 Hello everyone, we are going to give it just a minute for the room to populate, but we appreciate everyone joining us today. You are here today for another CDC care webinar our last of 2023 this one's going to be on decolonizing and collections care. We're going to be online from about 1pm Eastern to 2pm Eastern so just a heads up on that. My name is Robin Bauer Kilgo I am the CDC care coordinator I'm going to go through just a couple of opening slides and then we're going to go ahead and get started on our prepack today. As I said we're here for decolonizing and collections care. November 16 2023 from 1 to 2pm Eastern. My name is Robin Bauer Kilgo I am the CDC care coordinator. I'm going to talk to you from just outside Washington DC in Silver Spring, Maryland, where it is getting colder kind of seems like our weather is kind of fluctuating but do feel free to go ahead and put in the chat maybe your location and where you're from because that's always fun to see. A couple of quick notes on CDC care this is our home on the web. It is connecting to collections.org on that website you will see all sorts of fun information including past programming future programming link to our curated communities which are always good to go through, and most importantly, a link to our community our community is a great place to ask questions from basically a group of fabulous volunteers so we'll then go out and try to get you the best edges they can from a group of volunteer experts so I encourage you if you have a question that relates to collections care to go check out that community if you'd like to. There are two places on social media that you can find out information on CDC care. One is Facebook, and the other one is the network formerly known as Twitter. We are at CDC care on both and we tend to post announcements on upcoming programming on there. A couple of super quick technical notes. We have enabled the chat box which you guys are using very well so I'll go ahead and blow past that but that is there basically for you to communicate say where you're from, and to maybe comment on the program as we're working. The other thing that we have in order for you to actually interact with our presenter is our Q&A box now the Q&A box is actually there for questions so if you have a question at any point during the program I encourage you to use that Q&A box. Do not use the chat box the reason why we make that difference is as you guys can see it's a stream of consciousness in that chat box so sometimes if you put a question in there it will get lost so please use the Q&A box. If you have a question. A quick upcoming programming note. Our first webinar for 2024 has been scheduled it's on January 24 running from 1 to 2pm Eastern. It's all about rock on storing your geological materials. We realize that a lot of institutions amongst our small and midsize groups have geological materials in their collection and while it might seem those are easy things to store. They actually can have their own quirks and there's care of standards and all the other kind of fun stuff so I encourage you to register for that program if you are dealing with that type of collection which should be a good time. So without further ado I'm going to go ahead and hand this over to our presenter today her name is Cara Vedder she's the senior director of cultural resources at the Museum of us. So Cara you feel free to take over whenever you're ready and one other note we are recording today's program and it should be available on our website a few days after this is done so Cara feel free to take over whenever you're ready. Wonderful. Well, thank you all so much for having me for taking time out of your day to listen to me discuss and share about decolonizing and collections care also. I didn't realize I was the anchor leg for your 2023 connecting to collections care webinar series so I feel very honored. I wasn't great at track and field but I'm honored to be the anchor leg, regardless. So, thank you all again for attending today. And today again we'll be talking about decolonizing and collections care specifically from the viewpoint of the Museum of us here in San Diego, California we used to be called the San Diego Museum of man. The Museum of you who knew of us prior to our name change in 2020. And so, of course I want to begin with a land acknowledgement, the Museum of us recognizes that it has the privilege to reside and operate on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Kumeya nation, the indigenous peoples of this area. The Kumeya peoples have lived in this area since time immemorial, the Kumeya nation maintained their political sovereignty practice and cultural traditions, and are the stewards of this land. And I will also state that a land acknowledgement can and must be more than words. And so that, you know the rest of this presentation can kind of be viewed as one way that the museum, in particular is seeking to heed this call to action for more, more responsibility more ways that we can seek to incorporate indigenous knowledge traditions and viewpoints into the work that we're doing today. And so this, you know, beautiful image from a drone that you see a drone photography that you see is of our building we are a cultural anthropology museum that was founded in 1915 for the Panama California exposition as part of several attractions in the purpose built Balboa Park area it is a lovely park it has lovely architecture lovely gardens. It's very picturesque. The site is a hot is a site of harm to the community in particular but other indigenous communities of the region for the Kumeya in particular members of their community will removed from what is now known as Balboa Park, in order to make way for the park. So that is a site of harm in history that we do have to deal with whenever we're talking about Balboa Park in general our institution in particular. And so Balboa Park itself and also our institution is really tied up in the idea of World Spheres and expositions. There were many, many over the years and World Spheres and exhibitions are expositions excuse me, have some of their ties and earlier concepts of freak shows from circuses and other kinds of human attractions in the early, you know, 18th and 19th centuries, it with really took effect with the Crystal Palace exposition as part of the British Imperial Empire, hopefully I said that this is the history of the Victorian era that was really meant to show the power pride majesty and might of the British colonial empire, but also place people on display. The same thing happened over and over again, especially in the first part of the 20th century, reflecting this idea of power place display of human bodies human culture. This is what other people are doing, aren't we so great is kind of part of the legacy that we have to deal with. And then within Balboa Park in particular, the Kumeya nation and others of the region were not seen as being Indian enough, quote unquote. So, what the park planners did was they brought in southwestern indigenous community members, and they were brought in and placed as an attraction in the park and especially built Indian village. That was kind of either called the Hopi village or the painted desert it goes by a couple of different names historically. So there's even a plaque entrance to Balboa Park that's talking about these Queblo lands, even though this is not Queblo lands that were never known as Queblo lands by the communities that live here. And so, that's kind of another, you know, type of history that we have to deal with is the erasure of existing communities within a region in place of ones that were deemed more traditionally Indian quote unquote. But that said, the communities from this region the Kumeya in particular were deemed Indian enough to collect their cultural resources from. And so we have a large, you know, a large collection a large holding which I'll talk about the footprint