Thinking about a museum here in Dublin that tweets a lot about its collections and the provenance of its objects but without really getting into the colonialism and imperialism that underpins the acquisition of these objects. 1/
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And maybe they have more of this at the museum itself but if you are doing public engagement it is necessary to acknowledge this. 2/
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And maybe this doesn’t occur to an average person looking at their Twitter account because the nature of this museum is essentially taxidermy. 3/
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But they have not only currently endangered and (I believe) extinct animals in their collection, the acquisition of these were not donated by their countries of origin. They were acquired through trophy hunting. 4/
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And I am thoroughly unsettled about how this museum presents their collection, especially considering how often the extinction of animals is tied white settlers and colonialists exploiting the natural resources of these places. 5/
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Anyone who lives in Ireland will probably know what museum I am talking about and they may well know more than me about how they deal with this legacy in the physical space but ignoring this on Twitter is I think inappropriate. 6/
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And I think that anyone who works with heritage in some way has a responsibility to acknowledge the trauma that is attached to their collections. 7/7
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Addendum: my point here is that natural history is not a neutral discipline and it is just as rooted in racism, imperialism, and colonialism as other disciplines.
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