Welcome to the Rivers Museums. Matters of Policy podcast, this is a podcast in which we explore the museum's collections development policy,
speaking with guests from across the globe to delve into the language used and consider what really matters in this policy.
Hi, I'm Jeff, and today I'm joining Alexis. Hi, I'm Alexis.
And today we're talking to Faye Bouncier, the deputy head of collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum.
She works in various roles in the ethnography and anthropology sections and has worked in both
physical and digital collections currently working on writing the Pitt Rivers repatriation policy.
She's here today to talk about her perspectives on the policy and her opinions on ways to move forward.
I guess to start with the first question.
Could you elaborate a little on your work as deputy head of collections and curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum,
particularly focussing on your work regarding decolonisation? Sure.
I went to the rivers there for, I think, just over 10 years.
All of my rosary beads have been embedded in the collections department,
so I've always been working on the collection, so I actually have an archaeologist background.
I think I've sort of earned my status to follow ethnography as well.
My day to day job is quite practical. The practicalities of managing the collection in a really basic things.
So again, with the policy documents, we have to meet these national standards for accreditation.
But a lot of standards guide our practise in terms of what we do.
A lot of what I'm concerned with are the practicalities of knowing where objects are.
So locations management really basic things like cataloguing the collections, you know, ensuring that we have really good recordkeeping of the object,
making the objects assessable to all our public stakeholders that are interested in the fact that you may be to have meaning or for whatever reason,
people want to be able to access the collections, see them be given the information that we have about them.
Things like curating exhibitions and submissions, writing labels,
what kind of registry rows of getting objects ready for two to different exhibitions internationally,
nationally and then the right thing, the kind of policy that guides our practise or should guide our practise.
So this policy in question the questions, the relevant policies of the six is owed the sector.
I think for museums in the past six years, this change really radically.
Six years ago, the term decolonisation is the words have different meanings like colonial highs in terms of what that means with the
colonising museum collections is really developed in the last two years in terms of applying that to everything we do,
including the actual structures in place that gets the very practical levels of collections care.
Our director, Lowry Brookhaven, who's been here, I think, for five, six years in that time in our strategy, everything's changed, Renee.
It's been interesting someone who's been here for 10 years to kind of see that change, be part of it.
In my Washington career as a museum professional, I've always been involved in the Museum of History.
So I posted a conference here at the museum.
I think maybe it was 2016 and it was cool decolonising the museum and practise.
And I remember at the time there was lots of critique from other people who say, Right, well, you know, what is this what you are using?
And even then,
the whole crux of that conference for me is the museum professionals was the concept that it is a very theoretical level about the colonising,
and the sector was someone whose work is embedded in practise.
I wanted to know what does that mean in practise? Because I feel like I was being spoken about a lot.
But then you can see from the policy document, as I say, it's five years old.
It hasn't changed and it hasn't changed because there is no pressure to change it because it's written.
It was like it would be reviewed in five years time, and we need to be accredited to gain insights on a very public.
It's possible for, I mean, it's on our website. Arguably, it should have been changed a lot longer.
A liberating five years. A lot has changed in five years.
Our practise is definitely ahead of our policy. So whereas is that policy to inform practise,
I think our practise now needs to inform our policy and our policy needs to be rewritten to reflect that practise,
which again, I still think our practise is flawed in many ways, but I think that.
Our policy is not a fair reflection of where we are at in terms of our practise.
It's really great because part of this project is trying to understand how policy and practise relate to each other.
So is the fact that decolonial practise is ahead of policy an issue or to phrase it differently?
How important is that policy message practise or can practise go beyond policy without too much issue?
Well, I think it can become an issue when it's the fact that the policies are the things that
we have that are required to meet these standards and these benchmarks in practise.
So I think if the policy is not reflecting that, then arguably how could we say that we are hitting the standard that we should say today,
how often do I look at our policy and go our right to the point where this policy in particular?