in a moment of cultural resources that are from the Kumeya nation from the time which and we all of the communities from this region. And so some of our founding exhibits, we are pretty famous for a science of man exhibit that was created by Alice Friedliska. He is one of the original physical anthropologists of the discipline. And he created five different exhibits but we're most famous for the man's variation or races of man, I mean that kind. And it is totally shows his ideas around who, who makes up what race and it really solidified this idea of racial hierarchy, in part because Alice Friedliska himself was a known eugenicist and known supporter of institutional racism. And he has this deeper history and that filters into the displays and the exhibits that were created for the 1915 exposition. And from, you know, this original exposition and others put on during the exposition. The museum really began to cement our place as a center for anthropological research, but it was rooted in these ideas of colonialism and white supremacy during the 20th century. So whenever we're talking about our history we always want to talk about our founding exhibits we always want to talk about our collect collecting history, because we very much historically are an artifact of our time in our creation. And so, you know, after the fair ended there was another fair in 1935 we've always been in existence. We had a quite encyclopedic collecting practice like many other institutions have over the years. And we kept that up until about 2010 give or take. We shifted some focus over the years we shifted from a global perspective to a Western human sphere perspective, in the mid 20th century. But I wanted to focus on one story in particular that highlights, different examples of how collecting has a colonial or imperialistic tie. And he was an Austrian psychologist and he was even the author and inventor of what is known as the courteous maze test, which focuses on brain size as a determination of intelligence, deviant behavior. And he also contributed content to as well as well as held leadership positions within organizations that contributed to the eugenics movement and he also taught in Australia and Jersey and also at the University of Hawaii. And some of you are familiar with the change in name from courteous hall to I cannot remember its current name, but if you know in the chat, please, please post it. I wanted to talk a minute about the museum's role because we sent, you know, curators and researchers as part of his 1929 expedition to the Kimberly district in Western and Central Australia. And the exposition was, or the expedition was meant to collect data it was meant to collect research it was meant to measure human body parts of the original Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples. And the information that was collected and the research that followed was shared with the Australian government and contributed to the genocide and social disenfranchisement of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. So this is a history that we have to contend with and we benefited from because we do have, you know, about 100 or so cultural resources from this specific expedition that we need to have, you know, consent to conversations with with the communities about. So, with that kind of foundation as just one example of our collecting practices and not all have these deep deep histories, but we have enough of them that we wanted to make sure we were talking about what that was like. So, with that foundation set about what our history is how we kind of moved through space up into a certain point in the mid 20th century. We continue to collect, you know, you know, with that encyclopedic method in mind from a variety of different indigenous communities primarily for, you know, the next 100 years and what that has translated to today is about having about 75,000 ethnographic objects, more than 700 archaeological sites that are largely based here in Southern California the Southwest of the United States, and then also northern Mexico and Baja Mexico as well. We do have about 7500 ancestral remains, the vast majority of those are individuals who are part of scientific study collections, some of which who did designate that they wanted their bodies to go to science. Some who did not who are maybe potentially part of illicit black market trades from India and China in the mid 20th century. And then we do have a small number of international individuals indigenous Peruvian individuals where the Peruvian government gave Alice for Lishka permission to go in and take these ancestral remains but did not gain the permission of the indigenous communities. So that's a conversation that we need to have. And then also we have a small number of Native American cultural Native American ancestors that we are actively working through NACPRA and CalNACPRA processes on. We have about 100 images 100,000 images and 300 linear feet of archival material that tie to the ethnographic archaeological and ancestor remains or are just about our institutional history. And then we have representation for more than 150 indigenous communities within the United States or North America and then more than 200 represented internationally. There's a lot that we have to manage in the day today, but we do try to take it one bite of the elephant at the time when it comes to stewardship practices when it comes to accessibility, and all of these other things I'm going to be talking about just a moment. Given that the majority of our holdings come from indigenous communities, we have a lot of work to do to ensure that we are complying with some of our guiding principles around deep decolonizing initiatives. And I have to say, honestly and truthfully that decolonizing initiatives or DI work is not something that we just tripped into overnight. It began as a really long and deliberate process that started with us talking, you know, with taking on this exhibit called race, are we so different. It was created I think by the Science Museum of Minnesota it was co curated by some really fantastic wonderful scholars and knowledge holders about what it means to have this conversation about race within the US context, and it really tries to break down this idea of actually the social construct not a scientific one on race is totally social. And so, when we brought that on I think in 2012 and we brought it back in 2015. It demanded a reassessment of our work on what we have been doing as an institution, you know for the entirety of our of our existence there about. Because when you start talking about race and start peeling back the onion of what it means within a US context you realize that it has a lot of applicable touch points within indigenous community rights American Indian movement. You know all of these other areas and we realized we could be doing better, and we're better to start than having conversations with the individuals and peoples in the communities that we've harmed the most. So we started doing a complete reassessment out of our work under federal natural law. In particular we were listening to and actively working with our home communities like the premier nation. And then you know they have been demanding the repatriation of their belongings and ancestors for decades from us. And we chose late but we chose to have an open ended conversation about what we needed to be doing. And it was through this process of ceding authority and having an honest and collaborative conversation and consultation process with the community that we saw how transformative, you know, having community at the table with you to figure out how to move forward was. And so taking it further we began an even deeper critical examination of our institution. And that started with the cultural resources that were held there, as that is where the core of our institutional rock resides from the very beginning of our