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#Post#: 4030--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: guest5 Date: February 7, 2021, 2:42 pm
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Indonesians seek return of artefacts stolen by Dutch
[quote]For more than 300 years, the Netherlands colonised what
is now modern-day Indonesia and took thousands of cultural and
religious artefacts. After years of negotiation, the Dutch
government returned some items last year. Indonesian historians
want more to be returned - but say it is a long and complicated
process. Al Jazeera's Jessica Washington reports from
Jakarta.[/quote]
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj4lwTB2GQQ
#Post#: 4210--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: guest5 Date: February 14, 2021, 2:00 pm
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The British Museum is full of stolen artifacts
[quote]And so far, it isn't giving them back.[/quote]
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoTxiRWrvp8
#Post#: 4520--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: rp Date: February 28, 2021, 10:17 am
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Museum Decolonization in contemporary popular culture:
HTML https://youtu.be/Y82oa7kz4Zk
#Post#: 5075--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: March 25, 2021, 1:40 am
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HTML https://us.yahoo.com/news/us-museums-hold-remains-thousands-122656146.html
[quote]US museums hold the remains of thousands of Black people
Among the human remains in Harvard University’s museum
collections are those of 15 people who were probably enslaved
African American people. Earlier this year, the school announced
a new committee that will conduct a comprehensive survey of
Harvard’s collections, develop new policies and propose ways to
memorialize and repatriate the remains.
“We must begin to confront the reality of a past in which
academic curiosity and opportunity overwhelmed humanity,” wrote
Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow.
This dehumanizing history of collecting African American bodies
as scientific specimens is not a problem just at Harvard. Last
year, the University of Pennsylvania announced that its
anthropology museum will address the legacy of the 1,300 human
skulls – including those of 55 enslaved people from Cuba and the
U.S. – in its collection, which was historically used to
denigrate the intelligence and character of Black people and
Native Americans.
Other institutions have far more Black skeletons in their
closets. By one estimate, the Smithsonian Institution, Cleveland
Museum of Natural History and Howard University hold the remains
of some 2,000 African Americans among them. The total only
increases when considering museums with remains from other
populations across the African diaspora. How many more sets of
remains lie in museum storerooms across the United States, and
whether or not they were collected with consent, is unknown.
...
Collecting Black bodies
The abuse and circulation of African American human remains for
research dates back at least to 1763, with the dissection of
corpses of the enslaved for the first anatomy lecture in the
American Colonies.
The systematic collection of African American remains, as well
as those of people from other marginalized communities, began
with the work of Samuel George Morton. Considered the founder of
American physical anthropology, Morton professionalized the
acquisition of human remains in the name of scientific practice
and education.
Morton boasted the first collection of human remains, at one
point considered to be the largest globally. He used its
subjects-turned-specimens to promote racist hierarchies through
pseudoscientific interpretations of cranial measurements. His
research resulted in his 1839 magnum opus, “Crania Americana,”
replete with hundreds of hand-drawn images of skulls and
faulty-logic racial categorization.
His collection eventually ended up at the University of
Pennsylvania. Only last year did the university officially
announce the collection had been removed from a shelved display
within an archaeology classroom.
The impact of Morton’s collection and career ricocheted far and
wide, laying the foundation for unethical practices built on the
theft, transportation and accumulation of human remains –
especially of those most marginalized. Collecting surged during
the time of the Civil War. From the late 19th century well into
the 20th, skeletal collections in museums across the country
skyrocketed.
Morton also influenced the ideology of biologist Louis Agassiz,
his eventual collaborator. Agassiz founded Harvard’s Museum of
Comparative Zoology, which originally bore his name. His own
collection practices around the photographed bodies of the
enslaved have embroiled the university in a public lawsuit.
Institutions long embraced such collections primarily for the
pseudoscientific work of justifying racial hierarchies. But they
also enhanced their prestige by the number of remains in their
collections that could be used for research as well as for
exhibitions that fed the public’s morbid curiosity.
...
Ultimately, the remains of African American people, freed or
enslaved, are in these collections because the captivity of
their bodies, both living and deceased, was the very foundation
of museums of medicine, anthropology, archaeology, natural
history and more. While some academic and cultural institutions
have taken the initiative to confront their legacies with
slavery – such as decolonization efforts to include more diverse
perspectives and values – a national effort has yet to take
shape.
