Articles about decolonizing museums are everywhere these days, but what does this actually mean in practice for museum professionals working in what is now known as North America?

In this course we will approach decolonization as defined by Tuck & Yang:

“Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things…Because settler colonialism is built upon an entanglement triad structure of settler-native-slave, the decolonial desires of white, non-white, immigrant, postcolonial, and oppressed people, can similarly be entangled in resettlement, reoccupation, and reinhabitation that actually further settler colonialism. The metaphorization of decolonization makes possible a set of evasions, or “settler moves to innocence”, that problematically attempt to reconcile settler guilt and complicity, and rescue settler futurity.”

~Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, vol. 1, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1–40.

In this 8 week long course we will focus on looking critically at how museum professionals can activate decolonial ways of thinking in their own work environment, and in their day to day life. We will investigate how the words of contemporary Indigenous scholars and curators can be put into practice to promote practices that de-centre the subtle (and not so subtle) colonial ways of thinking that surround us every day across this land.

The topics covered in this class will motivate you to think differently about the world around you.

Because there is so much material to take in and discuss we have expanded the course to 8 weeks to give you more time to complete the readings and think about what they mean to you and your institution. There will be a once a week required Zoom Reading Response Sharing Circle where we get together and discuss what that week's readings mean to each of us and other opportunities for informal discussion and special guests.

Learning Objectives and Topics covered:

• Positioning yourself
• Appropriate terminologies
• Critiquing written narratives
• Critiquing unwritten narratives
• Creating decolonising texts and labels
• Decolonising exhibition content
• Developing strategies for building relationships and partnerships
• Critiquing authenticity and authority
• Identifying challenges with our museum / institutional inheritances
• Developing strategies for decolonising museum / institutional practices