institution. And this review and early work resulted in the creation of a framework of guiding principles rounded in the seminal work of decolonizing museums written by Ho-Chunk scholar Amy Lone Tree. And you all can read so I'm not going to read all of the slides, but I'm going to talk about, you know, them a little tiny bit throughout the comp or throughout this presentation, but we are really grounded in truth telling and accountability ownership, changing policies and policies, making sure we're being inclusive and representing communities where and when they're at, and making sure we're having reciprocal relationships about what we're doing with the communities. So, what does that mean in practice in part. And so this is kind of a brief, not so much a timeline but a series of touch points of where we've had activity then we've had action, we've had conversation then we've had follow up action. So what that looks like is discussing as I've said before how we've reviewed our own colonial history. We've been working to work with communities in a more broad manner. We've been working to listen and honor there's perspectives and prioritize and privilege it that is part of a decolonizing initiative. And then we've been trying to make sure that we're taking action at every level of the process, so that we can call back to it. We do the work and we know where we've gone, but we also know where we can go in the future, and then we're also open to constructive criticism about how we can be doing better. So a lot of our actions have been around changing our language around how we refer to the cultural resource sources we used to say, you know, artifact which isn't necessarily bad but it isn't slightly disassociative term, and really disassociates the community individual from the item that was being made so we talked about this being cultural resources cultural heritage items. We also do not talk about ancestors as specimens, any longer because again is that disassociative effort. And so we've been working to shift some of our language including language of possession like we no longer say my basket collection, when we're working with the belongings we say the communities name basket collections. It really is about the shift in priority and then we have conversations with any new staff about our language interns we talk about this, so that they understand where we're coming from why we're doing what we're doing. It has also meant policy change so some of you are probably aware of some of the policies we've enacted in the last five or six years so there's the human remains policy, or the curation of human remains which dictates how and when we might curate or alter ancestral remains, we don't actively do so at this moment but it opens us up to the future. If any community wishes us to do so, we would do so in a consented way but mostly it's around consented stewardship and how we will keep and hold these individuals until they're ready to be returned or repatriated to their communities. It's also meant we've come up with our colonial pathways policy which directs how we do decolonial practice of the cultural resources leverant level and how we repatriate communities outside of NACPRA. NACPRA is the floor and then the colonial pathways is way up in the ceiling. And then just a lot about our publicity and how we're trying to hold ourselves accountable to these actions. And then it just means that we're really working hard to repatriate as much as possible, or to have consented stewardship practices with as many communities as possible. And then we've been changing a lot of our exhibit practices, which we'll be talking about in just a little while. And then it also means it's how we're changing our governance and structure to be more decolonial to be more anti-racist in process. And so what you're seeing right here, the systemic change models, there's two different kinds, and it represents a different way to not only think of our guiding principles in action, but how they flow into and out of and all around. There are various areas of our institution's operations. And so we seek to internalize a positive system, you know, a positive systemic change while simultaneously looking to understand and change the internal and the external facing aspects of the museum, be they in different departments. You know, so we're talking about not only what does it look like in exhibits and what does it look like in cultural resources we're talking about what does it look like within our HR policy, what does it look like within, you know, our visitor experiences actually our museum is actually close to the public right now because our entire staff visitor experience included are attending and all day. So we're being around cultural sensitivity that's being hosted by a couple of different community members and contractors that we have hired to help us with some of that effort. And so, in years past it may have just been the staff who, you know, deal with the communities on the day to day that would have this training, but we feel very strongly that it's something that everyone could benefit from. So I'll be attending that training after I get done with this presentation today. And then on the right what we're talking about is how do you marry practice and policy to create that sustainable systemic change. And that's around making sure that if it becomes a practice, you put it in policy so that it doesn't live with any one individual or any one department. It's not a passion project if you feel very strongly that it's something the museum should be doing as a whole, we need to put it in policy. And I will say we are a little bit behind in updating our cultural resources management policy. We've made updates and changes over the years but we are just getting ready to start a full force cultural resources management policy update in 2024, hopefully not too much into 2025. So you'll be hearing more about that as we go through that process. I will also say that this was a long process of acceptance by our board and leadership there were some fear. There was some hesitancy by some parties about changing and, you know, how we operated was, you know, pretty 20th century museum and how we were seeking to operate now is very different. It was, you know, very fear, not very fearful but very worried about how that would change the museum for the long term. But a lot of the fears were about well you know what will be displayed there's less to show and the answer to that is many museums have, you know, 510,000 cultural resources, and they're able to put on excellent exhibits and programming with what they have. There's also robust lending programs and if we're building, you know, relationships with indigenous communities. So that's an opportunity for us to either create exhibits or programming around co curated co shared blended blended exhibitions. And so it's actually an opportunity to have a conversation about what can we do. That is not from a very Euro western idea of what an exhibit or what a museum should be. And I'll another question that was was how long is this going to take is it going to take five years it's going to take 10 years, and my hour response to that is. It took time, money and effort to collect all of these belongings, all of these ancestors so it will cost the same or more inflation. You know to ensure that consultation with indigenous communities is done well, and so that you know we will know just what is approved by the community to be in our care or not. And we do not we try not to set hard timelines on what it looks like to have these conversations and to do this work, because it depends community by community region by region, government by government if we're having to work with governments. And one thing I would say about colonial pathways the previous slide was talking about our colonial pathways policy. The one thing that helped us in creating the policy to begin with