Collections: A Journal for Museums and Archives Professionals (https://journals.sagepub.com/home/cjx) is hosting a focus issue on Indigenous Collections. Please read below for full details.
Guest Editors:
Victoria Van Orden Martínez, PhD candidate in History, Linköping University, Sweden, and Editorial Board Member of Collections journal
Adriana Muñoz, PhD, Curator at Världskulturmuseet (National Museum of World Culture) in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Editorial Board Member of Collections journal
Laura Phillips, PhD candidate in Cultural Studies, Queen’s University, Canada Nathan Sentance, Project Officer, Cultural Programs, Australian Museum, and
contributor to Indigenous Archives Collection
Heather George, PhD candidate in History, University of Waterloo, Canada
Historically, the art and artefacts of Indigenous peoples have been appropriated or neglected by non-Indigenous national institutions. When Indigenous belongings have been placed or incarcerated in such
institutions, there often exist and persist fundamental problems relating to issues like ownership and the re-contextualization of these belongings into foreign world views. In recent years, these issues have come to the forefront of discussions on and in scholarship relating to both the reconsideration of existing Indigenous collections and the creation of new ones. This focus issue of Collections aims to highlight
Indigenous collections – often referred to in non-Indigenous contexts as ‘art, artefacts and archives’ but equally recognized as belongings and Ancestors by Indigenous peoples– from across the globe and to
understand how these collections or populations are being problematized, conceptualized, reconceptualized, created, and reconsidered in different contexts.
Article topics may be related to any aspect of Indigenous collections, including the following:
• Indigenous conceptions of ownership, rights and archiving/collection practices;
• Transfers or repatriation/rematrication of Indigenous materials in former (and ongoing) imperial collections;
• Decolonizing and transforming Indigenous collections in existing non-Indigenous institutions;
• Creating original concepts of and new sites for Indigenous belongings;
• Digitizing Indigenous belongings and digitalization practices; considerations and implications;
• Protocols, sharing, interactions, and rights;
• Problems, challenges and opportunities related to contextualization/recontextualization;
• Overall issues and challenges relating to the collection/extraction of Indigenous belongings, such as authority, representation, terminology, practices, etc.
We are particularly interested in proposals that openly grapple with the implications of decolonizing frameworks for extracted collections / populations of Indigenous belongings / Ancestors, especially
contributions that work to apply the principles discussed in the framing references below.
For this issue, we are seeking articles, essays, and case studies of 2,000-3,000 words (8-12 pages doublespaced, plus notes and references). Authors should express their interest by submitting a 300-word
abstract and any relevant information (such as short bio or pertinent URLs) to the guest editor,victoria.martinez@liu.se, and the journal editor, jdgsh@rit.edu, by March 1, 2021.
Notification of acceptance will be made by May 1, 2021, with the deadline for submission of final papers of July 1, 2021 through the SAGE online submission portal. Publication is anticipated for volume 17 or 18 with an issue date of 2021/2022. For additional information or to receive samples of the journal, please contact the journal editor, Juilee Decker, jdgsh@rit.edu.
