EP 100 Conservation and decolonization with Monica Shah

Because I think that's what I think about, like from a preservation point of view, is that I'm trying not to make it impossible for new ways of working and thinking to happen in the future.

They don't have to do things the way that I do them or the way that maybe is the prevailing way right now, but at least whatever I do doesn't limit or take away the choices in the future in ways that are harmful. That was Monica Shaw. She's the Deputy Director of Collections and Conservation at the Anchorage Museum. She's interested in the things that we surround ourselves with. The things that bring us comfort, familiarity, and memories. Manifestations of culture and identity.

These materials are important to us because they embody our stories. In areas affected by war, for example, we see people rallying behind architecture, art, and religious structures. These things are targeted because by destroying them, you dehumanize the people they belong to and subjugate them. The opposite is also true, that by creating these materials, people are reinforcing their connections with each other and with their community.

These concepts, creation, destruction, and subjugation, weigh heavily on Monica in the work she does at the museum. But why do museums have items from other cultures in their collections? This is an important question that museums around the world have been grappling with.

For their part, the Anchorage Museum has put a lot of effort into decolonizing their collections. Sometimes, this means working with Alaska Native communities to ensure that cultural materials are displayed accurately. Other times, it means giving them back. In both cases, the goal is to honor the origins of the materials and the culture and life ways they represent.

To understand this from a Western point of view, you only have to imagine having something like a family heirloom, or a personal keepsake, or a diary, taken from you without your permission, and then displayed for all the world to see. So here she is, Monica Shaw. Welcome to Chatter Marks, a podcast of the Anchorage Museum, dedicated to exploring Alaska and the circumpolar north through the creative and critical thinking of ideas, past, present, and future.

Music. My name is Cody Liska, and I'll be your host. What do you think our attraction to and need for material possessions says about us as humans?

Wow, that's a loaded question. I think about that a lot, actually, because, you know, as we try to simplify our lives or really assess how we move through the world in a sustainable way, I think about material possessions all the time, you know, with aging parents, cleaning out their house, from donors who come to us to offer important material possessions from their personal lives.

Or their family's personal lives. I think there is something that's innately human about wanting to find connection to each other, to the place. And physical material items embody for me memories and experiences and connections. So, they're physical representations of those relationships. And so, when I look at, I don't know, a photograph, it's pretty clear because you see images of other people or people that you know and you remember that event.

But when you look at, you know, maybe a necklace that your parent beaded for you or a child beaded for you and made, and the care and the thought, and I think it reinforces those connections we have with each other and with our community, whatever that might look like. But it's very personal. And I think humans are always looking for that. And I see that a lot, you know, with the changing world on how when people are far from their families and what do they gravitate towards.

And if they don't have that in their personal lives, that connection and how they create their own community, which we see a lot in Alaska, right? We see people who are connecting to each other through shared interests or share, you know, I just was at the zine fair and there's a zine for everybody. Yeah, there is. But the zines themselves are physical, right?

They're not just us talking to each other, and it's not just a memory when we share a common interest, but instead we have this physical representation of something that is important in our lives, and important to each other, and important to our community. I don't know, I find it really intriguing. Yeah. Yeah, this reminds me of the places we live, you know, a room, an apartment, a house, and the things that we decide to surround ourselves with.

I wonder, in your life, what do you think it's important to surround yourself with? Well i mean i have my personal life and then i have my work life and they intersect of course but in my personal life i i love having memories of my family um and that doesn't mean just blood family but my alaskan family and so i i see a basket that i collected or purchased as you might say um.

That I bought with someone else who was with me at the time, or a gift, or this is the doll my husband bought for me when we first started dating. And I look at that and I think of that moment every time. Or I see art on my walls and I think about the artist who made it and I remember talking to them about their practice.

And I think, you know, there's that connection that I had with that artist and that's what i like to see so for me i surround myself with memories i'm super sentimental yeah um as a as a human being um uh that the impersonal i'm just like oh you know it's not it's not as important to me so if i don't have a connection to the person who made it or the person who gifted it to me or even when I made it or bought it if like not made it but if I bought it and I didn't have

a connection with the person who made it I tend to not feel as attached and so I'm more likely to let it go but I do I surround myself with things and material goods material That sounds so impersonal. So, museum speak. It's funny that you ask, because I'm sitting in a bedroom right now that was my daughter's, who's now gone off to college, and I have been madly cleaning it out in preparation for some new furniture.

And it's been interesting to me what I've been willing to keep and what I've been willing to just give and have it go someplace where it can have its next life, where someone else can enjoy it. And if I, you know, with your memory, if I forget the story, I'm like, I don't even remember why I liked this or why I was sentimental, so that goes. But then something else will strike me, like my grandfather's gift to my mother that she held on to that she then passed on to my daughter—,

And it's not a useful item, but it's beautiful. And I was like, oh, well, that's definitely sticking around. Yeah, yeah. I read that your family came to Alaska not for a better life, but a different life. Oh, it's so funny. I used that phrase years ago. Well, not that long ago. Yeah, it was in a different interview. I remember that now. A good memory. Well, my parents came to the U.S., I should say, not to Alaska specifically. My family, my parents, my mom came here to get married.

