Inclusive Museums: Better Models For Recognizing And Incorporating Indigenous Knowledge Into Heritage Management

This PhD thesis explores a disconnect within contemporary heritage management that, through the international Conventions, calls for inclusivity, Indigenous knowledge recognition, and the participation of Indigenous peoples in heritage yet continues to marginalize these knowledges and practitioners. It is anchored in geography where I have found synergy with a subdiscipline known as Indigenous geographies that is calling for increased participation and new methodologies that instead marginalize still-dominant colonial practices. Drawing on a variety of Indigenous and ally scholars I demonstrate the ways that Indigenous knowledges are not accommodated within current heritage management structures. I also posit a need to explore cultural institutions such as inclusive museums for models of better practice and collaborative engagement. My own professional career has not only demonstrated the benefits of such ways of working but also dictated how I was willing to engage in a fieldwork project and facilitated a suitable project. This fieldwork, undertaken through a technical assistance at the request of the Pueblo of Cacha, high in the Andes of Ecuador, foregrounded the work requested by the Pueblo yet demonstrated the benefits and pitfalls of bridging knowledge systems, with strongly positive results in the community yet an incomplete attempt to dislodge the dominant heritage practice paradigm. My ethnographic account of the time in Ecuador uses photography and a series of vignettes to explore the partial knowledges shared, then assessments through both professional and academic lenses. Indeed, this dichotomy of practitioner and academic is evident throughout this thesis, mirroring the challenges of working in new and different ways.