinner table he sat at you know at various parties and heard everyone tell the story of the place and where people had come from and that that was never really becoming there was no place for that within our institutions and so i think that's a real challenge about whether or not our institution can hold these places for people and it kind of brings me back to the earlier question we had about the community based centers and whether or not those can be places where this occurs um but i do know that um you know this work is happening in different places around the globe and casa de memoria in colombia actually does have people who have experienced these histories engage in different activities within the museum often they just go there for the different sewing groups and different talking groups but they actually are creating olivia what it is that you're kind of indicating so thank you so much for that question i don't know do you have something to add sure um you know i'll just add in terms of ways that that has that translates um to museum practices um you know all of these museums have docent programs the national museum of african american history and culture in particular has an incredibly robust docent program which is this amazing opportunity for any member of the general public to spend time with focused study to be able to deeply understand and be able to convey stories from each one of the exhibitions and be able to um to do so um you know incorporating to a degree their own personal perspectives as well nancy with the undocumented project but also um with our sanctuary project as well um this fall into the coming year are really looking to again foreground those first-person voices and have high impact in terms of folks being able to really encounter them broadly and so we're really excited to have a variety of digital offerings and programs on our website that will have people being able to tell their first their stories firsthand to broader audiences and the public and storytelling that way and then i think it's also about the work that we're doing um with again really foregrounding community knowledge local expertise and really being able to make sure that the products that we create whether it's our programs our exhibitions or educational materials are bringing forward these different world views that people have um you know whether it's of folks who um look at um what in museums we call objects but they might call their people right um or um you know these are sacred spiritual um people who are deserving of ongoing care and um changed care standards for our collections etc so you know being able to have these conversations and shake up practice and do that through the storytelling i think is really um is really key thank you both um so i have a uh another question i'd like to pose to you um i'm gonna take it uh a bit into the this age of conspiracy theories and fake news of um social media bubbles where uh what is what is real what is not real uh is hotly contested uh how are you navigating these kinds of dynamics all around us i think we have um a particular intervention as a public history institution but also the the nation's um you know uh museum system um to be able to um offer uh history and truth telling um in ways that are compelling and relevant um there was a pew study that was done um i may be mistaken on the year but i believe it was 2016 that showed that museums actually more so than universities um were and even the news media that museums were seen as trusted sources of information for the public and so i think knowing that and knowing um you know just how uh how well respected our institution is the fact that it's this site where eighth graders it's almost like a pilgrimage right we'll go um and learn about their nation's history that um that is a privilege um but also um a real responsibility that we take very seriously and that's why we see a slice of the work around um history making history keeping has to be regressive and we want to be able to provide that intervention through our work at the center and you mentioned um you know trust in academia universities i'm curious how is your work you see your work influencing the way history is being practiced in academic settings or amongst private historians individual historians beyond the museum yeah i think it's definitely an ongoing project so that there are a number of historians who work deeply with community engagement but it's something that the university system has trouble accommodating and so it's really wonderful to be able to work with people as partners because we have because we're really on the cusp between academia and also the public that we really are able to kind of harness that position to kind of bring these two things together and to be able to really actually like ensure that communities can produce their own histories i mean they already do but to bring it into a more national space so we often have working relationships with academics um yeah and so there's constantly dialogue going on but it's kind of two different institutional bases which structure our work and structure our accessibility to doing this kind of thing do you do you fade face any major resistance both within the institution or amongst your partners to the kind of innovation you're doing i think that we've really benefited from our um our own museum being really supportive of our work the fact that we even have a center that's devoted devoted to this type of redress work is hugely innovative within itself i think where we get the most pushback or where things get sticky is when we're really changing not just museum practice but also museum policy to align in ways that will support those practices for the long term and there are ways that like for example with our gpap internship that we've been incredibly successful in doing that um i think the till um exhibit is another example of the ways we've been successful but again we still have areas that we need to um to work on and begin and also work to reimagine um as well nancy i thought you were gonna try to jump in there yeah i was just gonna say like to be honest of course there's always a lot of tension and i think that there's tension within uh the historical community as well in terms of who is the holder and the producer of history um yeah so it's just like a continual back and forth and open dialogue and conversation yeah thank you for that um so let's see there's a comment here are there projects that