My dad was here on a visa after college, or after graduate school, I should say. He did his second master's here in the U.S. And my mom married in a very typical Indian way, an arranged marriage, and she never thought she would leave her family. She never thought she was going to live across the world. And so they lived here in the U.S. For a few years until it was time to go home.

And they went back to India after both my brother and I were born, and they—, The life there wasn't the right life for them. They couldn't accomplish what they wanted. They couldn't live the way they wanted to for a variety of family reasons, personal reasons, but not financial.

And they chose to come back to the U.S. because they wanted to give their kids the life that they envisioned, which included me having the choice to do what I wanted, to marry who I wanted, to, and then also, I mean, that was secondary. I mean, to be honest, the real reason is that my dad wanted to be an engineer and he wanted to do the work he does or did until he retired. And that wasn't possible. There were a variety of reasons that was that. So, they gave us a great life here.

You know, they had a harder life here, frankly, than they would have at home in India. And so, but they stuck it out and they had a good life here and they're still here. They did move back. Briefly, when one of my dad's parents died, they tried it, and it wasn't for them. Okay. They had become American, and so they, yeah. But Alaska, for them, was an opportunity. It was the first time in our family's lives that they had extra money.

And so, our life here was good, and I loved it. I found my home. Mm-hmm. And what do you think got you interested in the work of preservation? I think I've always been really sentimental about material items, about them embodying stories and embodying culture and connection. And so it took me a while to figure out that that's what I really, that's the part of maybe my world that I was interested in the most and could see myself making a career.

I started out as an archaeologist, which, again, I think I gravitated towards because I'm super interested in genealogy, not from a perspective of scientific study, but more about the personal stories that people have about how their families have grown and where they come from. And I'm always interested in that when I meet new people, no matter where they're from or who they are, because I think it makes us who we are. And so, all those things conspired and I became an archaeologist.

But in that world, I realized the part of the storytelling and sort of preservation was what interested me to help people find their connection who maybe don't have that connection or weren't proud of their connection to their past and their community and their culture. And I felt like this was one way I could help people remember that connection and remember that community that stands behind them always, whether they know it's there or not. Mm-hmm.

Who do you think we are as humans without our possessions? It's a good question because we still are that same person. Because in the end, these material possessions are just things in some level. But I think I believe in the way maybe a lot of people in the world believe that material possessions also have living beings and that there's something connected. And so, whether we have them or not, we're connected to them because, or at least I believe that.

You know, no one can take that away from you. But I think as humans, we're a little less when we don't have those important cultural belongings that mean something to us personally or as a community. I think about, in war-torn spaces, how people rally behind architectural, art, religious structures, and how you can decimate and dehumanize people by destroying those things.

So, I think as humans, even without those, we still can be who we are, but it's definitely when you look at history and you look at how people in power who are trying to subjugate another people, they destroy their material possessions, first and foremost, and sever that connection. Mm-hmm. Yeah, the Library of Alexandria comes to mind. You know, we're still talking about that. Yes.

Well, or the, I'm forgetting their names, and this is my memory playing havoc with me, but the structure, the really big Buddha figures in Afghanistan when they were bombed and destroyed. You think about that, you think about still people talk about destruction in World War II. People are still fighting to get their art back to this day from World War II, if you think about that. You displace people, you remove them from their land and from their homes.

I mean, all these things, I think there's so much out there that's inundating us to say that they're just material possessions, like let them go and live the simple life. But I think those sort of suggestions discount how much and how much importance we as humans need our connections, not just with each other, because we are, you know, we're not solitary animals, solitary mammals. We're people with connections. We live and work in groups.

So, yeah, I mean, I just, I think of war. And how, like what happens during those times, like churches, right? Churches are built, or even, I mean, if you look at Hagia Sophia in Turkey, in Istanbul, how it's gone from being Muslim to Orthodox to back again. I mean, that very important structure goes back and forth. And I mean, you just start looking all over the world and then you start to see that. And you see how people do that.

And then you look at the United States, which, you know, so many people here have come from someplace else, right? There's such a small population that is actually from the United States, from North America, from Alaska. You know, the indigenous people of these places. And you look at the rest of us, myself included, who've come from someplace else.

And I think that's why it's a little easier for those of us to be a little, I don't know, a little bit clinical, a little bit less understanding of how people feel about their own lives.

Places, their own cultural belongings, their own, the physical manifestations of who they are that aren't connected to their body, that are outside that. You know, we're talking about these objects, you know, some sacred, some sentimental, some both. Have you ever been around an object where you're in awe of it? Maybe you can feel a certain energy emanating from it. I would say I feel that every day when I go into the museum. Okay. I feel like there's so many items with such power.

But you also feel that, I feel that when I'm in awe. I mean, like I said, I'm kind of a sentimental fool in some ways. But I feel that way when I'm in front of some amazing art that I... I'm just happy to be there and to be a witness to its existence. And I think about going to places and seeing something that someone has crafted or made. And it doesn't have to be old. It could be something fairly new. But you feel the power behind someone's crafting and the message they're trying to send.