Desecrated in life and death
The U.S. Senate passed the African American Burial Grounds
Network Act in December 2020. This bill would establish a
voluntary network to identify and protect often at-risk African
American cemeteries. The program would be administered through
the National Park Service, and nothing in the legislation would
apply to private property without the consent of landowners.
More than 50 prominent national, state and local organizations
support the passage of the act into law and are working to have
it reintroduced in Congress’ current session.
But even this legislation does not include the remains of Black
people in museum collections. Such an addition would be more in
line with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation
Act, a 1990 federal law that addresses Native American human
remains in all contexts – both in the ground and in collections.
This work is necessary because many of the remains of Black
people, like those of Native Americans, were taken without the
consent of family, used in ways that contravened spiritual
traditions, and treated with less respect than most others in
society.
In the absence of such an addition, the work of finding all of
the African American remains in museums will be unorganized and
inconsistent. Institutions will need to make efforts on their
own, which will cost more money and consume more resources. Even
more importantly, the absence of a coordinated, national effort
will mean the delay of justice for thousands of African American
ancestors whose bodies have been, and continue to be,
desecrated.[/quote]
#Post#: 5169--------------------------------------------------
Decolonizing Paleontology
By: guest5 Date: March 30, 2021, 8:56 pm
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[quote]Paleontology, also spelled palaeontology or palæontology
(/ˌpeɪliɒnˈtɒlədʒi,
ˌpæli-, -ən-/), is the scientific study of life that
existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the
Holocene Epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It
includes the study of fossils to classify organisms and study
interactions with each other and their environments (their
paleoecology). Paleontological observations have been documented
as far back as the 5th century BCE. The science became
established in the 18th century as a result of Georges Cuvier's
work on comparative anatomy, and developed rapidly in the 19th
century. The term itself originates from Greek
παλαιός, palaios, "old,
ancient", ὄν, on (gen. ontos), "being, creature", and
λόγος, logos, "speech, thought,
study".[1] [/quote]
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleontology
Decolonizing the Hunt for Dinosaurs and Other Fossils
[quote]Younger paleontologists are working to overcome some
historical legacies of their discipline and change how people
learn about natural history.[/quote]
[quote]In 2019, Mohamad Bazzi, a doctoral student at Uppsala
University in Sweden, launched an expedition to Tunisia in
search of fossils. He and his colleagues traveled to the
phosphate mines around the city of Gafsa, where
56-million-year-old rocks record a time of rapidly warming
oceans and mass extinctions, particularly of apex predators like
sharks.
Mr. Bazzi made some distinctive choices for this paleontological
expedition.
For starters, his team hired Tunisians to help dig, rather than
bringing students from his university. Mr. Bazzi and his
colleagues also chose to reach out to the residents of Gafsa
wherever possible, holding impromptu lectures on the area’s
fossil history to interested onlookers. This was a contrast with
the secretiveness of many paleontologists in the field, who
might worry about their sites being raided for the fossil black
market.
The fossils the team collected from Gafsa are important for
learning more about how animals adapted to the hothouse world of
the Eocene, a period that may foretell what’s in store for the
planet in coming years if carbon emissions don’t slow.
But while Mr. Bazzi’s team removed the fossils from Tunisia,
they did so under an agreement with local institutions that Mr.
Bazzi himself insisted on: After he finished his research, the
remains would be returned.
Historically, these specimens are seldom returned, and locals
may never see them again. But Mr. Bazzi and his colleagues are
part of a movement among the next generation of paleontological
researchers, one attempting to change scientific practices that
descend directly from 19th century colonialism, which exploited
native peoples and their natural histories.[/quote]
[quote]Over the last few decades, multiple countries have
demanded the return of looted art, antiquities, cultural
treasures and human remains from museum collections in North
America and Europe. Countries such as Mongolia and Chile have
likewise demanded the return of collected fossils, from
tyrannosaur bones to the preserved remains of giant ground
sloths.
“There’s a consistent pattern with these specimens of high
scientific or aesthetic value, where they’re taken out of the
developing world and shipped abroad to be displayed and shown to
a wider audience elsewhere,” Mr. Bazzi said. “There should be
some balance so that local parties have a say in what happens to
them.”
Many countries with less money to spend on funding their own
scientists are home to important fossil deposits that could
drive major advances of our understanding of the prehistoric
world. If the field of paleontology is to move forward, these
researchers say, it’s important to figure out how to study
specimens in these places without extending colonial legacies.
