Colonial collecting in Sweden and Australia
Historical and Contemporary Reflections
Collecting Sápmi: Early modern collecting of Sámi material culture and Sámi cultural heritage today
Carl-Gösta Ojala, Uppsala University
In this paper, I will explore aspects of the early modern collecting of Sámi material culture, as part of a larger context of colonial and missionary policies in the Sámi areas, focusing on the Sámi sacred drums, which attracted much interest in early modern Europe. I will also give a brief overview of the research project "Collecting Sápmi: Early Modern Globalization of Sámi Material Culture and Sámi Cultural Heritage Today", funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2014–2018. The aim of the project is to examine early modern collecting of Sámi material culture and early descriptions of Sámi culture, primarily in the 17th and 18th centuries. We aim to study early modern networks of scholars and collectors interested in Sami material culture, to investigate how and why the collecting was conducted, and to follow the movement of Sámi objects between collections and collectors around Europe. Furthermore, the project aims to discuss the importance of early modern collecting and the collected objects in today's society. Here, critical issues are raised concerning colonial histories and relations in Sápmi, motivations and ideologies of collecting over time, as well as the rights to Sámi cultural heritage today and in the future.
Sámi objects in Nordic and European museum collections - Some observations and thoughts.
Eeva-Kristiina Harlin Historiska museet "Att samla Sápmi" -projektet
PhD student Giellagas Institute, University of Oulu
During the 21st century three large surveys have been made in order to acquire efficient knowledge about the tangible Sámi heritage in Nordic and European museum collections. Today, we know a lot more about the collections and their situations. Altogether, at least 57100 objects are stored in museums governed by others than the Sámi people. Until recently, concepts like colonialism and repatriation have not been discussed in the Nordic countries, and the cultural heritage branch still awaits these themes to be a part of mainstream discourse. Museums often try to fend off repatriation claims by appealing to legal transactions concerning these collections. In my presentation I wish to question the ethics of collecting by looking at some examples from Finland and Sweden.
Colonial collecting and its emotional legacies today
Jacqueline Van Gent, The University of Western Australia and ARC Centre of excellence for the History of Emotions
Indigenous people and museum curators have to deal with a complex legacy of colonial collections which arose out of particular social, cultural and emotional engagements between settlers, missionaries, government officials and Indigenous people. One of the more ambiguous areas in contemporary exhibitions is the representation of these collecting processes and the ways in which the material collections were assembled. All colonial exchanges, including collecting, involved emotional dynamics on all sides which significantly shaped the encounters but which have to date not been extensively analysed.
This paper will discuss these issues drawing on the recent "Encounter" exhibition of Australian Indigenous historical encounters with white settler society at the Australian National Museum in Canberra. This exhibition was almost exclusively produced with collections from the British Museum where the same objects had been shown in 2015, albeit with a very different curatorial concept. In Australia, there have been strong public feelings by Indigenous communities about these objects, their return home to Australia and questions of repatriation. Most importantly, both exhibitions differed in the way the views and feelings of contemporary Indigenous communities towards the objects were incorporated (or not).
The emotions linked to objects, their role in local cultures, their 'collecting' and finally their display in European museums collecting practices involve human interactions of various kinds which were driven by emotions such as greed, fear, admiration, curiosity, disdain etc and often in very unequal power situations. The role that missions played in not only assembling material collections, but also in leaving us an emotional legacy towards indigenous people is rarely analysed and sometimes carried over in contemporary exhibitions. I will address these questions in a discussion of three case studies of Protestant mission collections and their contemporary display in Europe and Australia.