So I feel that way about art all the time, and I feel that way about cultural belongings in photographs and... Yeah, I do. I can't pick one out, I would say, because I do feel that way when I'm in the museum. I wonder, how does the museum keep their collections safe from getting damaged, like from an earthquake or maybe somebody bumping into it or dropping it? Yeah, we have a lot of, we brainstorm a lot.

Around what might happen and then experiences with those activities have led us to be more knowledgeable about certain things like, oh, if you just, you know, keep it a certain distance away from a visitor, they're less likely to touch it.

There, you know, there's a variety of ways. There's no one way, and we're constantly brainstorming new ways to help visitors connect to the cultural belongings and artwork that they see on view while also helping those material manifestations still be around for others to see and interact and research and all those things in the future. And I would definitely say that, you know, sometimes things aren't meant to last forever, and I'm very well aware of that.

And when I talk about things or material possessions that get me all sentimental, those personal stories. Otherwise, there's definitely in many people's lives and cultures where, you know, you think about a car. Like, people drive a car until it's no longer useful and then they move on. And if you kind of had that attitude about other thing, you can apply it to some what we would call artwork because it's artistic and it's beautiful and they're meant to be used up.

And so those aren't the things I'm talking about. Like, you know, I mean, right now we have these really amazing benches that were installed on the museum grounds and we'll do what we can to maintain them and make sure that they are able to be around. But we may not treat them and put the barriers up so people don't use them as a bench in the way we might in the building where there might be a bench that's historic that's on display for a specific reason.

But, so we oftentimes talk to the artist, or we have these conversations with other people with experience, or we talk to the curatorial and design team about, you know, how best do they envision it? I mean, for an earthquake, I've been through a lot of earthquakes. I bet. I mean, you know how it is. You live in Alaska. It's like you experience them, you see things move in your house. I learned a lot in 2018 from that big earthquake, and I wish I hadn't.

But, you know, I also learned that we were doing a lot of things right, and I had proof then. So, you know, we have mounts that help protect individual tiny objects or art objects or cultural belongings. And then we also have stanchions and, you know, there's just a variety of things and I'm not, I'm always surprised when something doesn't work because I'm hoping the best of the visitors, but sometimes I'm surprised when.

Because, you know, we're not all the same, and that's lovely that we're not all the same. And people have different reasons for coming into the museum, and people have different reasons for what they're interested in. And you just, you know, you do the best you can and hope that what you've thought of will help protect the item in the way that it might want.

And then in other situations, you might have to be open to thinking like, well, this had its life, and we need to then think about it differently and maybe not think about it for the forever. And I think people are unaware that we do do that, that we in museums actually think that way, that we think about how long something might make sense to be around. And we don't make the judgments easily or without knowledge or research.

We consider a lot of different aspects of an object's sort of life and purpose and what the community might want. But it's always good to know, right? We help advocate for that information and then let people make informed decisions about how they want to proceed. Because sometimes those kinds of physical handling is important.

And so I would say, like, it's different for physical handling back in storage than physical handling by thousands of people in the exhibitions, where the sort of connection that people might have to that one cultural belonging are very vastly different. Where it might be a little impersonal and in the visitor setting whereas in the storage setting where we have community members and other researchers come in, they have a connection.

And so, the handling there will be very different, just because they have a connection. Mm-hmm. If it sits for too long without someone tending to it, treating it or cleaning it. So surprisingly, in our situation at the museum, you know, most, almost, well, not almost, all the clothing is stored in drawers or boxes. So they're laying flat and protected from light and dust.

And you'd be surprised how good the clothing is and that you know the temperature's stable the relative humidity is stable and all these things really help um keep the clothing in a. Inherently deteriorating about it so one of the things that i think about is there's a silk that was made in the 1870s to the 1890s that's called weighted silk and so it had minerals added to it to give it its heaviness and its crinkle and that silk will will no matter what you do in the dark in you know

stable temperature relative humidity nobody handling it it will deteriorate no matter what but then i or like if you look at um like scraped seal hide that has been scraped and then worn and used um it'll be stiff um and then it ages naturally and becomes brittle over time and And it could, like when you take it out, like say 50 years later and you're handling it, it'll still be stiff, but it probably won't be worse.

It's actually surprising how well clothing survives just laying flat and kind of quietly. I mean, people actually, our clothing comes out quite a bit because people are doing a lot of research on the clothing we have, the parkas. The footwear, the boots and slippers. And so, it gets handled. I mean, people aren't putting it on. Yeah, yeah.

But when we have, when we've put them on forms, we might need to reinforce, you know, because when they go upright and get filled with a body, so to speak, you're putting pressure on all the seams. And so, then the seams become vulnerable. Okay. So actually, keeping clothing flat and in a box or in a drawer actually is probably the most gentle thing you could do to it. Okay.

I know people are always surprised sometimes because we'll pull out, like I just pulled out a gut bag made of seal intestine. And it has silk and some feathers on it and they're so vibrant and it's from the 1870s. The gut is still flexible. The blue and the red and the purple in it are just so brilliantly bright. You would have thought it was made yesterday, not 150, 60 years ago. Yeah, that's wild. It is wild.

