Abbe Museum Awarded Competitive Grant for Workplace Inclusion

The Abbe Museum has been awarded a $53,050 Museums for America: Museums Empowered grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The grant is 1 of 28 awarded to museum projects across the US – totaling more than $1.9 million – and will fund the Abbe’s project, Workplace Inclusion to Support Museum Decolonization. 

“As centers of learning and catalysts of community change, libraries and museums connect people with programs, services, collections, information, and new ideas in the arts, sciences, and humanities,” said IMLS Director Dr. Kathryn K. Matthew. “They serve as vital spaces where people can connect with each other. IMLS is proud to support their work through our grantmaking as they inform and inspire all in their communities.”

Museums for America (MFA) is IMLS’s largest discretionary grant program for museums, supporting projects and ongoing activities that build museums' capacity to serve their communities. Museums Empowered (ME) is a special MFA initiative to provide professional development and capacity building opportunities for eligible museums. This year IMLS received 147 applications requesting $16,770,555 for Museums Empowered grants.

The Abbe’s project will include professional development and training for staff, board, and volunteers to support the Museum’s work with the Wabanaki Nations towards a decolonized approach to every aspect of its operations. An emerging concept in museum practice, decolonization is an ongoing process of sharing authority for the documentation and interpretation of Native culture. 

“The Abbe team is committed to continued learning and we have dedicated ourselves to internal examination to make sure we are an inclusive museum, focused on anti-racist strategies and initiatives,” said Abbe President/CEO Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko. “As a small organization, the grant award helps us expand our bandwidth by bringing in experts to guide us and ultimately boost our strategies for the benefit of Wabanaki people and museum-goers.”

Generally speaking, museums have historically controlled their audiences’ understanding of Native people, sovereignty, and culture by leaving Native people and communities out of the planning and processes of museum practices. In the end, there was little to no consultation and collaboration with Native people on exhibits, archaeology, culture, history, fashion, food, music, placenames, burial remains, spirituality, education, and much, much more. This practice is certainly evolving, but the museum field has a long road to travel, righting these inequities of the past and planning for a collaborating present and future.

As a decolonizing museum of Wabanaki art, history, and culture, the Abbe develops policies and protocols guiding decolonizing practice. As part of the Workplace Inclusion to Support Museum Decolonization project, Museum staff members and trustees will engage in learning sessions around anti-racism and the effect of acculturation and will engage in cultural competency assessments. A museum inclusion expert will work with staff to assess inclusion from a systems perspective – people, policy, assumptions, values, and norms – and determine if they align with the museum's adopted guiding principle of decolonization. The project will provide essential resources for staff in the learning and development of workplace inclusion practices to support the broader work of decolonization.

About the Institute of Museum and Library Services
IMLS is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 123,000 libraries and 35,000 museums. Its mission is to inspire libraries and museums to advance innovation, lifelong learning, and cultural and civic engagement. IMLS’s grant making, policy development, and research help libraries and museums deliver valuable services that make it possible for communities and individuals to thrive. To learn more, visit www.imls.gov. 
 

Questions Teachers Must Ask Themselves: A Reflection on Dignity

I came to the Abbe Museum as a former social justice trained educator having worked with middle and high school social studies students. I worked hard to develop my pedagogy in the classroom, constantly forcing myself and my students to look beyond the pages of our resources and ask ourselves questions. Why is this important? Whose voice are we actually listening to? Who is telling this story? Who has been silenced? One question I kept asking myself at the end of every lesson was how do I bring dignity to a society built on colonialism and slavery?

Developing a solid curriculum is essential to all good teaching. My theory behind developing curriculum for dignity is a dual intention of honoring my content and providing an environment that is responsive to the needs of my students. In a history setting, students are free to explore the lives of other people separated by time and space and grapple with questions universal to humanity. "History, in other words, is...open to the whole range of human experience" (Whelman, 55) and I can utilize this to promote my own students' dignity by legitimizing their experiences. 