was building case studies for how cultural resources came into the museum. It is, you know, brought the pain of colonial activity that was perpetrated upon the indigenous communities into the light. And after diving into the case studies doing some really deep work, especially when there's military records involved, understanding why a donor was in a specific place at a specific time, and who they were collecting from and what the social political histories of that of that era were. And it helped us tell a better, more accurate history of why these belongings were in our, are in our care, rather than just the story of an individual who happened to be stationed at a specific fort in 1852. You know, there's more to it than just just the byline that we get. It was really clear to most of the board members that this work is really valuable and necessary to see us through the next phase of the phase of the museum. And so it helped us create, you know, these different pathways about how belongings may have come into our holding. And so we've got an equitable trade periods of economic hardship they were removed without consent or consultation. They were acquired through that expedition exploration or exploitation. And then also a colonial pathway goes both ways. It's not just about how they came to us, but it's how they might lead. And so again we always are using the floor of NACRA when working within the United States specifically, but we use that as the floor up, but a colonial pathway goes both ways and that means when maintaining ownership, when cultural revitalization is dependent upon repatriation or rematriation is really, really critical and important. And so we wanted to make sure that it showed that it is a process that can work both ways. And so, next I wanted to move into some of the examples of decolonizing work that we're undertaking within our exhibits, our cultural resources stewardship practice and relationships with indigenous and descendant communities. And so I told you a little bit about the history of the Pumi I nation with regards to Balala Park, but with regards to the museum specifically, we have a very deep history of harm. We have, you know, of course held their cultural resources taken those in one of the original archaeologists for this region was responsible for the taking and looting of hundreds of, you know, archaeological, you know, sites and areas. And we have all of those materials and all those belongings. We also in the mid and later 20th century had curatorial staff, you know, mining, you know, their informants quote unquote for information with little or no compensation. And sometimes the community members wanted to share that information and sometimes they didn't. You know, it's about power structures and balance and who has the power. And we were utilizing our power structure and in equitable ways. It also, you know, meant that we had a lot of misattribution a lot of confusing information about the different cultural resources and the different spaces and places that the Kumi I nation occupies. And we meant that archaeologically speaking, we, we furthered this notion that the nation and other coastal communities were not at the coast when, you know, at specific times because of our lack of understanding and collaboration with community about their true history, which then made it more difficult for these communities to enact NAGPRA in the early days of NAGPRA. And this all said in 2016, like I said, we were, we were re initiating conversations and I just want to give my deepest and sincerest thanks to the nation, to the individuals and authorized representatives who were willing to sit down with us and reopen conversation reopen relationships, we could not have done it without them. And it is very important that we continue to have these dialogues these conversations, however easy or however difficult they are in order to get us to a more just and equitable future. So, but in 2016 when we were really taking a deep dive into the early stages of the colonial practice. We started doing more improved NAGPRA processes, but then the community was willing to take a chance on us and work with us through an IMLS grant that was really all about a partnership with the nation providing access to their cultural resources at the museum, making sure that we were consulting and getting updated information about about all of the cultural resources that are within our holdings. And it meant that we were working working to create a book that is for the community only it's not for sale. You see it here with us a visit with the ancestors of a variety different cultural resources within the community. Again, like I said, it meant that we were working to update our language about how these items were being identified. And I will state that we're getting ready to migrate databases right now. And what I'm really excited about is that I'm going to we're going to be he's not just me it's my team. We're going to be changing some of our field types to prioritize the indigenous names and places within the database. So that those are what populate first whenever we're running searches, so that we're providing the communities whenever they have questions with the information that's in their language and their terminology prioritize first, then the nomenclature and second after that because nomenclature is a very Western you're a Western idea of of utilizing, you know, cultural resources by activity type. And that may or may not jive with how communities view their language so that's what we're working towards right there. And then we also had a wonderful community day, which we are hoping to put on a second one at some point in the future the second one got canceled because of coven but the first one was a really lovely day, and a lot of cultural resources out a lot of activities that were planned by and with the community. And so that's just one example of when we open ourselves up when we take the criticism where it needs to be taken. We are then able to start building a better relationship, and we are able to do things for and with the community that we may not have ever considered in the past. And now what we're working on is this our current coming I native Californians e pi t pi exhibits very anthropological it's very 20th century which isn't necessarily bad, but it was done without consent, or input from the community. And we have refreshed it here and there but it really needs an overhaul and that's one of the big things the community has said. So we're having a series of listening sessions we're working on writing a grant in the next coming year or two. We're going to be able to help fund additional activities around creating content for an updated exhibit and you know even moving the exhibit somewhere else so that it takes up a larger footprint can have a broader base to tell the story of the Kumi and people from their, from their point of view. Well, some of you are probably familiar with James Luna he's a time which him community member who did pass away not too too long ago, but he is famous, really famous for this piece called the artifact piece. And what a lot of people don't realize is that he actually first performed this work at the Museum of man in San Diego now museum of us in 1987. And he's an impetus for his future, then future interpretations of this work at other places like museum studio museum in Harland and Harlem and other places. And so he first displayed this work at the museum in 1987 so it's actually our very first colonial practice work, even though we were nowhere near ready to be do to be doing decolonial work. But that said, it is often one of our most requested images. And so what we have done as part of our practice is even though the museum is the one that took the images we technically, you know could claim copyright over that. What we've done is we've entered into, you know, an agreement with the Luna estate, where