I am delighted to say that the University of Oxford has now
launched a major campaign to create a scholarship for members of communities of
origin to spend time in Oxford learning from heritage items which are in the
Pitt Rivers Museum collections.
The Origins and Futures programme was inspired by the work of Gwaai
Edenshaw and Jaalen Edenshaw in carving a new version of the Great Box several
years ago. While the Museum hosts many visits annually from Indigenous
people and other communities of origin for the collection, the Great Box project made people think about the potential of such visits for both
communities and for the Museum, and solidified a desire by Museum staff to support
such visits in a regular way.
As a result of the positive impact of this project, we are now
establishing a new bursary programme, Origins and Futures.
We want to welcome Indigenous artists, elders, and researchers from communities
around the world to study and reconnect with unique cultural objects cared for
by the Museum. Such visits strengthen traditional Indigenous knowledge and
cultural identities while giving opportunities for Museum staff and visitors to
learn more about the heritage and significance of the precious objects in the
Museum’s collections.
This is where we
need your support.
Each bursary for a visiting researcher or artist costs
£8,000. This email is part of an appeal to raise at least £24,000 to pay
for one artist or researcher to visit each year for three years. I would like
to ask you to consider supporting the Origins and Futures programme. All donations
will be used for the bursary, the Museum will donate administrative costs.
If you would like to know more about Origins and
Futures and how you can support the Pitt Rivers Museum please contact
me (laura.peers@prm.ox.ac.uk) or visit the Museum’s Support
Us page.
This bursary is something I have hoped to set up since I arrived
in Oxford in 1998. It acknowledges the very real need of Indigenous peoples for
contact with ancestral items in order to strengthen culture in the present, and
it is part of the gradual establishment of positive relations and postcolonial
shifts in thinking that we are working toward. Someday it may come to pass that
heritage items will be returned to communities; it may also be that they are
co-managed. I have tried to work toward co-management and the establishment of
positive relationships during my Curatorship, as the building blocks for the
next phase in our shared history. The Origins and Futures programme is the
next step. Please consider supporting.