Every time I see it, I'm like, whoa. Because then we'll have another clothing item made of also seal intestine from the 1950s. So it's younger, and it's not as in good a condition. And I don't know why. I mean, I'm sure it has something to do with the way it was used, but wildly different. Age isn't always the deciding factor. It's often how something's prepared how something's used those kinds of things that make a difference yeah.

Which is so different than our world, right? Like if we have something and we haven't used it in a while, like that's especially plastic. It's worse than when it was new because that stuff degrades fast. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what the answer to that would be. Something that keeps needling at me, you know, as I'm thinking about the seal gut is, and, you know, I can't verify this because I'm not, you know, I don't have the credentials.

But it wouldn't surprise me if the reason the newer seal gut, you know, was more frail might be because of the environment, might be because what's in the ocean now versus what was in the ocean then, climate change, things like that. Yeah, I don't know about that. I think I have made the assumption that it had to do with like how much something was used or if it was oiled during its life, things like that. But you're right.

I hadn't thought about the way the materials that are available to us naturally, like, you know, plants and trees and things like that, as well as animals, how they're changing. Though there are people who talk a lot about access to those materials that are changing, right? Like, maybe seals aren't as plentiful because they're not...

They're just not here, right? Because the water's too warm or something, or there's no fish, or we had an artist from Greenland here recently, and she was, she mentioned just, we were talking about seal skin and how it's available in Greenland commercially, and it's exported, and it's taken to Denmark, and, you know, there's stores all over that you can buy seal skin items.

And uh she was saying that yeah there's just thousands of seals and I couldn't even imagine that right like we're here I wonder if it's how people who live in other places where the fish are different than in Alaska and they see the fish runs here and they just can't fathom it if they're because they're not from here and they don't see how the fish are running um but then if you go up to the headwaters of the Yukon and you and people aren't getting fish and you're like whoa wait what like out

at the mouth um of the Yukon or the you know just down on the Kenai how many fish are running in the summertime I think I think yeah I mean I always think about abundance and and changing abundance because of the changing environment but I hadn't thought about like the actual material being different because of the changing environment.

But that's true. I mean, people, I mean, I'm sure indigenous people who work with those materials are very well aware. Yeah. I'm sure they're knowledgeable about it. You know, I read this article you wrote on the Anchorage Museum website titled, Decolonizing Through Virtual Repatriation, A New Vision of Collections Access.

And in it you say that few non-tribal museums have made significant changes in collection practices or repatriation of material culture outside of the mandate by the National American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Is that to say that many museums out there have only repatriated these images and objects because they were made to?

You know, when I wrote that, I think it was true, and that was especially part of, you know, that content as part of the grant writing that supported that project, which at this point was in 20—I think I wrote the first draft in 2019 or 2020. Yeah. It's really different now. The landscape across the U.S. Is changing, and I think that there's this momentum building. I think there's a lot more happening than there was back then.

I think up until that point, there were few enough museums out there doing this idea of, How do we change the power structure? How do we change what this might look like if non-Indigenous museums considered other ways of working, considered other ways of stewarding, other ways of ownership? I think that there, within the framework of NAGPRA, museums had been doing that.

So, there was a lot of agreements, maybe not a lot, but a fair number of agreements between tribes and museums where museums would hold and steward items for tribal entities. But often through that NAGPRA, which is the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. And it was a federal law, or it is a federal law, and so it was easy to point to. And I think there's other state and federal regulations that make it easy to give you a roadmap of how to do something.

And I think there were fewer museums who were looking at, do we rightfully own these items? Or even if we do rightfully own them from a Western title perspective, is it the right thing to do?

And I think there's a big change. I don't think, I mean, there's many museums doing that now, which is really, I was just at the Association of Tribal Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and I was excited to see more and more people taking part in that and expecting that so that, you know, there are professionals who really believe we should be doing that. And I think we'll see that more as the days come, because I really feel strongly that that's the direction of museums are going.

And I'm hopeful that we will find a way forward, because we do have to deal with the Western ways of ownership. And museums or cultural institutions have to evaluate how they're going to go about that. I was disheartened to hear recently at that same conference a museum kind of double down on their stance. And I don't think they realized it. I think the person who was talking...

Was trying to explain their and contextualize their phrase of what got taken out of context, but I definitely did not get the sense that they personally were on board with what we call ethical returns, ethical repatriation um ethical mate matriation um all sorts of different uh or rematriation i should say um you know there's different phrases i i often just we have a hard time figuring out what to say so in that project that that you referenced we haven't

we haven't even figured that one out i mean we have figured it out but we're we're working in on it still i would say is that copies of these photographs were given to the tribe and control over those, the images that are within and about their tribe and their tribal lands are what we're working out, how to make, how to work that out in reality. Like, does that mean every image request that encompasses that gets sent to them, or do we help them? You know, how does that look?

Those kinds of questions are ones that all museums are trying to figure out. I know the Smithsonian now has a shared stewardship model, and so they're open to how that might look, and that's a big thing. I mean, to have the National Museum of the United States basically say, please talk to us about your concerns about the collections we have, and then move forward with that and how that might look.

I'm happy that it's happening during my work lifetime. Music. Yeah, it sounds like so much of this conversation, possibly argument in some situations, comes from this idea of ownership. And I think you were talking about this earlier, where a museum can believe that they own this sarcophagus. You know, they own this thing and it is theirs to show rather than this, you know, again, for example, a sarcophagus belongs to, you know, this other culture over here.

