Twelfth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

The 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, along with federal, provincial, and municipal efforts in the more than a decade-long reconciliation process with Canada’s First Nations peoples, encouraged territorial acknowledgment for public institutions to recognize the contested history of postcolonial land. The adoption of local variations of territorial acknowledgment has spread across Canada and certain parts of the United States. For arts, cultural, and heritage organizations, the construction and delivery of this acknowledgment carries profound ethical, educational, and political ideas. This paper situates the discussion on territorial acknowledgment within the Canadian government’s framework of Reconciliation, in the greater spheres of historical ideas of postcolonialism and museum studies ideas of the decolonized institution. Territorial acknowledgment and its effects on arts, cultural, and heritage institutions are rarely discussed in prevailing literature, despite the greater amounts of institutions adopting its practice in verbal and digital formats. After situating this practice within the theoretical framework, this paper will analyze the implementation in various arts, cultural, and heritage institutions mainly in Canada and the United States, comparing implementation outcomes as a possible factor of government policy through interviews and institutional policies. The implications for territorial acknowledgment continues to be incredibly important in changing political environments of postcolonial countries with political policies continuing to exacerbate the fraught relationship between Indigenous peoples and unceded land, and institutions responsible for acting as mediators.