In the literature on cultural appropriation, the issues that are addressed are often about misappropriation. And so it is in the case of this important collection of thought-provoking essays. They focus on the misappropriation of things and the knowledge of things by dominant societies from disempowered peoples.
Its horizons are wide and will broaden those of most readers. The challenges faced in assembling an interdisciplinary team whose perspectives and scholarship could cover the breadth of the contested territory mapped by the editors is discussed in the preface.
Bad luck and force of circumstance robbed the book of some of its indigenous contributors. Any museum that has embarked on an inclusive, consultative approach to planning a culturally sensitive project will recognise the difficulties.
Debate was lengthy and disagreement expressed. Unsurprisingly, what emerged is occasionally contradictory, but has nonetheless a resonant integrity.
One chapter describes the stealing of traditional knowledge from indigenous peoples. The echinacea products that are sold in shops throughout the world originated in the traditional knowledge and plant husbandry of North American First Nations.
So the author poses the obvious question: how can anyone claim exclusive rights to something that is knowable by anyone? In answering the question, the author neatly skewers the rationalist world view (on which the western museum is founded), based on a tradition of “ethical objectivism or universalism”.
Just because the dominant western culture is unaware that a landscape, with its plants and animals, has been the subject of centuries or even millennia of indigenous interaction and traditional lore, doesn’t mean that the shaping of the land by peoples didn’t exist.
Those who seek to impose a wholly alien set of universal values to justify exploitation in the name of humanity, are self-seeking and mask the unaccountable use of power with a “self-righteous veneer of ‘justice’”.
The diverse chapters create a satisfying intellectual framework, leaving the reader to make connections between a discussion of archaeology, the treatment of human remains, religion, genetic research, traditional knowledge, music and cultural objects in western museums.
Strong themes run through the book: the unequal wielding of power and its consequent abuse by dominant cultures over “subaltern groups”; advocacy for positive engagement through what is variously described as an “ethical lodge” or space.
Therein difference is acknowledged and respect for indigenous laws and institutions is the starting point. The ancient idea of “virtue ethics” is advocated, moving away from prescriptive standards, procedures and rules, towards the cultivation of values that “foster a capacity for responsive, respectful engagement across difference”.
Museums seeking to build bridges with alienated groups in their own communities, or embarking on research with communities overseas, find such a nuanced approach to be effective.
There are points with which one might take issue. The sweeping statement that archaeology is “inherently a practice of cultural appropriation” – in the sense of moral theft – is not true: but when archaeologists dig in an indigenous site without the permission of the descendant community, it undoubtedly is.
The characterisation of the conflict between the claims of science and indigenous peoples over human remains as a collision between “knowledge” (of science) and “justice” (to descendant communities) is unhelpful.
Knowledge, it is argued cogently elsewhere in the book, is scarcely the exclusive preserve of western society: there are many ways to “know”.
Implicit in this book is the importance of empathy, the willingness, humility and imagination to put ourselves into the shoes of another and to see the world from a different perspective.
Tristram Besterman is a freelance adviser, mediator and writer on museums and culture