And, you know, it's rightfully theirs. And in them taking it back or giving it back, you know, this museum is all of a sudden depriving itself of a piece from one of its collections. And that, to me, sounds, it's a very consumer, kind of capitalist-driven idea. It is. And I think, you know, I don't have the answer to this, but I often think about, like, so, you know, you look at European and some other countries, museums that are national. Mm-hmm. Like, all heritage is national.

Um and so when we as travelers go visit those museums we have no sense of that like only if you know their national laws would you really understand that kind of ownership um and it's collective because it recognizes that one's cultural heritage cannot be owned by one individual it is owned by the country but those countries are political boundaries that are modern They're not perhaps as, they don't acknowledge older boundaries or older ownership or whatever.

And so, you know, today, as we look at our institutions today and how do we, how do we, think of that and how do we construct a new way of thoughts around that when our culture is so based, on that idea of single ownership um in the united states right um we have a very different approach um there granted there are you know many laws that impact how people own land and there's ways that the states, cities, and federal governments can appropriate land in the necessity of roads

and other infrastructure. But I think for United States citizens, when we think of ownership, it's very linear and capitalistic in that point of view. Like, I bought this. It's mine. I paid money for it. But that's not how things always worked. And so, how do we create a system that acknowledges that many of the cultural belongings or items that we're caring for were acquired from places that may not have had those same systems in place when they were created?

So, like your example of a sarcophagus, you know, when that was created, a different system was in place around ownership. But, you know, I think about, I think it's easier for people to think about when they think of like, let's talk about a church, like the entire building or a temple, right? Does any one person own that? And most people would say no. So then how do you then sell parts of it?

And so then you have, you know, stained glass windows, or you have sculptures, or you have these things. And I think it's easier when you. Relate it back to their own history for people to understand how difficult of a conversation this is, is that when you're looking at items in a museum that might be cultural belongings of a community that's here in our state, but then what about people who are not in our state?

Like, you know, if we have items from Greenland or Canada or Mexico or Africa or maybe we don't know exactly where they're from specifically, we just know generic regions and how do you deal with that? And I think if you start to look at that big picture, it can keep museum staff from moving forward, but you have to start somewhere. And so, you know, people like to have procedures and like clear-cut answers on how to move forward, but sometimes this is a little murky, and we move forward anyway.

And so, you know, we're doing the best we can, but I do think about—your example of sarcophagus was really good. I've been to a lot of museums. Yeah, well, I mean, you think about, like, because it's also a grave good, right? I mean, it's somebody's burial, but at the same time, sarcophagi, they would move the people in and out of it, right? Some of them, not all of them.

Or you think of those like yeah i mean i i uh i have personal opinions about, also why it gets back to what i said earlier about why why do people have items from other cultures sometimes it's just because i was a traveler and i i collected these things because i thought they were you know interesting and important but in other places, other places, it is a show of subjugation. Yeah, yeah. And it's a show of power, and those inequitable practices are then manifested, right? Like, in the museum.

Yeah. But not everything in the museum comes from that, right?

Like, there is art that is purchased directly from an artist for a specific reason.

But, you know, who knows? Maybe in a hundred years, somebody will be like, no, that's the art of my, community and you've taken it i don't know but that's for later people to decide how they want to move through but what my hope is is that what i've done now hasn't made it impossible for them to do what they want to do in the future because i think that's what i i think about like from a preservation point of view is that i'm trying not to make it impossible for new ways of working

and thinking to happen in the future they don't have to do the way things the way that i do them or the way that maybe is the prevailing way right now but at least whatever i do doesn't limit or take away the choices in the future in ways that are harmful because um things have to change, one would hope they change and hope for that they change for the better and yeah there'll be new ways of working, new information, new science discoveries, you know, all sorts of things will be happening and.

You know, when we make decisions today, they do impact those of us around us, and it impacts the future. And so, I think about paper. I know this is going to be really weird. I love paper as a material. Paper has been around forever. It has, yeah. I mean, the idea of paper is really amazing. But think about how little people write anything down that they keep. Everything's digital these days. And so, my hope is that even I, with my digital photographs of my family that I, you know, I treasure,

I think about, you know, will people in the future get to see photographs? Mm-hmm. You know if will they get to see.

Or hear maybe not hear that's not the right word, be able to read what like what you're thinking Cody in this moment you know, like will they get will they get to to do that you think about letters or you know just just these little snippets into the past, but yeah paper to me is just one of those really amazing materials that I think we take for granted, kind of in the way we take other plasticky things, like, oh, it'll always be around. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I wonder, you know, we're talking about a little bit here about the future, you know, what these future humans will be thinking. And, I mean, it could be something totally different. You know, they could have new ways of reading these preserved SD cards, you know, And on those things, that is our story. Yeah. And will somebody be able to pull that information off the SD card? Mm-hmm.

Hopefully. Yeah. That's where I would say is like, I hope that whatever I do, that somebody will be able to still access the SD card or, you know, I mean, now it's, you know, backups on the cloud that we hope people will have access to. You know, something you just said that I think really encapsulates kind of all of this with the possessions, with preservation is whatever you do, you hope in some way people in the future will know about it.

