The growth of collaboration between museums and source communities - the people from whom collections originate - is one of the most important developments in modern museum practice.
This volume combines some of the most influential published research in this emerging field with newly commissioned essays on the issues, problems and lessons involved.
Focusing on museums in North America, the Pacific and the United Kingdom, the book highlights three areas which demonstrate the new developments most clearly:
*The museum as field site or 'contact zone' - a place which source community members enter for purposes of consultation and collaboration
*Visual repatriation - the use of photography to return images of ancestors, historical moments and material heritage to source communities
*Exhibition case studies - these are discussed to reveal the implications of cross-cultural and collaborative research for museums, and how such projects have challenged established attitudes and practices

As the first overview of its kind, this collection will be essential reading for museum staff working with source communities, for community members involved with museum programmes, and for students and academics in museum studies and social anthropology.

The growth of collaboration between museums and source communities - the people from whom collections originate - is one of the most important developments in modern museum practice.
This volume combines some of the most influential published research in this emerging field with newly commissioned essays on the issues, problems and lessons involved.
Focusing on museums in North America, the Pacific and the United Kingdom, the book highlights three areas which demonstrate the new developments most clearly:
*The museum as field site or 'contact zone' - a place which source community members enter for purposes of consultation and collaboration
*Visual repatriation - the use of photography to return images of ancestors, historical moments and material heritage to source communities
*Exhibition case studies - these are discussed to reveal the implications of cross-cultural and collaborative research for museums, and how such projects have challenged established attitudes and practices

As the first overview of its kind, this collection will be essential reading for museum staff working with source communities, for community members involved with museum programmes, and for students and academics in museum studies and social anthropology.

Model of a Summer Camp is an intriguing object with a range of stories to tell. Originating in the Sakha (Yakutia) region of far northeastern Russia, it depicts a yhyakh celebration – a festival of huge cultural importance to the region. This concise book takes a detailed look at the object, revealing the intricacies of the yhyakh and the model’s fascinating journey from Siberia to the British Museum. The recent resurgence of interest around the model is also explored, where creative responses and research have enriched our understanding of its stories.

This book gives readers the opportunity to learn about a unique object in the British Museum’s Collection and the rich heritage of Sakha (Yakutia).

In the pages of this beautifully illustrated volume is the story of aneffort to build a bridge between museums and source communities inhopes of establishing stronger, more sustaining relationships betweenthe two and spurring change in prevailing museum policies. Theexperience of negotiating the tension between a museum’sinstitutional protocol described by both the authors and by Blackfootcontributors to the volume was transformative. Museums seek to preserveobjects for posterity. However, the emotional and spiritual power ofobjects does not vanish with the death of those who created them. ForBlackfoot people today, these shirts are a living presence, one thatevokes a sense of continuity and inspires pride in Blackfoot culturalheritage.

When the Franklin Motor Expedition set out across the Canadian Prairies to collect First Nations artifacts, brutal assimilation policies threatened to decimate these cultures and extensive programs of ethnographic salvage were in place. Despite having only three members, the expedition amassed the largest single collection of Prairie heritage items currently housed in a British museum. Through the voices of descendants of the collectors and members of the affected First Nations, this book looks at the relationships between indigenous peoples and the museums that display their cultural artifacts, raising timely and essential questions about the role of collections in the twenty-first century.