we're working with their authorized representatives. Every time we get a request, it's documented one there. The requester is forwarded to the estates authorized representatives around around, you know, if they want to give permission for this image to be used in a specific way. And then, and then we work with the authorized representatives of the estate to either disseminate images or anything else that might be going on. We have an agreement where if anyone's just asking to do research about James Luna if we have anything within our holdings that we let them know that that's what's going on, and that, you know, they can have a conversation with the researcher if they if they if they should so wish. And so we're working on some of that working to get a couple more of those things codified, but that has been our practice and it's our documented practice we have a specialist about in our server where we keep all of the information. And that's kind of how we move forward when we're dealing with this particular image there are others that we have within the cultural resources holdings but this is the main one that we get asked about all the time. Now I wanted to share about our relationship with an international community them aside, some of you who may have seen some of these presentations might be familiar with this but I'm really pleased to have an update to share with you all. So of course in 2018, we were able to welcome Ambassador Oles and colleague to the museum he happened to be visiting in Southern California, and we were able to pull together a handful of cultural resources that were identified potentially as being the side. He and his wonderful, you know, gift of time and knowledge shared with us what was what wasn't. If you look and see the orange handled on get and pay or lion's beer he was like that is totally tourist trade you could, you can get rid of that if you want to, you know, we were like okay well we'll work on that we kept having a continuous conversation with him about. Do we need to have return at anything do we need to be treating these belongings and special ways and he told us about how we were not taking care of the actual traditional on good and pays that were over 100 years old. He said, no, you need to be taking care of these better and this is how you do it you sheep fat rub it on metal and would. You know, you're taking proper care of it and I know for some folks, the thought of using sheep fat, using an animal product on on an item might be a little bit, you know, we're a some but for us, it is around utilizing and observing and using indigenous pathways around care and stewardship and recognizing that some communities believe these items have a specific lifespan and so you need to take care of them for the entirety of their lifespan and when that span is done that's it you do not preserve it further. Some want you to do specific preservation practices or spiritual care practices so you have to follow those. And so with the on good and pay. It's a matter of every 12 to 18 months taking a look at the metal, making sure it's not rusting spotting and I've gotten the opportunity to treat the metal a couple of times, and it really is a transformative experience not only for the on good and pay spirit self, especially the first time when it had not been cared for properly for so many decades. But I felt better, providing that care to that belonging. And so what we did was in 2023. Actually, in 2019, we had continuous conversations with the community they were building their own cultural center which is now open. I think it's an embo selly on the outskirts of embo selly National Park, and we were talking with them about just cultural resources management about how do you bring in a collection, you know, alone from a community member how do you do temporary curation how do you do stewardship. So we're having lots of conversations around those topics. And then in 2023, unfortunately, because the pandemic really, you know, messed up some of our existing conversations and they were very delayed. We were able to refresh our relationship. And I shared with them. Oh, we've actually completed the next round of cultural care and the on good and pay are looking great would you like images. Would you like us to do any kind of social media blog post or conversation or like news blast out about this either directly to the nation or in a more public format and they seemed really excited. The Maasai chief seemed really excited that this might actually happen. And they have even asked us about maybe potentially working on a future exhibition as well as looking to approve a blog post about the conservation practices that we're doing there are the cultural care practices that we're doing with their belongings. So even although we only have a handful of cultural belongings it's really important to treat them with the do care and respect. So even though they're smaller represented within the institution. They're still great partners for us to work with. Next, I kind of want to quickly discuss why the heck we have cultural resources and belongings from the Maya community. Again, our institution was founded in 1915 and Maya culture Maya ruins, you know, all of this was like the craze quote unquote, before Egyptomania really took hold in the 1920s with the finding of you know Tutankhamen's right. And so we historically sponsored an expedition down to Kerigua in Guatemala, an abandoned city state and had all of these casts made of the Stella and the zoo or morphs and the other large scale figures, and the cast brought back the originals are still in place in an archaeological park, but we have these big casts brought back and they have been in various places within our institution over the years. And we've had I think about 10 exhibits that have, you know, have been concerning the Maya people, but we've always done these exhibits without their consultation without their informed consent. And the most recent exhibit, besides the one I'm getting ready to talk with you about was was where was I point that was this Maya exhibit called Maya people's heart of the sky heart of the earth. And it was a very brown exhibit, it was a very traditional anthropological exhibit that focused on the items and having a really massive amount of cultural resources out there. And it really talked about the community as being of the past, not of the present, not in any way contemporary. And so what we were doing is we were able to get a grant. And this is very tiny I realized so hopefully the slides that Robin will be sharing afterwards you'll be able to see them better. What we've done as part of our decolonial practice was identify different exhibits that we needed to update and change and so we've been slowly changing some of our exhibits over the years. And this one slated to be dealt with in a decolonial way. And so it started and will actually started in 2019 but then it really got kicking off into the fall of 2020, where we were able to find and locate and work with, you know, six or seven Maya community consultants, scholars, folks who are either within their homelands or part of the diaspora here in Southern California, we even had a couple folks who are professors overseas and New Zealand and at one point I think in Germany. So it was really fun having consultations across four or five different time zones from time to time. But we spent a lot of time having conversations with the consultants about not only like exhibit design and content and all of that, but having conversations from a cultural resources perspective around here is a list of all of the belongings that are currently on display here are the histories as we currently know them from a provenance standpoint. What would you like us to do do you want us to take them off display do you want us to put them on display, keep them on display do you want a whole different set of cultural resources displayed