Twelfth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

Local is critical to heritage, and often subsumed or ignored by the global, creating a tension between the two. Policy is made and resources assigned at the national and international levels, where governments or international organizations adopt heritage practices for the benefit of the people. Yet the practice of heritage–including its dynamism and creativity–is a local one. What happens when the practitioners are removed from the decision-making about heritage preservation? In an age of diaspora, what do local and global mean? Why are Indigenous communities disproportionately affected? I look at geographies of heritage and what it is about the local that we as academics still misunderstand, to answer the question, “Whose heritage is it?”