Caring Matters | Healing Materialities

This panel focuses on confronting the deeply troubling and troubled histories of our ethnographic institutions, in the hope of fashioning decolonial and non-imperial futures. By taking these institutions as sites, as evidence, to explore the violent workings of colonialism, we want to try to inaugurate more just and equitable futures. This panel then engages how ethnographic museums, with their violent histories, can, or rather must, learn to better care, by  honoring the histories and ongoing aftermaths of such pain. We understand that we can probably never 'care well.'  And, we would be tragically and disrespectfully remiss were we not to try. We must welcome caring as an inconclusive practice, which constantly demands that we nurture humility in our relationships to our museums' materialities: as objects, with histories, heritages, and communities. 

Image: Kapa barkcloth, Polynesia / Hawaii, before 1892. As in other parts of Polynesia, barkcloths were used for garments such as wrapskirts, loincloths, and warm cloaks and blankets. images of gods were also clothed in white barkcloth and the dead were buried wrapped in barkcloth. Hawaiian barkcloth "kapa", was mainly made from the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree called "wauke" (Broussonetia papyrifera) that was cultivated especially for this purpose. Imported European blankets and textiles for apparel soon replaced traditional barkcloth after their introduction in Hawaii, although the making of fine ceremonial cloths for ritual exchanges continued for some time. At the end of the nineteenth century, the production of barkcloth had become completely extinct. Today, Hawaiian barkcloth-making is revived by women who study ancient Hawaiian barkcloths in museum collections and receive instructions from Tongan, Samoan, and Fijian women.

We will host this event on two platforms. You can either join on ZOOM WEBINAR or on our Facebook mainpage.

To join via ZOOM WEBINAR, please register in advance for this webinar via the link in the sidebar. 

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

If you have any problems, send an email to alessandra.benedicty@wereldculturen.nl