Thirteenth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

Living history museums aim to recreate ‘authentic’ simulations of historical sites, lifeways, and people. Visitors ‘time travel’ to a site and immerse themselves in an imagined past. Interpreters in period costumes play historical roles, demonstrate livelihood and cultural practices, speak in period dialects, and generally engage visitors in learning about the site, people, culture, and time period depicted by the museum. Exhibits have a spatial, temporal and thematic organisation, and draw on visitors’ imaginations and their five senses. In North America, most living museums take the form of ‘frontier’ colonial forts, ‘ethnic’ European villages, and mining and colonial town sites. These sites are presented predominantly from the historical perspective of dominant white European settler-colonials, and mostly exclude the narratives and experiences of First Peoples who inhabited the sites 1000s of years before the arrival of Europeans. These First Peoples today often continue to live nearby museum sites, but are seldom meaningfully involved in museum design and interpretation. Further, when First Nations are represented, they, and the violence of settler-colonial history towards First Peoples, are often portrayed through settler-colonial historical lenses, myths, and stereotypes. This paper looks at how some living history museums have begun to introduce decolonizing historical narratives, exhibits, and interpretation in regard to First Peoples. These narratives sometimes take the place of, but more commonly, are added alongside, settler-colonial perspectives. In general, however, decolonizing design practices help to create more inclusive museum spaces for First Peoples, and as well as more authentic educational experiences for settler-colonial visitors.