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A little note on #abandoned for #museumsunlocked. It is quite common to find the word abandoned used in object records, particularly for colonially-acquired ethnography. /1
This majestic sculpture of a sphinx by Haida artist Simeon Stilthda @britishmuseum was for example supposedly found in an abandoned Haida house in about 1895. /2
But abandoned means something quite different in these contexts - quite often the buildings were abandoned in times of epidemic, famine or war, usually directly (and often deliberately) incurred by colonial governments or settler processes. /3
It’s not a natural or passive process. Sometimes objects we’re even taken from “abandoned” buildings whose inhabitants were just out fishing or hunting, and returned to find their “abandoned” homes looted. /4
Even where the buildings were vacated for long periods or “permanently” as we understand it, fallen into ruin, they are not considered abandoned by their communities as long as there are any descendents with the rights to claim and resettle them. /5
Haida people in particular have expressed this strongly to me in my research. There are Haida communities which were vacated 150 years ago which are still active, still cared for by the descendants of the inhabitants that they may one day choose to return. /6
So when we encounter the word “abandoned” in the object record it is important to critique it - who decided that the site was abandoned? Who gave permission for objects to be removed? Was it owned even though no one was there to tell the collector? Who should own it now? 7/7