And I think there's something there. You know, there's something there that humans want to be remembered. And I think that possessions, family, you know, identity, it all ties into that. It does. You know, and it's funny is because like personally, like I've never had the desire to be remembered or the desire to like my story. I don't find as interesting as my ancestors stories.

Okay. And I think that kind of plays in a little bit as to why I do the work I do is that I'm more interested in preserving other stories, not my own.

I'm more interested in making sure that like my, like my nieces know my grandparents stories because that's what my great-aunts did for me is they shared the stories of their ancestors with me so it's like you know you're just a blip in time and you're just here a moment and to pass it on and i know a lot of people who they do have that desire to be remembered and you know that's fine that's that's for them but for me personally it's not so much about me as it's about these

other stories that i think are really compelling and i really find um i find joy in helping people pass those on to other people and um. Yeah. I don't know if that makes sense, but. No, it does. I have something to say to that because I feel like I really identify with it in that I don't know if my story is that interesting as well in the same way that you're talking about it.

But I have talked to a family member about this, and they have said, you know, oh, that's because you're the storyteller of the family. And that sounds a lot like what you are. I was just going to say that I feel like the way you interview people and have your podcast, yes, I would say that similarly, you're helping people hear these really great stories of other people. Oh, thank you. And I think you're very successful at that. And I hope that I do the same thing, but in a different way, right?

So, yeah, I find, I think, you know, it's funny is, I don't know, any different people, some people really want their story to be told. Yeah. But I think that the best and interesting stories are those, not stories, I shouldn't say that, the connections that I see. Like it brings me joy when I see somebody come into the museum and they make a connection. Because I know I helped in a little way to help them make that connection.

And then what they do with that is up to them and whether they continue it or not is up to them and whether they share that with their family is up to them but I do, I do it's the best part of my work, How did the Anchorage Museum start to decolonize their collections?

Well i think um in little steps uh you know sorry for switching gears on you there no that's all right um i think about well i mean because there's a lot of people who do the work right um and that's one of the things when you name something you suddenly realize and you start sort of a uh i don't know a focus you suddenly realize how many people are already doing that work and you're like, wow, like we're doing pretty good.

And I think at the Anchorage Museum, there's been a lot of really great staff who have been changed. I put the term decolonizing is fraught for many people. For me, it means just changing the way we work to be more inclusive and equitable and inclusive. And being open to new ways of working and re-evaluating the practices that we have. And so I see it in my own department in collections, but I also see it in all the departments across the museum.

And that really, I think, makes me proud to be, to say I work at the Anchorage Museum is because I see that work happening across the board. And so, you know, when people ask, like, what do you, and I'm like, well, we started doing this in, you know, whatever date. And we started doing this in another date. And we started this only in 2021, but we've been thinking about it. So I think of some of the people who've left the museum and gone on to other places and the work they've done.

I think about the staff who are there now and continue to change or continue processes that were in place by their predecessors. And I think there's been a big shift, and I shouldn't say shift, but a big hope that we could do better and a concentration, you know, under Julie's leadership, definitely. But that's not to discount all the people before her as the director who made changes in.

You know, maybe not in the ways that are most obvious, but also in other ways, you know, doing different things. And so, I think there's been some really good concerted work happening. Like, I'm just going to use COVID, like 2020 as a benchmark. I think there was a lot of good work that happened before that.

Like, I'll mention to somebody, oh, yeah, we stopped really trying to get cultural belongings of, you know, we started encouraging donors of indigenous cultural belongings in 2011 to go elsewhere and return to source communities. But it wasn't in our collections policy until post-2020.

But that doesn't mean we weren't doing it. And so, you know, those kinds of things, it's always interesting to see, like, wait a minute, we've been doing that for 15 years, but then suddenly, like, well, it's not been in our policies. It's only been in our policies for four or five, but, you know, that's just on the collection side. I just am speaking to that because curatorial, education, programs, development, marketing, exhibits, design.

I'm trying to think of all the departments. I mean, they're just all doing really amazing things.

Work that helps and makes it easier I would say as a you know when you when the whole museum is behind the effort it makes it easier for each of us individually and so some of the decolonizing things that we're doing in collections include being proactive and and trying to encourage access and invite people in and and being vocal about like the way we work so that people feel more comfortable um but that was happening before

i was ever head of the department i mean that was you know those kinds of things were happening but maybe they weren't happening the way they needed to or people didn't know about it and then maybe i was doing it for a long time but still nobody knew about it. And now we have a variety of people, curatorial team members, people that are partners that know about it. And so, and now I'm vocal about it.

And so, people know, like, oh, you know, it's important to us that Indigenous communities have relationships with the cultural belongings that are physically housed at the museum that we steward. We want to talk to people about, you know, what does that look like for their future? And, you know, are we doing things the way they want us to? Like, are we stewarding items the way they want? Are we holding items that shouldn't be in our collection?

