Decolonizing Museums: Collaborative Practice and Indigenous Voice

Colonialism refers to the historical establishment and exploitation of territories in Asia, Africa, and the Americas with Western epistemology expansion. Coloniality is the continuation of this hierarchical logic through invisible processes in modern empire nations. Colonial powers imposed their worldview as the one true way, rendering colonized cultures inferior. This created lasting hierarchies where white Europeans became the norm while non-white peoples were categorized as 'others.' The distinction lies between literal colonial occurrences (over 500 years) and the ongoing invisible coloniality that shapes global power dynamics today.

Sociologist Aníbal Quijano Obregón distinguishes between colonialism (direct political domination during the colonial period) and coloniality (the persistence of power, knowledge, and being structures created during colonization that continue to operate after independence). While modernization was sold as progress and civilization, it came with exploitation and subordination of colonized peoples. Coloniality means that despite political independence, the hierarchical racial, economic, and cultural structures established during colonization persist. The privileged classes of today are not new; they simply dress and express themselves differently while maintaining the same power relationships with those below them.

Colonialism refers to dominant structures of exploitation, social control, political control, and control of natural resources that occur in a determined geographic space for a determined time period, imposed by an authority external to that space. Examples include Spanish colonialism, English colonialism, and French colonialism. Coloniality, in contrast, is a more abstract concept that remains after colonialism—the structures that persist after the departure of colonizers. Coloniality includes patterns like the idea that the white always has reason, that Europe always has the truth, and structures of easy money and destruction of nature that persist beyond the colonial period.

Colonialism represents one of history's most tragic marks, involving genocide and ethnocide across the Americas, Middle East, Africa, India, and China. Coloniality differs fundamentally—it is the organizing logic of power that extends beyond the colonial period itself. Colonialism was the concrete historical experience of political, economic, and cultural control based on metropolitan-colonial relationships, while coloniality explains how power dynamics established during colonization continue to shape global relations between North and South, and even within regions like Brazil's Northeast and Southeast. This distinction is crucial for understanding how colonial power operates through both direct domination and ongoing structural arrangements.

Coloniality is distinguished from colonialism because it refers to the persistence of colonial structures and power relations after formal independence. While colonial legislation ends with independence, the order of coloniality persists. This concept emphasizes that the epicenter of colonial perspective—the racial question—remains unacknowledged in many societies, particularly regarding race, racialization of bodies and knowledge, and Eurocentrism.

Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination by virtue of which they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development. This right is fundamental to indigenous peoples' ability to maintain their distinct identities and cultures. Indigenous peoples have the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs. Indigenous peoples have the right to manifest, practice, develop, and teach their spiritual and religious traditions, customs, and ceremonies. They also have the right to maintain, protect, and have access and privacy to their religious and cultural sites. States shall provide redress through mechanisms which may include restitution developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples with respect to their cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their free, prior and informed consent. Indigenous peoples have the right to belong to an indigenous community or nation in accordance with the traditions and customs of the community or nation concerned.

Collective intellectual property rights underlie fundamental rights including self-determination, autonomy, cultural identity, and territorial integrity. These rights include ownership of cultural heritage, recognition of manifestations, rights to decide cultural heritage use, consultation rights, and fair benefit-sharing. The Federal Law for Indigenous Cultural Heritage faces criticism for lacking proper consultation during creation and for not issuing required regulations. Effective protection requires respecting indigenous normative systems and allowing communities to determine fair compensation through their representative authorities.

Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) encompasses indigenous people's rights to their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions. It includes languages, literary and performing and artistic works, cultural property, immovable cultural property like knowledge of sacred sites, indigenous ancestral remains, and traditional scientific and ecological knowledge. ICIP is connected to land, communal, about identity, and represents a living culture. The rights include: free prior informed consent (FPIC), recognition as primary guardians and interpreters of culture, authorization and refusal of use, commercial benefit from exploitation, prevention of derogatory use, and maintenance of secrecy and privacy around secret and sacred material.

