SLAIS, UBC
On April 16th 2011 I gave a talk at the University of British Columbia’s School of Archival, Library, and Information Studies. Thank you very much to Lisa Nathan and Eric Myers for inviting me and for hosting me so nicely that day. The talk was webcast and archived here: Repatriation, Digital Media, and Culture in the Virtual Museum
Abstract:
Many Canadian First Nations and Aboriginal organizations are using digital media to revitalize their languages and assert control over the representation of their cultures. At the same time, museums, academic institutions, and individuals are digitizing their ethnographic collections to make them accessible to originating communities. In this presentation I will explore how the term “virtual repatriation” is being applied to the digitization and return of heritage to Aboriginal communities, and draw attention to the opportunities, challenges, and critiques associated with digitization, circulation, and remix of Aboriginal cultural heritage. I will discuss recent projects including the collaborative production of a Virtual Museum of Canada exhibit with the Doig River First Nation, a Dane-zaa community in northeastern British Columbia, and a current collaborative production of a virtual exhibit with members of the Inuvialuit community in the western Arctic and curators at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. I will show that while access to cultural heritage in digital collections can facilitate the articulation of intellectual property rights to digital cultural heritage—-including the right to restrict circulation—-it also amplifies the difficulty of enforcing those rights.