I mean, those are all conversations that we're open to, but maybe people didn't know 20 years ago. But 15 years ago, maybe they found out about it or 10 years ago or five years

ago or whatever. So, those efforts are... I think gaining steam and our being prioritized on our daily work level, I would say, in ways that maybe they weren't able to be prioritized 20 years ago because of other factors that had nothing to do with what they believed in, but might have had to do with other, you know, it was a different time. And they had other priorities.

So I don't like to discount the really great work. Not only of my predecessors, but also other people that worked in collections that have since moved on to other roles. To your point about working with communities, the museum has worked with Chickaloon Native Village to repatriate images and other cultural materials. What did that look like? Yeah, that was kind of our first big project. And we're not sure where it's going to go.

But the way it looked like over the last four years is we had regular meetings with staff from the Chickaloon Village Tribal Council, who is operating the Chickaloon Native Village, or contract, you know, somehow, you know, connected legally. And uh. They worked with us and partnered with us to invite and be open to bringing other community members, so elders.

Younger people, a variety of people, and we had multi-generational tribal citizens along with Chickaloon Village Tribal Council staff come into the museum regularly. Um the staff came probably every week or you know they they came more often and then the larger groups um then came you know less often and I say less often but like you know maybe once a month or something but they they what we realized is that um by having the staff come in first and select what the group would look at.

They got much better responses and engagement. It's really hard for an elder to sit there for six hours and look after photograph after photograph that has no interest to them. And so they listened to what their tribal citizens were telling them, and they ended up doing that. And so over a couple of years, they came in regularly and looked at different collection items. So both historic photographs and cultural belongings that were related to the upper Cook Inlet area.

And they also brought other Atna and Dena'ina people into the conversations. They didn't just keep it to Chickaloon Native Village. And that way they facilitated some of those other, you know, those other communities to come in. And then... We worked on making sure that they got the information about those images and cultural belongings. And then we did site visits where we went back to the community.

So we've been a few times to Chickaloon specifically where we took photographs and cultural belongings to the community so that more people could have connections and see what and present the work that we're doing. We went to their gatherings the last couple summers. We also went out to Chitna last winter and did a community gathering there. And we're hoping, even though that grant-funded project has now ended, we're hoping to continue this relationship.

And that's part of what this project was about, is to develop the relationship, maintain the relationship, and repair the relationship. Because a lot of the people who came over the last few years, tribal citizens, either had never been to the museum or just had bad feelings about the museum. Okay. And so, trying to repair those relationships and then also create a lasting relationship with the tribe since they're right here in South Central. Okay.

We're lucky enough to have a tribal member from the Eklutna Dena'ina on staff. He's the president, in fact, of the native village of Eklutna right now. And so we have, and I know you, Aaron. Yeah. And so we have a good relationship with them, but the other closest tried to us wasn't as involved in the museum. And so, developing that relationship was important to the museum, to me personally. And so, we're going to hope to do more community visits with them.

We're going to continue to plan to go to their yearly gathering in the summer. I mean, as you know, relationships take work. And so we want to make sure that we continue that. And they've also opened some doors to other communities for us. And so we're exploring how that might look in the future and how that might, you know, how we might be able to do something on a smaller scale because we don't have this large federal grant. That is going to fund the project the way we envisioned it before.

Because we paid for, you know, we paid honorariums, we paid for travel costs, we paid for staff from CVTC for them to have staff working on the project. You know, all sorts of ways of, you know, these were all through the grant. This is not like, it's not the Anchorage Museum's operating budget, But it was a specific federal grant that allowed us to do this. And so we're really thankful to the Institute of Museum and Library Services for funding this project. Mm-hmm.

You know, as I was writing these questions, I couldn't help but think of the Alaska Gallery. And I was wondering how this act of repatriating items applies to that gallery. And that gallery, for listeners who might not be familiar with it, is the longstanding exhibition that features items from present Alaska and also historical Alaska. So yeah, so the Alaska exhibition that is now installed at the museum was installed in 2017 and had curators.

Aaron Leggett is one of the co-curators of that exhibition, and there were other advisors that worked on it. And, you know, Will, definitely the cultural belongings that are older in there had been reviewed prior to that by appropriate tribes, is my understanding. I wasn't involved in that process and that was before I ever was at the Anchorage Museum. But we'll have to revisit that and those are good questions, you know, and I think that's part of decolonizing is being open to...

To change in communities. So what the tribe decided in 1995 or 2000 is going to be different than, 2024 or 2025 soon. And so we as a department are actually working towards that about opening those conversations up again. And I think that's one of the things that definitely I've learned and I need to be reminded is that sometimes it's easy when you have a job and you're like, okay, I got to do this. You do it once and then you move on and you need to remember that things change.

The museum not only has changed, but the culture outside the museum and the community outside the museum has changed. And so, you need to revisit these periodically and to keep an open mind. And so, those are things that is an unknown right now. And we'll see how the cultural belongings in the gallery are associated with specific tribes. And those tribes may have different opinions than the tribe did in 1995 or 2000.

And so, how we approach it, I think, will be different. And so, we'll be, you know, I could say stay tuned.

Yeah, yeah. We'll see how it works out. But, you know, one of the other part of this work is, like I said, it's great having Aaron Leggett on staff to help guide us and help navigate some of these conversations and help facilitate those conversations with communities, who might want to have a conversation about those connections and relationships with cultural belongings that are on exhibit or that are stored in our collection. Mm-hmm.

