Decolonizing the museum: U of T graduate student looks at ways of honouring Indigenous artifacts – News@UofT

Museums with Indigenous ancestral objects on display should consider how they’re teaching the public about those artifacts and the people who once used them, says Audrey Rochette, a University of Toronto graduate student whose research focuses on museums and colonization.

“We’re people that come from a rich history of oratory,” says Rochette (pictured left), a master’s student in the department for the study of religion in the Faculty of Arts & Science and a member of Whitesand First Nation. “And when you go to museums, you look at things and there’s nobody there to tell you these fantastic stories about them.”

As a docent at the Royal Ontario Museum’s major Anishinaabeg Art & Power exhibit that ran from June to November, Rochette says she got to share some of those stories. And as she guided visitors through Woodland School paintings, beadwork, bandolier bags and other works of art from the past two centuries, she says she also made observations for her master’s research, looking at ways in which the ROM is incorporating Indigenous knowledges and voices into its programming.

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