I haven't looked to that for a very long well. And I myself was a bit shocked by just how our faces on how problematic it is
really can certainly be the case that your practise kind of overtakes the policy.
You know, you have your mission statement about fits into your strategy, and your policy should reflect best practise at the colonial practise.
Then again, your policy should reflect that, particularly in the cases where policy is used or to uphold or to do something like in,
say, repatriation, be like, you know, we have to. Well, according to the policy or clothing to the right bureaucratic process,
someone can wave a piece of paper in someone's face and say where the policy is
this that can be used as an argument in a not to do something or to do something,
whatever, then yeah, your policy document is pretty important that I think it's OK to acknowledge that our policy is off base,
but that we really do something about it. Yeah, that's what we're trying to get at.
So it's good to hear that. Can you tell us a bit about that work regarding writing the museum's repatriation
policy and how that policy compares to the CDP Section 15 on repatriation?
And of course, given that you're very involved with that,
do you think that policy know fifteen point one and fifteen point two of the CDP ensures smooth, adequate and morally responsible repatriation?
If not, what is missing? And in your opinion, what should be included?
Actual repatriation is a very bureaucratic process.
Essentially, the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum are the property of the rescue,
and there are problems that right when you think of what the University of Oxford institutionally
kind of represents is there are inadequacies and they're like very short paragraphs.
And the Section 15 regarding population restitution of objects and human remains like two paragraph.
But the repatriation policy, which I think is probably even a few years old in itself now.
It was a really interesting process for me, revised it from the previous time to see again just how much had changed and the difficulties of
working with a collection that is or was collected to be encyclopaedic and cover the entire world.
Again, I haven't been back to revisit that repatriation policy recently.
Repatriation requests for Australia and I think Hawaii.
We have a couple of ongoing requests that literally take years, and I think that's because it has to be done in a case by case basis.
The fifteen point one says I would take such decisions on a case by case basis within its legal position
and taking into account the ethical implications of available guidance which stage your game is a museum.
I think we have to reflect that bureaucracy is one thing.
But if bureaucracy is just putting up a barrier to someone or a group who perhaps don't
have the toolkit to kind of break down that barrier or that bit of bureaucratic nonsense,
basically this bureaucratic nonsense, then why is it there? Like why you have a need for someone to jump through when actually we should be
thinking about ways where perhaps you can go from the heat of the heat under the heat?
I think again, the trouble with policy is often it's really hard to articulate the grey.
It's often quite like white on a game, repatriation and restitution.
It can come across being quite white. And so again, I think as a museum,
our policy needs to accommodate the grey needs to be like a usable document that if a community
agrees to come to us and say we would like this thing back or we'd like it to go to X,
Y or Z, then. We present the repatriation policy, but it needs to be something that they can understand, it needs to be a usable document.
It needs to kind of explain how they would go about getting it back.
We were at the time, like really came to me to explain the whole process like, you know, your your request will come to us.
We will look at the provenance history of the objects from the documentation we have, acknowledging that the documentation may not be very fulsome,
but we will endeavour to research every bit of information we have about how that object came here to assess whether it was came here or not.
Whatever legally or not is a really completed process.
It would go to council, it would go here, we go back and say we'll have the final say.
I'm just to have that whole process trying to spell it out to someone,
whereas I think sometimes it can be really ambiguous, like just in the paragraphs.
The Council of the University of Oxford. Like, who are these people deciding whether something ships say OK,
acting on the advice of the museum's fisheries softeners governing body or who are the museum like?
Give that advice. You really have to kind of break down all of these things, which can be seen as barriers, I guess.
And I think you do have to have policy and procedure because legally, again,
repatriation, restitution, sometimes institutions, they kind of hold up these arguments.
Well, we send it back as long as you don't destroy it,
as long as it goes to a museum that has appropriate standard in the country in which that museum is.
And I think at the point when something is repaired again, it's not for us to say what happens to it,
what was done with that because it's not ours and it's not legally our property anymore.
