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Belonging, representation and display in museums and libraries and the power imbalance that affects indigenous people.

Museums have long presented people through the objects they have taken from them through colonisation, economic exploitation and genocide. Libraries, like the Portico, preserve books written about indigenous people from a ‘settler’ or colonising perspective, in ways that is deeply offensive and racist. Truth telling and talking about uncomfortable truths is particularly important when these legacies have such a profound impact today on generational trauma and ongoing social and economic inequalities.

This conversation between Michelle Broun and Alexandra Alberda draws on the work made for the new Belonging Gallery in Manchester Museum and the work around the Child artists of Carrolup at John Curtin Gallery to ask how institutions that preserve knowledge can address racism, exploitation, injustice and harm.

Biographies:

Alexandra Alberda is a woman of Jemez of Pueblo and European heritage from America. She is the Curator of Indigenous Perspectives at the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester. The Manchester Museum is currently closed until February 2023 for an ambitious project to transform its spaces and stories. Click the link to see more on the new Belonging Gallery.

Michelle Broun is an Yindjibarndi women from the Pilbara region of Western Australia. She is currently the Curator, Australian First Nations Art, at John Curtin Gallery, Western Australia, an focusing on the collection of artworks created by the child artists of Carrolup Native Settlement from 1946-1950.

Michelle has 25 years’ experience working with Australian First Nation’s arts and cultural communities. She collaborates with cultural leaders, researchers, artists, and producers to develop projects which empower Aboriginal people and build bridges across cultures. She has worked as an artist, curator, in cultural planning and policy, and as a creative producer for Local and State governments and the not- for-profit sectors. As Manager of Community Indigenous Stories at the Film and Television Institute of WA, she produced over 30 oral-histories on film. She was lead curator of the Ngalang Koort Boodja Wirn exhibition at the WA Museum Boola Bardip which opened in 2020. She is currently enrolled in the Masters of Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at Deakin University and has special interests in cultural safety, rights in records, decolonising collections and repatriation.