Argument: positive contributions to preservation of indigenous cultures by museums

Regarding the reconciliation related to the preservation of the indigenous people’s cultures, the Canada’s museums could be seen as playing a crucial role in the process. Groen and Kawalilak (2019, p.85) provided positive perspective on the Aboriginal exhibitions held in museums in Canada by mentioning “the political, ethical, spiritual, ceremonial, emotional, and embodied dimensions of historical remembering in public history institutions”. By arguing that the Canada’s museums are becoming more inclusive in “moving beyond seeking apology and reparation to work toward genuine social transformation”(Groen and Kawalilak, 2019, p.86) with specific museum example of The Janvier Exhibition, they indicated the importance of the Canada’s museums in the reconciliation process of preserving indigenous culture, since “all aspects in the Canadian society should be considered” while defining and evaluating the reconciliation processes according to the statements made in The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015). Lederman (2021) uses the example of Burnaby Village Museum and argues the similar opinion, stating that “museums across the country are working to adapt programming and exhibitions so they are more representative of the Indigenous community”, which positively contribute to the maintenance of indigenous culture. The artwork Nehobetthe created by Alex Janvier (Figure 2) is presented on the left in this page as an example: the textual function is that the artist presents various indigenous people’s culture by using figurative approaches such as buffalos, tribes, and women and men in traditional garments. The ideational function is that the artist expresses affirmation, appreciation, and love for the rich and diverse cultures of the indigenous peoples. The interpersonal function is that by using the artwork name translated into English as “Land Before They Arrived”, the vivid colors depicted and the positive facial expressions drawn in the painting actually criticizes the settlers for erasing the indigenous people’s culture. It can be seen from this Omeka item that the artwork displayed in the Canada’s museums contribute to the maintenance of indigenous people’s culture by presenting it and arousing viewer’s emotions in different forms of exhibits.

A Voyant text analysis is conducted to the selected parts of Moved to Action: Activating UNDRIP in Canadian Museums, shown on this page in the right (Figure 3), to further support the argument. This report is chosen because it was “developed as a response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action #67” (Canadian Museums Association, 2022, p.2), which calls upon the collaboration between Canada’s museums and Aboriginal people. The sections of "Standards for Museums", "Recommendations", "Governance" and "Operations" are selected because they show how the museums response and act to the call, and what museums are considered to be contributing to reconciliation. By applying Voyant, we can firstly see that the most frequent words are “indigenous” and “museums”, which correspond to the topic investigated. Then, if we observe the trends of the words “indigenous”, “operation”, “culture” and “right”, we could see that they basically have similar trends. As indigenous right is defined as “practices, traditions and customs that distinguish the unique culture of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Nations” (Canadian Museums Association, 2022, p.122), the similarities in trends of “right” and “culture” could indicate the increasing awareness by Canada’s museums of preserving and maintaining indigenous culture, and the trend of “operation” reflects that the museums have been putting their focus on the indigenous people into practice, positively contributing to the issue.