and what ended up coming up out of these conversations and as you can see, it was a pretty big process. We had lots of consultation review, we had lots of D install and install points around as new information came out. But what the consultants really highlighting was is they wanted to talk about what colonialism was it was part of the grant, but they really wanted to talk about how colonialism has impacted their community in particular. So, you know, tease out the threads of the history around the different cultural resources so like one was taken out of a lake, when it had clearly been, you know, put in that lake to be put to rest. And then it was a couple have only ties to a specific valley but provenance is so poor, we don't know anything more about it. Some have ties the new United Free Company some have ties to the cheaply coming and mineral mining industries. And so they really wanted to talk about how has colonialism impacted their communities at different ways, but then they also wanted it to be a great space of light, lightness and celebration. And while this image is very small and can kind of see it here between here, and here, these giant murals that you see are really are recreated by artist Alicia Maria see you who's also Maya, and she through consultation with the communities are with the really created these two murals that are really about the past, the present, and the future. And she also utilized some of the textiles and cultural resources that are currently on display in this refreshed exhibit to highlight that idea of past, present and future the to the children to the unborn, you know, so on and so forth while also highlighting some of their true histories around, you know, around, you know, how they've had to do some, some kinds of guerrilla style military actions in order to secure some of their, their freedom, although they're still very much having a lot of issues within their homeland. And so the one thing I wanted to say about all of this work is that it took a lot of years, but it was our first fully collaborative exhibit, you know, from start to finish. And what it has opened us up to is it has opened us up to having a brighter future with the community about how we're able to have more conversations around what is access look like, how can the community come and see cultural resources. There's no really restrictions on that any further. What does repatriation and Consented Stewardship look like we're in the early days of conversations there and they're going to be helping us connect with different authorized professionals or authorized community members to have those conversations. And it just means future collaborative work that could not have happened had we not opened ourselves up in that way. And so these are just a handful of the different examples of the ways in which cultural resources has been changing and opening up and kind of unpeeling our onion of colonial and imperialistic and anti racist, you know, or racist activities, and how when we open up. And we start having the community inviting the community and to have those conversations with us, we start to have different, you know, ways that we can move forward into the future. And so the questions we keep asking ourselves on these decolonial journey. They're all incredibly important, but I think one thing we might want to think about more from a cultural resources management perspective or cultural collections care management perspective is who defines the industry's best practices and what is normal. Luckily, things have been shifting and changing especially post 2020 I've seen a massive sea change and how our collective industries are really thinking about stewardship are really thinking about indigenous representation within the holdings and within the staffing. That is providing this care, but we really have to think long and deep and hard about who defines the industry's best practices and what is normal. And then also what does truth telling look like on how do you include that in all of your departments, making that it's not the responsibility of one department to do all of the holding of all of the spaces for indigenous collaborations, because you're just going to end up with really burnt out individuals who love the work but are no longer able to do it because it's too much for any one department that really does have to be an institution wide process whenever and wherever possible. And so that was a lot. But also a little bit because we only had 45 minutes to really talk about it but I wanted to just you know again, thank you all for listening to me talk about, you know, our changes in our practice within collections care within cultural resources management. You're welcome to email me directly or contact me directly if you have specific questions but I think we are just at about time for q&a does that sound right Robin. Sounds right. Thank you for doing that and thank you for kind of keeping an eye on the time for everything because the questions have been rolling in one word of attention to them so I'm ready. Right well one I'm going to well and I'm going to say something real quick as we're going to give an audience chance to your questions that when we first came up with this webinar, I was calling it decolonization in collections care and you corrected me rightfully so by saying it really should be changed to decolonizing in collections care because this is an active process right so I just, I like to point that out just because it is like this isn't going to be an ongoing kind of. So when we think of these initiatives a lot in the collections care space we think okay I'm going to start the initiative. There's a middle point, and there's an end, and it's done and it seems like with this. It is just an ongoing process and using those action words is incredibly important. So, exactly and I've been corrected myself for saying shun, instead of, you know, icing and so that's something that I really try to instill that it's a process and it takes time and it, you may step forward really far and so it's just to keep at it. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well I'm going to start with a couple questions we had where you mentioned getting a new database, and so there have been quite a few questions on because this is our crew. You know what I mean of what database, and it's as much as you're allowed to talk about but they were asking kind of what are you using and then what are you moving to so I don't know if you're able to talk about that or if you want to talk about it too much the specifics. If you want to email me directly I will talk about it there. But we're basically moving from an open source system to a SAS model SAS SAS model system. The open source had a lot of great features to it but it wasn't quite meeting our needs around tracking repatriation around tracking the consented stewardship around a few different areas. And so what we've been doing now is we're moving to a different model that is more SAS oriented that has a little bit better customer service. A few other things that allows our small but tiny or mighty but tiny team who does not have it professionals like on staff we work with your contractors to really be able to rely on the vendor to provide the it framework for how we do some of this work and we're really talking too much about it we're choosing a system that's really allowing us to customize more has a more customizable it's pretty intense it's very deep deeply well built system but it's a lot. But it's a system that will allow us future flexibility as we are looking to you know eventually get cultural resources online, you know around searching and around doing some of these other report building function functions that we just don't have right now. So please message me separately and I will tell you all about the trials and tribulations of database migration. That's totally fine and that's the added feeling