Normalizing Culturally Informed Collections Stewardship

Summary

This is an abstract from the "In Search of Solutions: Exploring Pathways to Repatriation for NAGPRA Practitioners (Part III)" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Culturally informed stewardship takes a holistic and culturally inclusive approach to the preservation, access, and use of cultural items, records, and images. It acknowledges that curation and care are political acts and that the stewards of cultural collections must do more than simply consider the autonomy, expectations, and requirements of originating communities, but work to privilege Indigenous perspectives. Museum, conservation, and originating community stakeholders have advocated for culturally informed collections stewardship for decades, but it has only recently emerged as best practice. This presentation offers an overview of the trajectory of cultural care, shares the challenges of implementation at a small academic anthropology museum, and highlights training needs and opportunities at the Center for Collections Care at Beloit College.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• In Search of Solutions: Exploring Pathways to Repatriation for NAGPRA Practitioners (Part III)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40007.0