So I think those stipulations are really not helpful and shouldn't be there on the repatriation restitution.
It should be like a process of dialogue. We have a level of kind of understanding and I think a kind of approach to
enabling what's morally and ethically correct for a particular object thing.
So again, it's complicated in terms of what things go back to where and whom the point of
a policy or procedure should be that it's really transparent is really clear,
and it's a usable document and policy procedure that people can refer to and can be helpful.
Yes. So there seems to be a power imbalance when looking at the choices represented in the document, particularly in Section 5.1 and 5.2.
And this might result in situations you mentioned where power is maintained by boasting all sorts of conditions as part of a restitution process.
Do you think that creating more diversity within the governing body or a professional staff or council for university is the way to go?
Or should be more be focussing on including the voices of local communities in those sections or both.
A bit of think it just comes down to transparency,
and I think that the two very short paragraphs and fifteen point one fifty point two aren't enough to express that really sick bay.
But I mean, you guys really articulated well, the problems are the language in this document, and I think the power imbalances do exist,
but we have to kind of acknowledge that we have to change the way that the language that we use and the way that we talk about it.
Thanks for your great insights. Yeah, because you are also working with making collections accessible and you are also working with digitisation.
What role do you envision for digitisation in the decolonisation of museum collections?
The museum database is a very specific and ultimately have to serve a function.
As I mentioned at the beginning, we have to know where everything is, and to do that,
you have to classify information, but you just have to see the mission statement.
And the CBP is off to date. But our current mission statement that leads to the many ways of measuring and
reflecting these many ways of moving into the Western systems and structures.
The museums in the UK Europe were founded on this really difficult we could like just go,
okay, forget it through the database of but that we can actually do our job.
We have an obligation, a duty of care to look after these things.
However, they don't have that here and they are in our institution and they are for us to make sure that they are motivated,
whatever it is that we care for them at a very basic level.
And to do that, we have to have policy procedure. I think it's not that we can't change it.
It is like a structural change to how could you do this needs to start to get.
And I think it's really difficult to do that, say in 10 years, say lots of change in the last five years.
I think there's been lots of talk, but a philosophical theoretical level in there about decolonisation.
What does it mean? But on a practical level, the practise is not reflected in our policy.
We are, I think, the revisionism.
We are doing, we're practising what we're talking about, but we're still falling short of the ideal of what we should be striving to achieve.
And I just don't know how much of it is actually achievable.
I'd say it's quite early days in terms of actual, meaningful change because as someone who sat with him for a long time ago,
my day to day hasn't changed a lot in terms of my practise.
The way that I manage in consultations, I guess what has changed has been like a decent centric.
See, this is you read people's policies as they are starting to rewrite them,
that the focus becomes more on people and less about the objects and less about anything less
about these political offices you connected you to which our policy was rife with what,
if you like, elicit the colonial officers and think the fact is that that's what we do about our collections.
We know who they came from, but we don't know who made them the people who took them or collected legitimately or illegitimately.
We all know that these things were taken on very unfair grounds, even if they were taken technically.
Legally, it was under clear rules that those people they didn't record the names of the people who made them
the names of the people they took them from the names of even the villages they took them from.
And in some cases they did like meals and patterns, and there was nothing collected and not alarmed and which is northeast of here.
And they practised at the time what was seen as a technological practise of political field.
And they they did record a lot of that information that I say is there.
But you know, it's still the focus very much on those collections and about the fact the reason
they're celebrated and the facts about them is that they were classified museum them.
So, you know, even when we have that information, it's not the information that's been privileged in terms of the historic records.
I guess the kind of processes the rancour, the unit and the collecting fund that is we collect today,
these things are changing the focus away from the collector.
But even now, we get literally swathes of people offering donating things to us.
Often, you know, the older generation and these things were collected by relatives,
parents, grandparents, Cuba, colonial officers, even to their 1950s 60s in Africa.