I'm, thank you for that answer because I knew that sometimes we can speak publicly and other times it's more of a private conversation so thank you for doing that. A couple people are asking kind of how you spoke about how you talk to consultants outside groups, there's a couple people kind of saying like how did you go about finding those consultants, because I know that can be a challenging initial step for many people. I really, really can and so when we were thinking about especially for the Maya exhibit Maya peoples is now called Maya Heart of Earth, Heart of Sky my people's heart of Earth, Heart of Sky so they didn't change the original exhibit title too much so that's why sometimes it gets a little flipped in my brain. But when we were having these conversations we too were like, who do we talk to. We do this and so it really just started with okay you know what sometimes it does make sense to go the Western European wrote and go for the scholars who are the indigenous scholars in the region. Oh okay so you know and then talking to folks up at UCLA and being like, this is what we're trying to do. What are your recommendations and then they say oh yeah yeah we would like to know I don't have capacity, but you should talk to this person. It's about having a conversation and being open to the suggestions of the community so you know we had a couple folks that we wanted to work with but it didn't work out or they didn't quite gel right with it with the other consultants. And so you know you know we had to have kind of figure out how to create that core group, but then. Oh hi Jennifer I saw your comment in the session. I wish you an Indianapolis to. But really it was about just asking a couple of people who are noted scholars who had done a lot of work or we knew of, you know who represent have represented the community elsewhere, going to those community events thank you, as well and just saying like, who should we be talking to. And so it really does depend on which community you're working with or set of communities you're working with. What has been your relationship with them previously. If you have no relationship, this is a great way to start. If it, if you do have a relationship, you need to build on that relationship and tap those resources first, and then they should be able to give you direction, but you know, especially if you already have that existing relationship, you should go rogue and just go tapping on other people outside of that existing relationship that will get you in a world of trouble. So you have to start with the community first that you already have a relationship with, and then build upon there. That's a super, super good point and I think also you know I think it's, and you've stressed this and even my limited work working with tribal communities that it's a long process right so it's it's not going to be scheduled a meeting you have the meeting. The thing is done, it's like you're going to be going to like you said starting by going to community events the ones that are public obviously starting to figure out attitude to talk to realizing that you're to be blunt you're on their turf, you know what I think it's just to kind of make sure everyone understands the respectfulness and all that kind of stuff but it's really it's it's a slow process, and I think that that can be frustrating for some people. For all people, it can be frustrating when I'm saying, but I think it's important to kind of realize that that timeline is going to be stretched even longer than what those of us who work in collections are somewhat used to. So please do keep that in mind. Someone says wonderful talk you may have already described this but what does intangible repatriation look like as practice intangible repatriation so that's really. That's museums trying to grapple with the 21st century around digital in part in part but also around. You know how do you deal with like these born digital images or just you know if you do a scan and then you now have the physical image that you could repatriate but then you also have, you know, the digital image there's also yes thank you very much Lacey just hit the nail on the head intellectual property also has to be restored to the communities of origin. So it's about. If you have intellectual control will then you need to work on a process to transfer over that intellectual control and that's actually a conversation. I'm working to start with one of our communities we have some books that we've published that we claim intellectual control over. Well, should we. So, figuring out within the hierarchy of priorities within the community when dealing not only with us but what they've got on you know going on internally is is to have a conversation be like, do you want us to transfer copyright. Would you like us to transfer copyright or would you like us to, you know, go down a different pathway, and what does that mean. And so it's having those kinds of conversations close tangible is just you know the physical is the physical what you can see touch, but then we're talking about these other concepts that are just in your head a little tiny bit are are not as you say tangible they're intangible so you have to think about it that way. Someone pointed out to in the chat that compensating this goes back to kind of when you're working with consultants and community members and all that compensating community members is a must as well and full heartedly agree. And it's not just, you know, a one time fee if at all possible it's a every time you meet. If you're meeting in space and they you know they're coming to you it's about, you know, paying for their travel paying for you know they're they're lodging you know paying for their food a food stipend. So one of these other topics are areas that you can you can just you can either do like a one set fee. And that's a conversation that you have to have with either the individual or the authorized representatives depending on what you're doing in some communities. Some representatives don't want to take payment and that's totally fine. If they don't wish to be compensated and alternative is to ask would you like this funding to be donated somewhere. And that's another way that you can still compensate to the benefit of the community if the individual is not able to take or does not wish to take compensation. Yeah, exactly. I'm putting again in the chat link to our resources and the survey just as a quick reminder, the link to the resources and I'm doing that because you sent along we have a link to this presentation so I would encourage everyone to go look at that and then a link to the resources which include web, like places that you would recognize CDC care webinars in this fabulous glossary that you would put together because one of the questions we have is you use the term rematriation in the program can you elaborate on that and that is on the term list. Yes, and I'm happy to elaborate although I'm still gaining comfort in language use. I've heard of the term rematriation before, but it came up when we were at the recent arts conference, not to just last week with some of our first nation representatives who were who are speaking at the conference. And rematriation is really what we utilize versus repatriation and rematriation, this is me loosely saying it from the glossary, but it's essentially a focus on Indigenous feminist ideology around reconnecting to humanity and reconnecting us to the earth in a way. And there's more to it than that obviously and I'm not an expert and I'm still learning all of that language, but it's kind of taking this idea of patriarchy and saying we don't, we need to focus on the human element that are combined elements and how do we get back to a space where we are honoring our traditions honoring our culture and legacy through rematriation processes and so that's really about just opening up the conversation to that but there's more