Your Collections, My Story: The Collaborative Exhibition between Aboriginal Tribes and Museum

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Ching Mei Lin  

According to international conventions, various forms of cultural heritage should be protected, developed, utilized, and passed down from generation to generation. With this spirit in mind, what strategies should museums that collect early Indigenous artifacts adopt to resonate with these principles? This study takes the Academia Sinica Institute of Ethnology Museum in Taiwan, which has been launching collaborative exhibitions since 2017, as an example to explore how the museum can open its collections to the Indigenous tribal members to identify, select, and provide explanations for the artifacts carrying memories related to Indigenous tribes. Subsequently, through collaborative planning, exhibitions are jointly organized and presented within the tribes. Among them, the Xiangbi Tribe of Tai'an Township in Miaoli County planned learning activities for Da'an River Basin Primary School, the Wuta Tribe in Yilan County planned a symposium, and the Jiaping Tribe of Taiwu Township of Pingtung County spontaneously trained young people to serve as guides during the exhibition. and a series of study activities will be conducted during the exhibition. They also launched a series of workshops. Through interviews with tribal curators and ethnic leaders, this study finds that the museums or researchers pay attention to the knowledge aspect of objects when facing collections, while tribal groups pay attention to the emotions and memories behind the objects. It has concretely achieved the goal of promoting human civilization.