You may ask how one actually creates this kind of “curriculum for dignity." In my approach to history, I think it is imperative to highlight the agency and resistance of those living under oppressive socio-political systems. I wanted my students to interrogate all of our texts that perpetuate ideas about 'passive victims.' The development of critical thinking is essential for this kind of questioning. My focus on resistance is about bringing dignity to those in our units and students alike. It is an avenue through which students see the importance of being critical citizens who vocalize their questions and concerns. 

My work in museums is not all that different than that in a classroom. I still value the reflective nature of this work and believe that museum professionals must fully form their pedagogical approaches with dignity in mind. How does our work dignify the lived experiences of Wabanaki people? How are we addressing the past transgressions of museum work which assaulted Indigenous dignity and wellbeing? These are the questions I do not fear asking my colleagues and myself because it is the heart of decolonizing work. 

I bring dignity into museum work through truth-telling and decolonizing practices such as honoring the authority the Wabanaki nations have to tell their own stories. Since starting at the Abbe, my education team has developed a dialogue program called Decolonizing Museum Practice. It is an institutionally-reflective experience for visitors to see the challenges museums, like the Abbe, must come to terms with in order to create an environment that breaks down colonial narratives and supports a Native voice and agency. I actively engage visitors in reflecting on their own experiences and biases, because learners never come to us devoid of these, and in order to push past stereotypes and static historical narratives we need to confront ourselves.

Whether my learners are in a classroom or the museum, there is a responsibility I feel I have to bring my pedagogy of dignity to all the work I do behind the scenes and out on the frontline. This ensures that I am able to create a space for deeper educational moments that push us past the comfortable and into a truthful assessment of colonialism today. 

About the Author
Starr Kelly is the Curator of Education at the Abbe Museum. She is a member of the Algonquin First Nation of Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg in Quebec, and has worked as a middle and high school social studies teacher and is a social justice oriented educator, developing what she refers to as a "curriculum for dignity." Her lessons and pedagogical approach put theory into practice by honoring those she teaches about while simultaneously creating an environment which is responsive to the needs of her learners and dignifies her students' lived experiences. 

Guest Blogger Series
Our Guest Blogger Series is written by members of the Abbe Museum's Board of Trustees, Native Advisory Council, Staff, and special guest authors. It is a place to talk about the Museum's mission and related topics. Interested in becoming a Guest Blogger? Contact the Abbe's Director of Advancement, Heather Anderson, for more details at heather@abbemuseum.org. 

Amy Lonetree Lecture on Decolonizing Museums

The Abbe Museum is excited to announce that Dr. Amy Lonetree, Ho-Chunk, will give a free lecture on Decolonizing Museums: New Directions, Ongoing Challenges at the Museum on February 1, 2017, at 7 pm. Lonetree is a leading scholar on Indigenous history, visual culture studies, museum studies, and decolonization.

“We are incredibly honored that Amy is giving this talk at the Museum, especially since decolonization has been our touchstone and guiding principle for many years,” said Abbe President and CEO Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko. “We’ve been a resource and a model that the museum field turns to for ideas, solutions, and strategies for comprehensive museum decolonization.”

As applied to the relationship of institutions such as museums to the Native people of the United States, “decolonization” means, at a minimum, sharing authority for the documentation and interpretation of Native culture. Traditional museum practices of exhibiting, collecting, and programming have informed the collective memories of museum-goers while dehumanizing Native history and creating colonizing museum spaces. Emotional, spiritual, and physical harm is done when these colonized spaces and practices are not acknowledged and addressed. As explained by Lonetree in her 2012 book Decolonizing Museums, “Museums can be very painful sites for Native peoples, as they are intimately tied to the colonization process.” 

Lonetree’s talk will focus on the current state of contemporary exhibition practice with, by, and for Native Americans at both national and tribal museums. Central to her analysis is exploring how museums can serve as sites of decolonization by privileging Indigenous knowledge and worldview, challenging the stereotypical representations of Native people produced in the past, and discussing the hard truths of colonization in exhibitions in an effort to promote healing and understanding.  