I don't know. Did that get, did that get kind of what you were. No, it did. No, it was, it was, it was great. It actually, um, I, I, it was good. It was good. I, I think, uh, the reason I asked about it is because I grew up, you know, born and raised in Alaska and for field trips, you know, you go to the museum and you're a kid and, and, uh, you know, when you're a kid, you, you don't, you're not really into museums just yet.

At least I wasn't and you go into the alaska exhibit and i remember i loved the dioramas because it um it gives you the impression of like you know uh getting this sneak peek like a fly on the wall into you know that culture but but i also know that those dioramas were kind of iffy Yeah.

I mean, it's just an old way of looking and if they weren't accurate. Yeah. We hear this a lot about people. I mean, I grew up here in Anchorage as well. And those dioramas got put in when I was a high schooler. And so I don't have as much memory of them when I was a school age person. I remember them more post-college. But yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people felt connected and that's how they learned about indigenous people. And so, but yeah, those ways of display definitely has changed.

Yeah, I think it's a, it's tricky, you know, in my mind, I understand that those, those dioramas can be, like I said earlier, iffy, you know, we don't know, there are some misrepresentations involved. But at the same time, I remember them kind of lovingly, you know, because they were kind of my introduction into understanding this culture that was not my personal culture.

And I always love, you know, learning new things, meeting new people, being introduced to new cultures, traditions, life ways. And maybe I didn't fully understand it in that way when I was young, but I felt it. Yeah, I can totally see that. And I think it's hard because I think there's so many different ways that you can create exhibitions and design exhibitions. And so, you know, a decision has to be made. Do you want to have a diorama and update?

And is that the way you want to tell the story? Or do you want to tell the story in a different way? And I think there are so many successful ways to tell. The story of Alaska, tell the story of people and how they lived.

And I think it'll be interesting to hear people who were young and saw the gallery the way it is today, and in conjunction with the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center, the Living Our Cultures exhibition, as a compliment, and to see them together and to get a sense, like, what did they have a sense of.

Indigenous people and how they how they lived in alaska prior to settler communities coming here um and then and then what is their impression of you know early anchorage like what is you know life of a hundred years ago um i think it's just hard to imagine what what people take away but i think you're right i mean i think you hit on it is that sometimes when you're younger you the parts that you pick up at a museum are not the parts that the museum people thought

you would okay yeah right like you know you you go in and you have like maybe maybe the educators have given the teacher a curriculum guide and and they're going through it to me it's always fascinating what What people remember after they've come out, especially younger people, like elementary school age kids, what they remember when they come back like 10 years later or 15 years later and they visit again. And what do they remember? Mm-hmm.

Considering how much museums have changed in the last 10 to 20 years, how do you see them changing over the next 10 to 20 years? Do you think they'll continue to be more conscious of the communities and identity behind things in their collection? I think so. Oh, I think that people, well, not people, I think institutions and museums are going to actually, at least my hope is that there'll be more variety.

I think that's the thing that is really interesting to me now is that there are some museums who are presenting the way that they've always presented. So, you know, they might be, they might look the same way they did 20, 30 years ago. And then you have museums doing things completely differently. And I think that that variety is only going to increase with time because I think there's a place for all of it.

Whereas I think maybe 30, 40 years ago, people thought there was only one way to be a successful museum. I think today that there, and I see that, is that there's going to be more variety. So, you don't have to be, so another museum in the state can be successful, but they don't have to look like the Anchorage Museum. They can look like themselves and they can have their own identity and serve their own community.

And I think that the challenge will be in the next 10 to 20 years is for those institutions and museums who maybe are struggling right now to figure out what their identity is and just owning it. Like, maybe they want to own that we're going to just have dioramas. Or they're going to be all virtual, right? Like, it's a virtual museum. I think there's space for all of it. And I think that people also expect that variety.

And so if they go, you know, me as a museum goer going to other cities or other states or other countries. I probably am not going to go to a museum that's exactly like the one in my hometown because I can go to my hometown. Yeah, yeah. And so I think that that variety will be important and I see it happening and successfully.

I think that but I do think the struggle will be like, how do you finance? How do we support this? You know, I think that. The way our economy is, you know, sort of the way we look at finances, our museum's going to have to look at being a little different in the way that they approach.

Um like do they go down the path of places where they're completely funded federally or statewide or something so that it's all um public funding or are they gonna go down the path right now which is what we have where it's a mix there's some museums that are private some museums that are a combined amount of funding. I don't know. I'm not sure what that holds for a resource-heavy economy like Alaska.

But it'll I'm hoping that the various institutions will rally and figure out ways to work and succeed. I like that.

Well, Monica, those are all the questions I have for you. I want to thank you for your time and for the work you do and for the passion and personal way in which you do it. Well, thank you, Cody. Likewise, I feel weird being recorded. But I appreciate you having asked me and I appreciated the time to share some thoughts and just things about my work that maybe other people might find interesting. Music. For more information about the Anchorage Museum, visit anchoragemuseum.org.

This podcast was produced by me, Cody Liska, for the Anchorage Museum. With additional help from Julie Decker, Chattermark's music. Music.