This section synthesizes the fundamental principles underlying international law on indigenous rights: (1) Non-discrimination - recognized in all human rights instruments, interpreted in the context of indigenous peoples and their cultures; (2) Right to self-determination - affirmed in both International Covenants and the UN Declaration, interpreted to apply to indigenous peoples with a view toward a pluricultural state model; (3) Right to culture - the right of indigenous peoples to maintain and develop their distinct cultural identities; (4) Right to land and territory - affirmed in the Declaration and ILO Convention 169; (5) Economic and social rights - including education, health, and housing, interpreted in the indigenous context. These principles form the foundation of the international legal framework protecting indigenous rights.

In Canada, indigenous nations are sovereign nations separate from the Canadian government, living on the same land mass. Section 35 of the Constitution recognizes indigenous peoples' right to remain sovereign and practice self-governance. Indigenous self-government allows communities to control administration of their people, land, resources, and programs including education. Indigenous data sovereignty extends this principle: indigenous nations have the right to ownership and governance over data about them, regardless of where held, and indigenous people have the right to access data supporting nation rebuilding. This challenges Canadian copyright law which often fails to protect indigenous knowledges.

Modern museum practice requires moving beyond traditional curator-centered storytelling toward co-creation with communities. The old model, exemplified by Neil McGregor's 'A History of the World in 100 Objects,' presented history through a single authoritative voice—typically white and male—without community input. Contemporary practice demands that museum stories be accountable to communities and that knowledge be shared rather than controlled. This shift is essential for museums to retain public support and social legitimacy, transforming curatorial expertise from a source of top-down authority into a collaborative process of knowledge production and interpretation. The evolution of the curator role from gatekeeper to facilitator represents a fundamental reconceptualization of museum authority grounded in democratic participation rather than institutional privilege.

Curatorial practice requires three essential elements: an audience, a space, and a curator who occupies a middle position between them. The term 'curator' derives from the Latin 'curare' (to care for), first used in 1362 for those caring for the sick, and by 1661 for those responsible for collections in museums and libraries. Historically, curatorship served educational and civic functions in state-controlled institutions, bringing culture to the masses. Curatorship has also served as political propaganda for communicating political messages and as self-improvement through academic study of art history. Alfred Barr, MoMA's first director at age 27 in 1929, conceptualized the museum as a gathering place for living artists and created the first course on modern art history. The Family of Man exhibition, curated by Edward Steichen, traveled to 92 locations worldwide over seven years, demonstrating how cultural exhibitions could serve diplomatic purposes.

This segment covers the critique of curatorial authority and contemporary approaches to curating. The symposium 'Curating Degree Zero' in Bremen (1998) put in place a form of proceeding in exhibitions characterized by participation, processuality, and plurality of voices. The charismatic status comparable to artists attributed to conservators was questioned. Criticism was directed specifically against projects where curators sold their concept of curatorial as the true artistic product and positioned themselves as if they were the true artists, reintroducing the traditional concept of artistic genius into art history, where the curator would be the genius deciding individually about the meaning of artistic works. This was shown in discussions around the collection of Wilgen Schurman and Eric Troncy's projects, understood as an act of power assigning artists a subordinate position, almost vassalage, in the production of meanings. Recent approaches to curating consider the possibilities of dissolving dominant dependency relationships within and outside the art field, or at least displacing and configuring them dynamically. These include relationships conditioned by sex, race, nationality, social or economic factors, as well as those resulting from conservators' obligations to artists, involved institutions, gallery owners, collectors, and different groups constituting the public. The condition for this is to exchange and redistribute in always new ways among actors the practices implicit in the curating concept, according to different competencies and positions temporarily fixed in each case. This involves usurpation of conservator tasks by artists, connecting with institutional critique from the late 1960s and models of self-organization in the art field.

A museum curator serves multiple roles: they act as a midwife helping artists bring their ideas into existence, a translator converting visual art into language, and a storyteller who helps audiences engage with challenging or difficult works. Their primary responsibility is to make people interested in and care about art by presenting compelling narratives around exhibitions.

The curator uses artists' work for curatorial projects, but this is temporary—other curators will use the same works at different times. However, artists are not prevented from becoming curators themselves in the modern world. The concern about curators overshadowing artists is not a problem that cannot be overcome. Curatorial work is not standardized—there is no single approach to curating. Some curators have clear programs demonstrating their taste and love for certain artists. Others create effects of contrast, while others seek to reveal unity. Some curators critique strategies while others simply present them. This pluralism of curatorial approaches means that criticism of individual curators is limited, as each represents a different strategy.