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Dr Phillips discuss­es her new book Muse­um Pieces: Toward the Indi­g­e­niza­tion of Cana­di­an Muse­ums and the con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing muse­ums and their oblig­a­tion to First Nations polit­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al demands in North Amer­i­ca. The ways in which Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ple and muse­ums work togeth­er have changed dras­ti­cal­ly in recent decades. This his­toric process of decol­o­niza­tion, includ­ing dis­tinc­tive attempts to insti­tu­tion­al­ize mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, has pushed Cana­di­an muse­ums to pio­neer new prac­tices that can accom­mo­date both dif­fer­ence and inclu­siv­i­ty. Draw­ing on forty years of expe­ri­ence as an art his­to­ri­an, cura­tor, exhi­bi­tion crit­ic, and muse­um direc­tor, she empha­sizes the com­plex and sit­u­at­ed nature of the prob­lems that face muse­ums, intro­duc­ing new per­spec­tives on con­tro­ver­sial exhi­bi­tions (1967, 1988) and moments of con­tes­ta­tion (1997). We dis­cuss an uncle of mine Noël Wut­tunee who was one of the prin­ci­pal artists at the con­test­ed Mon­tréal 1967 Expo. We also dis­cuss the 1988 Cal­gary Olympics and how much I enjoyed her work (I was 12) even though it boy­cotted by the some First Nations in Alber­ta (Lubi­con Cree Nation) because they are still with­out treaty and the oil and resources are being stolen from them.

Ruth Phillips argues that these prac­tices are ​indige­nous” not only because they orig­i­nate in Abo­rig­i­nal activism but because they draw on a dis­tinc­tive­ly Cana­di­an pref­er­ence for com­pro­mise and tol­er­ance for ambi­gu­i­ty. Phillips dis­sects sem­i­nal exhi­bi­tions of Indige­nous art to show how changes in dis­play, cura­to­r­i­al voice, and author­i­ty stem from broad social, eco­nom­ic, and polit­i­cal forces out­side the muse­um and moves beyond Cana­di­an insti­tu­tions and prac­tices to dis­cuss his­tor­i­cal­ly inter­re­lat­ed devel­op­ments and exhi­bi­tions in the Unit­ed States, Britain, Aus­tralia, and elsewhere.