“As a scholar focusing on the history of the relationship between Indigenous communities and museums, I am heartened to see the amazing work happening at the Abbe Museum,” said Lonetree. “Their willingness to discuss the knowledge they have gained with other museum professionals is impressive, and I would be honored to assist them in these endeavors based on my academic background in museum studies and Native American history. I am confident that the important conversations that take place at the Museum will enable all to arrive at new understandings of how best to move forward with efforts to decolonize museums.”

To learn more about the Abbe Museum’s decolonization practices, please check out our Strategic Plan. This lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, or to reserve a seat, please contact the Abbe at 207-288-3519 or RSVP@abbemuseum.org. 

About Amy Lonetree
Dr. Amy Lonetree is an enrolled citizen of Ho-Chunk Nation and is an Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her scholarly work focuses on the representation of Native American history and memory in national and tribal museums and she has conducted research at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, British Museum, Mille Lacs Indian Museum in Minnesota, and the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways in Michigan. Her publications include, Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums (University of North Carolina Press, 2012); a co-edited book with Amanda J. Cobb, The National Museum of the American Indian: Critical Conversations (University of Nebraska Press, 2008); and a co-authored volume, People of the Big Voice: Photographs of Ho-Chunk Families by Charles Van Schaick, 1879-1942 (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2011). She is currently working on a visual history of the Ho-Chunk Nation from 1879-1960.

We Must Decolonize our Museums

“Museums can be very painful sites for Native peoples, as they are intimately tied to the colonization process,” writes Ho-Chunk scholar Amy Lonetree. Reading this passage for the first time in 2012 stopped Abbe President and CEO Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko in her tracks and forced her to ask herself "How does the work I do cause another person’s pain and anguish? How dare I ignore this pain?" She can’t ignore it, and she would hope most of us can’t ignore it. But for many museum workers, this intertwined colonial history isn’t discussed or represented in their institutions.

In the following talk, recorded at TEDxDirigo in Portland, Maine on November 5, 2016, Cinnamon shares the urgency of museum decolonizing practices and describe some of the work the Abbe Museum is doing.

Abbe Museum to Make the Case for Museums on Capitol Hill

Local Museum Leaders to Join Hundreds of Citizen-Lobbyists from Across the Country Feb. 22-23

Abbe President and CEO Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko. Photo by Rogier van Bakel.

Abbe Museum President and CEO, Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko, and Director of Collections and Interpretation, Julia Gray, will travel to Washington, D.C. February 22-23 to petition our government and make the case for museums.

Joined by other museum leaders from Maine, Catlin-Legutko and Gray will be visiting members of Congress and their staff to make the case for federal support of America’s museums. They will be among more than 200 museum professionals and supporters from across the country participating in the eighth annual Museums Advocacy Day, organized by the American Alliance of Museums.

Catlin-Legutko and Gray are rising to the occasion to educate elected officials and inspire support for museums, at a critical time—just as Congress begins its work for the year.

“Legislators have a lot of issues on their plates, and we can’t expect them to fully appreciate the museum field unless we bring the message to their doorstep,” said Catlin-Legutko. “We want to make sure Congress knows about the indispensable work museums do, and their role as educational and economic assets.”

As the first and only Smithsonian Affiliate in the state of Maine, the Abbe Museum is trying to do more than just be a cultural and historical institution. Education is central to its mission, and with the launch of a new strategic plan this past fall, the Abbe’s mission hasn’t changed, but its vision has a new focus.

“Decolonization, which means sharing authority for the documentation and interpretation of Native culture, has been the Museum’s touchstone and guiding principle for many years,” said Catlin-Legutko. “As the only museum in the world dedicated to telling the story of the Wabanaki, we are committed to an ongoing process of better understanding Wabanaki culture, history, and values and examining and changing our practices to assure they reflect those values.”

