Seeking te tumu
Decolonising Indigenous heritage in an island community
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5701390 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Emily C Donaldson (0000-0003-1359-5499, Anthropologist, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 7 |
| Pages | 878-897 |
| Publication date | 2025-07-03 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Heritage Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1352-7258 • E-ISSN: 1470-3610 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13527258.2025.2496882 |
| OpenAlex | W4409894871 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 26 |
As its name suggests, the Gauguin Cultural Centre of Atuona, Hiva Oa features art by the famous French painter who died and is buried nearby. But recent plans to renovate this space reflect a shift in how the local Indigenous community understands its past and its future. In 2022, the Hiva Oa government launched a collaboration with two European museums that plan to return some 60 local objects in a long-term loan, hoping to exhibit them in a newly renovated Marquesan Cultural Centre dedicated to Indigenous heritage. Anchored in the current trend to engage with source communities and safeguard living and intangible heritage, this initiative illustrates how the process of reclaiming heritage can challenge Indigenous communities to define themselves, their past and their future in new ways. For the Marquesans, who call themselves Ènata, decolonising their heritage requires a delicate dance between reconnecting with the ancestors and preserving artefacts. Pressured into a preservation paradox, they seek to simultaneously satisfy Western standards of museum curation and te tumu, an ancestral source of being based in a fundamentally non-Western relationship to cultural objects. In so doing, they chart not only the future of this tiny museum but also Ènata
Archaeology · Cultural heritage · Ethnology · Geography · Indigenous · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · History · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Ecology
Working with the Ancestors
Decolonizing Museums
New Mana
Place, Destabilized
Quilting Power
Indigenous Wāhine Talking Critically in the Museum Space
Le Fare Iamanaha – Musée de Tahiti et des Îles, au cœur d’une souveraineté culturelle en renouvellement
Decolonizing Museums, Memorials, and Monuments
Imagined communities
The effects of repatriation on the relationship between the Glenbow Museum and the Blackfoot people
"Feeling "Superstitious
Working as Indigenous Archaeologists
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |