Module 33: Museums and Ethnic Politics:
The Role of the Local History Museum

Reading: Erikson: “A-Whaling We Shall Go”

Why, according to Erikson, are museums important? Because they refer to the past to explain and comment upon the present. Museums often perpetuate stereotypes of Euro-Americans and non-Euro-Americans that justify the advantages enjoyed by the first group and the disadvantages suffered by the second. According to Blakey (1990:45), these stereotypes were:

This feeds into the prevalent American myth, that success in the United States is a reflection of people’s personal efforts and talents. Museums can perpetuate histories that ignore theft, violence, and discrimination, allowing Euro-Americans to believe that they have succeeded through their own efforts; or that convert theft and violence into a heroic narrative of struggle to tame the wilderness, e.g., the narrative of the Deerfield Massacre (Keene and Chilton 1995).

Non-Euro-American memory and oral history contain the records of events that are needed to challenge dominant history, but these are “subjugated knowledge.” In what way is “subjugated knowledge” subjugated? It is disqualified as inadequate or insufficiently elaborated, naïve, or beneath the level required of science. They dispute or contest the dominant/authorized histories. What would be an example of “subjugated knowledge” that we have read about? The native account of the Cheyenne Outbreak (McDonald et al. 1991). So one job for local museums is to collect and represent the memories distributed through the local community, to encourage remembering that challenges dominant narratives.

One strategy to disqualify subjugated knowledge is to question the authenticity of the community that remembers, to dismiss its memories as tainted by “politics,” to undermine the legitimacy of its claims (that is, what claims can be rightfully made by whom). So a second job for local museums is to show that local communities are the legitimate “heirs” to historical memories, that they have legitimate “identities.” How would you go about demonstrating the legitimacy of a local community? By establishing the historical and cultural continuity of the local community with the population that supposedly experienced the events under discussion.

These, then, are the two functions that Erikson sees for local museums: (1) to collect and represent the memories distributed through the local community; and (2) to establish the legitimate identity of the local community.