Decolonization is an emerging concept in museum practice in the United States, and the Abbe is deeply committed to work that positively impacts the tribal communities and the museum industry. The Abbe is already a resource and a model that the museum field turns to for ideas, solutions, and strategies for comprehensive museum decolonization and the board and staff will deepen and broaden that commitment.

Abbe Museum Director of Collections and Interpretation Julia Gray. 

This is emblematic of the work museums of all types and sizes are doing nationally. According to the American Alliance of Museums, there are more than 850 million museum visits annually in the U.S.– more than the attendance at all major league sporting events combined. Museums invest more than $2 billion in educational programs each year, serving Americans of all ages and income levels, in a variety of ways. There are more than 55 million visits by schoolchildren to U.S. museums each year, and museums are among the most trusted sources of information for Americans.

Another study found that for every $1 invested in museums and other cultural organizations, over $5 is returned in tax revenues through cultural tourism and related economic activity.

Catlin-Legutko and Gray will be sharing these and other facts about museums with the Maine Congressional delegation.

“Museums are essential to communities everywhere, as part of our educational infrastructure, as economic engines, and as community assets that improve the overall quality of life,” said American Alliance of Museums President and CEO Laura L. Lott. “We feel privileged that Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko and Julia Gray will be joining us in Washington for Museums Advocacy Day. The Abbe Museum is doing extraordinary work in Bar Harbor and the members of Congress from Maine need to hear from constituents about how the Museum serves its community.”

For more information on the Abbe Museum, visit www.abbemuseum.org. For more information on museums and their impact on communities nationally, visit www.aam-us.org.

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What Does Decolonization Mean?

As the only museum in the world dedicated to Wabanaki art, history, and culture, the Abbe works closely with the Wabanaki Nations, sharing authority for the documentation and interpretation of Native culture. We are committed to an ongoing process of better understanding Wabanaki culture, history, and values, and with this in mind, we have a new vision for the Abbe, one that is  groundbreaking, ambitious, and thrilling:

The Abbe Museum will reflect and realize the values of decolonization in all of its practices, working with the Wabanaki Nations to share their stories, history, and culture with a broader audience.

You might be wondering what decolonization means, orwhat it looks like in a museum setting. You’re not alone; it’s not a well-known word or practice, but it’s gaining speed and we’re proud to be a leading resource and model that the museum field turns to for ideas, solutions, and strategies for comprehensive museum decolonization.

Susan Miller, Seminole, describes decolonization as a process designed to shed and recover from the ill effects of colonization. Amy Lonetree, Ho-Chunk, states in her outstanding publication Decolonizing Museums, that “a decolonizing museum practice must involve assisting (tribal) communities in addressing the legacies of unresolved grief.”

Generally speaking, museums have historically controlled their audiences’ understanding of Native people,  sovereignty, and culture by leaving Native people and communities out of the planning and processes of museum practices. In the end, there was little to no consultation and collaboration with Native people on exhibits, archaeology, culture, history, fashion, food, music, placenames, burial remains, spirituality, education, and much, much more. This practice is certainly evolving, but the museum field has a long road to travel, righting these inequities of the past and planning for a collaborating present and future.

The principles of decolonization inform how the Abbe builds, understands, and exhibits its collections, and they affect who shapes and tells the stories in our galleries and programs. Decolonization is part of our governance and policy and practice, the training of all staff (including those who greet and educate visitors), and even determines what is sold in our Museum shops.

We’ve got big ideas for the future, and ourstrategic planincludes designing and installing a new core exhibit, producing the Abbe Museum Indian Market, expanding our dialogue-based programming, implementing a new and improved web presence, developing an archaeology advisory committee, and creating an online collections database. We plan to share updates, projects, and milestones on the website and blog each week, so be sure to visit often (and ask questions)!

This new plan and vision are the result of years of discussions, interviews, research, writing, and testing. The plan represents a critical transition in the history of the Abbe, and it’s a journey we’re excited to embark on!