to it than that, but I'm still kind of learning about it more. And so I think that would actually make a fantastic webinar in the future about language and about the different about the different ways in which language bends to meet the needs of the moment so they're there along the same vein about the return to or return of, but they have very different processes and if we think about it repatriation is really about physical return in a way it's about legal control whereas rematriation is along a different idea of about changing structures, essentially. Perfect, thank you. Yeah, this is this is like the new, the new era I mean I you know we a lot of us been thinking about this topic for a long time I was in a weird spot because again I started my career in a travel museum so I've been thinking about this stuff for a long time. But I think that especially like you said 2020 really reopened the door on a lot of these topics so it's I think the language is going to be constantly shifting as it should, you know what I mean as the field kind of adapts and looks to this topic on a whole, for Okay, last question is about three minutes raining but I think this is a good question so we're going to take a step back, and this is the question is, can you share more about the discussions and decisions that led to the museum originally signing to embark on decolonization you mentioned board concerns and use of case studies, but any more context for how leadership move from discussion to action because that's going to be a big question. And that's what I have more guidance for those involved in this discussion and how to drive alignment to begin the decolonizing practice. Okay, so you'll have to remind me of the different components of that question when we get there, but we're talking about. Thank you. When we're talking about like our transition at a leadership level so primarily our senior leadership and our board. I will say that for us, it was a moment of synchronicity if that's the correct term, where we had the right people, the right thought process and the right time in place and so we were very lucky. Excuse me that you know we had this exhibit the race are we so different exhibit which is where we're going to update and refresh we're really excited about that. But it started with having this exhibit, and then having staff, especially our previous deputy director Ben Garcia, our CEO Mike parson who is still relatively new at the time. You know, there was this fresh push this fresh wave of, how can we do things differently how can we do things better. And then, you know, having some things happening within the indigenous community on the legal side of things there was a big court case. You know, for our the home community that was not for us but it was with another academic institution. You know, that had kind of put us back in the public eye of the community in particular and so it was having these different kind of points in place, where we were able to sit back and go what are we doing. Why are we doing it, and then saying how do we move forward in a way that is equitable and there is this book that talks all about it and there are these conversation points there's, you know the Association for tribal archives libraries and museums who have been saying this for decades, you know so there's been all of these different things are like, you know we should have a deeper conversation. And then we have the conversation, and then we say well once your mind is open, you cannot go back because then you are refusing to accept reality. And that's not a way that we saw that we could move forward and so that's how we started to take those steps into having a conversation we recognize we're very lucky. We have a board that is now fully invested. It's a top it's not a top down structure it's an everywhere. It's very hard to build it out to be so. So it was a very large hard process but well worth it. Yeah, it sounds like to me it was just right place right time right you have. Yeah, and that's not to say that it couldn't have happened a couple of years sooner or a couple of years later, but I think I want to recognize that there was a little bit of a lot of thought and planning that went into having this conversation and a lot of muddling and making mistakes, and being okay with making mistakes and coming back and you know you get hit you come you'll go down you get back up. You know, and you try to figure out how to do it better than next time so I won't say it was easy but it was really really important to do so but I would quickly I know we're out of time at a plug for the indigenous collections care guide. And that is will be coming out in a little while where they will have an advocacy section there's also other resources from the school for advanced research that talks about how do you collaborate, how do you do these things. And so there's there's these guides out there that can really help you figure out what you can do at your various levels of influence within your organization. And then you can build build build build those relationships and once you get to the leadership level you'd say this is what we've been doing and it's been going great. Should stop. Yeah, exactly and we did a CDC care last year did a course I think was last year, did a course with that group with SAR just where they we started talking about that stuff and we had a tribal representation and community representation. The initial steps you could take so I would recommend I believe that course is now free on our website so I would recommend folks go over there and see. Take a look at it and see if there's anything in there that's good. And the last thing I'll say this kind of connected that question is, can you give me one small way that you think any museum can go about even looking at decolonizing and collections care like one small action they can take that is ability to someone and maybe they don't have the funding maybe they don't have the backing of the group but something they can do within there. I would say as the keepers of the information you are in control of how the information is input into your systems how it's disseminated into exhibit labels. You have some level of control that others may not have. And so even if it doesn't make it into the final label you can put, you know, this is the community name for this item. This you know this is oh this is the community members, you know this is their indigenous name, you know this is their English name, you can change language a lot more easily than you can change structures in some way shape or form so I would say starting with how you utilize the information that you're either updating or inputting is one really small yet incredibly powerful way to start changing changing how things go. So that's that's one recommendation there's others but that's one I would recommend. Yeah, I agree I think that language thing is very powerful we are the keepers of the databases so I will remind everyone about that as well for sure. Well I'm going to add the link to the resources in the survey one more time in the chat. Please do take our surveys they help us kind of direct where we're going to go with see to see care programming in the future so I really encourage you to do that. We recorded today's presentation a lot of people are asking that so we'll be posting that up on the FAIC YouTube channel and our website by the end of the week, most likely. So keep an eye out for that. Kara, thank you so much for doing this Kara just said we both just got back from the arcs the registrar's conference last week so we're both recovering from that but I appreciate you doing this such a timely and wonderful month to do it so thank you. Happy to happy to thanks everyone. Perfect. This was a thanks to IMLS for supporting this program FAIC and we will see you all in 2024 have a happy and safe holiday season and we'll see you in the new year. Thanks everyone.