Sarah is the last of our graduate student highlights this week. She researches collaboration as a practice for the development of indigenous museology.
Sarah Carr-Locke
Sarah Carr-Locke
PhD Student in Archaeology
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
Supervisor: Dr. George Nicholas
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
Supervisor: Dr. George Nicholas
PhD Dissertation: The Presentation of
Indigenous Heritage in North American Museums
My PhD dissertation is entitled “The
Presentation of Indigenous Heritage in Canadian and American Museums: Exploring
Collaboration and Public Perception.” The issue of Indigenous sovereignty over
heritage has come to the forefront in several related fields such as
archaeology, museology and history as Indigenous peoples have asserted their
rights to manage intellectual and physical aspects of their culture within non-Indigenous
institutions worldwide. An overview of museological literature since the early
1990s demonstrates that theory and practice has changed in response to this
dialogue.
My research will ask: How have the
methodologies used to create museum exhibits about Indigenous heritage changed
as a result of increased interactions with local Indigenous people in Canada
and the United States? To what degree can these interactions be labeled
collaborative? How effectively is the collaborative nature of exhibition
creation communicated to museum visitors?
I will visit five museums in different
corners of North America to conduct research on one collaboratively created
exhibit at each. I will interview staff and Indigenous community
collaborators/consultants to learn about the nature of the relationships and
methods used to create the exhibit. To address the final question, I will also
conduct visitor studies at each institution to assess the degree to which the
public is cognizant of these methodologies. My research will focus on
collaboration as a practice in exhibition creation and will contribute to the
development of “Indigenous” museology.