Heritage Valuation and Building a New Narrative: Learning from Indigenous Ways and Appropriating Indigenous Concepts to Healing
Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Category
Social Sciences/Humanities
Abstract/Artist Statement
Heritage is a highly contested and politically inherent concept, but it is also the very thing that hold many traumatic, wounded hearts together in one piece and place from the sequels of colonization. In the 21st Century heritage valuation paradigm, there is a shift to appropriating the past as an important and relevant part of the present—and by extension, a hopeful outlook into the future. The significance of heritage to humanity’s well-being cannot be underestimated. Going beyond just aesthetics, heritage has brought economic, spiritual, emotional, and socio-cultural wellbeing to the people who value it. With colonization came the deepening of cultural heritage pillaging, willing and unwilling gifting of cultural objects, etc. Within this context, cultural objects have suffered from a long journey away from their cultural home(s) and have been caught up in waves of ownership battles. Being away from home and stumbling into many hands, assumptions have been made, new concepts have been developed, and diverse meanings appropriated around what objects should be and what they were, instead of what they are. In the spirit of decolonization, many Indigenous groups, in the process of self-determination are “decolonizing the narratives”, but not in ways that give power to the colonizer, which is the norm. This paper appropriates heritage as a tool to help the healing of intergenerational trauma stemming from colonization and cultural object pillaging.
Mentor Name
Kelly J. Dixon
Heritage Valuation and Building a New Narrative: Learning from Indigenous Ways and Appropriating Indigenous Concepts to Healing
UC 330
Heritage is a highly contested and politically inherent concept, but it is also the very thing that hold many traumatic, wounded hearts together in one piece and place from the sequels of colonization. In the 21st Century heritage valuation paradigm, there is a shift to appropriating the past as an important and relevant part of the present—and by extension, a hopeful outlook into the future. The significance of heritage to humanity’s well-being cannot be underestimated. Going beyond just aesthetics, heritage has brought economic, spiritual, emotional, and socio-cultural wellbeing to the people who value it. With colonization came the deepening of cultural heritage pillaging, willing and unwilling gifting of cultural objects, etc. Within this context, cultural objects have suffered from a long journey away from their cultural home(s) and have been caught up in waves of ownership battles. Being away from home and stumbling into many hands, assumptions have been made, new concepts have been developed, and diverse meanings appropriated around what objects should be and what they were, instead of what they are. In the spirit of decolonization, many Indigenous groups, in the process of self-determination are “decolonizing the narratives”, but not in ways that give power to the colonizer, which is the norm. This paper appropriates heritage as a tool to help the healing of intergenerational trauma stemming from colonization and cultural object pillaging.