you're looking forward to that you can talk about in the next year i think what we are really looking forward to is being able to put out those tool kits so being able to share with other folks um in ways that art we hope will be highly adaptable our our method for doing work in the areas of internships education but also just um putting out information on what we're defining as restorative um uh practice for history um you know we mentioned this in the presentation but in our field there's been um a lot of community-based work but there actually has been no defined theory or method for how to go about that work and um that can be really hard for folks who want to be able to replicate especially a certain type of redress work um you know at small institutions at large institutions like our own and so we're really looking forward to writing what we know is not the definitive way to do this work but what we hope is a tool in this broader toolkit of museum practice that folks will be able to pick up and use um and we're going to be doing that through a variety of publications both academic but also popular publications through some of our digital projects like i mentioned and you know also through the toolkits that we produce too and i think i have one last question that i'm dying to ask um what about a res uh a museum of restorative justice is that on anyone's radar can we expect something like that coming up um to try to educate or bring it raise awareness about this this whole this movement uh to the larger public dark can you start it with us actually on a side note there is a mob museum in las vegas nevada who's been open to creating an exhibit right next to their police violence exhibit on restorative justice very interesting wouldn't have expected it to emerge there um who knows yeah what were you going to say yeah i was going to say that there are a lot of great folks who are doing this work even if it's not encapsulated in a singular museum you know i think you've named some of those partners like the work of equal justice initiative um you know in their lynching memorial um but the interpretive work is happening on the ground i'm not aware of a singular museum at least not in the united states that's devoted to that that subject but i think the idea of being able to to have a dedicated space to rethink museum practice but also to actually implement that sort of redress work would be incredibly powerful and i think what we're hoping to do is in um you know our smaller corner and through the center being able to prototype and figure out what some of those models and new ways of working are well thank you both um this has been a fascinating and rich conversation uh john so we um uh actually i'm gonna hand it to you to talk about i think our upcoming webinars i'm happy to do that yes we have got webinars coming up um the the rest of this fall so uh they are always on wednesday uh wednesday noon wednesday afternoons eastern time but we've got some one coming up on october 19 another one november 16 and then december 14. all of these can be found on uh zaire institute's website which is both down here at the bottom zero institute dot org um we work with some wonderful folks here at emu that do strategies for trauma awareness and resilience and we are um lucky to be able to uh host and have uh trainings both in person and online um so there are some coming up online uh star level one uh there is a an online training happening september 26 through november 16. that happens on mondays and wednesdays and then a star level two that happens october 13 through december 8 on tuesday tuesdays and thursdays we are offering we're continuing to offer a restorative justice master's degree at uh at the center for justice and peace building at emu and we also offer restorative justice graduate certificates so uh the certificates in particular allow working professionals to continue working while completing studies and and we really prioritize self-reflective practitioners so so the certificate and our graduate programs help help you reflect on your work and increase your knowledge and skills uh restorative justice in education is another significant program here at emu this focus is for for k-12 educators administrators or other school leaders community leaders and social workers or school counselors there's an rje concentration in the ma in education program and there's also in our restorative justice and education graduate certificate and again as i just referred to a little bit ago where we offer mass masters in conflict transformation and also an m.a in restorative justice we have a practice-based curriculum exploring non-violent and restorative responses to conflict and we're fostering reflective value-based practice and critical self-reflection there are options to focus in restorative justice psychosocial trauma strategic peace building community development and organizational leadership or really create a unique specialization and lastly feel free to visit our site zaireinstitute.org you can find updates find out what we're up to get resources on webinars and learn about events that are taking place and there's also a spot as most websites currently have a spot for donations we love to have more partners in continuing um both this webinar series and other work of this air institute so um feel free um to donate as you see as you see uh fit and as you're able i am going to pass it back to tarek for some closing comments but as we close out this webinar and also a deep heart warm-hearted thank you to our two guest speakers nancy and sion thank you for making the time to be with us um i i think in as a closing thought uh as i've been listening and imagining uh the work that you do the way that you are addressing hierarchies within the institution the ways that you are thinking about where to place exhibits in such a thoughtful manner spending time in communities engaging in dialogues there it it really struck me at how much you really are living these restorative values and it inspired me while not a historian or in any way connected to curiatorial work it inspired me to look at the ways that i as well gain information about the past and the present and in what ways um can i be more restorative in my own approaches so thank you for all of that we hope to see everyone uh next month uh when we'll be uh talking in in honor of indigenous peoples day and month with dr valendra about going moving beyond indigenous land acknowledgments take care