That will take the development of a different approach to the
field, more like the ones being tried by Mr. Bazzi and other
scientists that rely less on extraction and more on
collaboration with and the development of local
institutions.[/quote]
Entire article:
HTML https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/science/dinosaurs-fossils-colonialism.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab
[img width=1280
height=852]
HTML https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/03/23/science/00SCI-PALEO2/00SCI-PALEO2-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp[/img]
#Post#: 5467--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: guest5 Date: April 10, 2021, 10:41 pm
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Why is the UK Refusing to Return the Parthenon Marbles to
Greece?
[quote]Brexit was a messy affair. And that animosity is playing
out in a long running dispute between the UK and EU over the
Parthenon Marbles. The Ancient Greek relics date back more than
2,400 years, and are now housed at the British museum. Greece
has demanded their return but the UK says the artifacts are
staying in London. And it’s not the first time the UK has
refused to return what many call, looted treasures.[/quote]
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TznVxge7bVs
#Post#: 5559--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: April 14, 2021, 10:21 pm
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Some success:
HTML https://www.cbsnews.com/news/penn-museum-skulls-black-americans-return/
[quote]A museum in Philadelphia apologized on Monday for
collecting the skulls of Black Americans and vowed to return
them to their respective communities. Dr. Christopher Woods, the
director of the Penn Museum, expressed regret in a statement on
behalf of the museum and the University of Pennsylvania of
Archaeology and Anthropology for the "unethical possession of
human remains."
"It is time for these individuals to be returned to their
ancestral communities, wherever possible, as a step toward
atonement and repair for the racist and colonial practices that
were integral to the formation of these collections," Woods
said. He also said they will reassess their practices of
collecting, stewarding, displaying and researching
humans.[/quote]
It is a good sign that US museums are much more open to
returning stuff than museums of the former Western colonial
powers. This gives the US moral high ground that it can use in
the future to hammer the former Western colonial powers with.
#Post#: 5652--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: guest5 Date: April 18, 2021, 12:40 pm
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Turkey fights to retrieve its stolen artefacts
[quote]Turkey has ramped up efforts to retrieve its stolen
artefacts in recent years yielding great success.
#Turkey​ #Artefacts​[/quote]
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgoQhgz0C7s
#Post#: 5929--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: April 27, 2021, 10:26 pm
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HTML https://www.inquirer.com/news/move-human-remains-penn-museum-princeton-bombing-1985-philadelphia-20210426.html
[quote]The University of Pennsylvania apologized to members of
MOVE on Monday for using the remains of one of the group’s
members as a case study in its anthropology classes, rather than
returning them to the family.
“We understand the importance of reuniting the remains with the
family and we are working now to find a respectful, consultative
resolution,” a university spokesperson said. “... We are
reassessing our practices of collecting, stewarding, displaying,
and researching human remains.”[/quote]
That is not an apology. Gouging out your eyes (which were used
to study those remains) would be an apology.
[quote]Meanwhile, members of MOVE, the West Philadelphia-based
radical organization whose compound was bombed by the city in
1985 in a conflagration that killed 11, accused the city and the
Penn Museum of mishandling and disrespecting the remains of at
least one child who died in the blast.
They rejected the museum’s apology at a news conference Monday
at the group’s West Philadelphia office, calling it empty words
offered by an untrustworthy institution 36 years late.[/quote]
Well done!
[quote]Pam Africa, one of the group’s most vocal and prominent
members, called the museum “body snatchers” and “grave robbers.”
...
Another member, Janine Africa, said the museum’s handling of the
remains was “the most disrespectful, hateful thing you can do to
anybody.”
...
Consuewella Dotson Africa, the mother of the two oldest children
killed in the 1985 bombing, became emotional during the news
conference and left the room. She later returned.
”Some 36 years later they come to us and say they got some bones
of our children. You go to hell with that bull—,” she said.
...
”I could not imagine, in my worse nightmare, that the government
would drop a bomb on us and kill my brothers and sisters. And I
could not have imagined 36 years later that they would be
displaying parts of our family as if they’re some dinosaur
relics that they dug up,”[/quote]
I guarantee they would have no problem bombing us again if
rightists ever regain power.
#Post#: 6202--------------------------------------------------
Re: Museum decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: May 7, 2021, 1:10 am
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HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHR5pME8xQo
Not sure why the guests are wearing Western suits while
complaining about Western colonialism, though. They direly need:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/issues/dress-decolonization/
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