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Decolonising the museum: the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2015

Claire Smith
Claire Smith*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia (Email: Claire.smith@flinders.edu.au)
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Abstract

The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), the Smithsonian Institution’s new facility on the National Mall in Washington DC, challenges the very notion of what constitutes a museum. Probably the most theoretically informed museum in North America, this is no shrine to the past: it is a museum that claims both past and present to shape a decolonised future for Indigenous populations.

Keywords

USAmuseumsdecolonisationindigenous archaeology
Type
Debate
Information
Antiquity , Volume 79 , Issue 304 , June 2005 , pp. 424 - 439
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2005

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