Or what? That even after these places, these countries are independent and it's really hard, I think, because it's an ethnographic collection.
I do feel like it's quite problematic to not collect. Griffey is from that particular era.
So I think it's quite a difficult thing to kind of navigate that.
Yeah, it's something that I see either things are changing,
and it's kind of interesting to be here now at this point where someone described it as, you know, Scouse.
And finally, this is a kind of tipping the other way.
The question I was going to ask about how the policy, even the mission statement,
the one that's in the CDP has changed from when the CDP that we have now that's accessible
to the public was written to the mission statement that is used and is on the website,
the more modern mission statement. So the old one that's in the CDP talks about the best university museum.
So I think I was going to ask which I think you kind of already answered.
How has that shifted from when that was written to now, which I think you already answered about the sort of decentralisation and all of that.
So to know if you want to just summarise that again, a bit more simply, it was like, what does it mean or what did it mean to be the best?
How are they defining best? I don't know. Like what?
What it used to be the best in terms of when that was written,
and it talks about being a inspirational forum for the sharing of cultural knowledge of the widest possible public.
I think our current mission statement a similar thing. Yeah, inspire.
Knowledge, which I think is that we should be to be the best kind of about good practise about,
you know, changing our practise and evolving our practise to reflect that.
Museums are changing.
Others say to acknowledge the hugely problematic past the Powell collections were quiet here, and I think we're kind of getting that.
But like I say, it's still work to be done.
I think we are now focussing a bit on the shift in the mission statement from emphasising preservation of objects to centralising a care of people.
Does this influence the way we define what counts as developments, so in rewriting the CTP?
What changes in the way we understand and conceptualise this notion development?
So again, this is where I have maybe just a bit of the chair, but we'd like a concept of what you can apply, what you can do in actual practise.
I would say where I feel like I gave this. This is a concept as a theory, as a philosophy.
We've been talking about the museum spaces for it, so it's like a really long time.
But we haven't been doing it and we've been talking about it for a really long time.
It's actually doing it or going about the business of decolonising for like a really short time.
And we still don't really know what it means to do it.
But I think to do it, it means that we do need to conceptually include.
So we talk about a plurality of knowledge, different ways of doing that.
That's reflected in the way the language of the way that the documents are written, the policies are written.
So I think we do need to include, I hate this term, the other voices because of that.
Okay, what are you saying that basically not our voices,
not be as white female museum curator like is not my place to necessarily say or be kind of be the dominant voice at the policy documents?
So I think that that for me, we're talking about it in regards to repatriation that you would like.
What is it like? What do we change to incorporate? I hope, is that transparency?
Like, how can it appear again, it being treated?
It's really important to not just talk about techniques, but do things that we say, not just do things if we don't know what we're doing,
but to ask the people the material culture that we have here,
ask them how should be included, represented by us and then what we're doing in our policy.
But we say that again, it's really difficult because as the White Museum professional is not up to us,
the game to put the onus back on the community here.
This stuff came from. It has to be a real dialogue.
It has to be a real kind of sharing in a reciprocal universe of who the museum should not have any obligation
to get anything back like we do deserve anything that we we need to be giving our views to be very open,
honest dialogue, I guess. Yeah, it's very interesting to get your perspective, not only unlike the sort of practical aspects of your work,
but also on your perspectives on how things can move forward.
Because the things you emphasised are often what other people in other interviews that we've held have also emphasised.
I think as a sort of final closing question, I think we've established that your practise sort of goes beyond the policy.
You know, the policy is outdated in terms of what the museum is practising.
But we've also, I think, established that policy is important not only because it's open to the public and therefore represents the museum,
but also because of the ability that it has to sort of smooth in the repatriation process for those who are looking at it.
So on that note?
Are there any parts of the policy, any sort of suggestions, any sort of final thoughts on it that you may have had that you would like to voice now?
I need the policy will be started the game. Basically, that's what's going to happen with this particular policy.
If you start to the game will be looking across the museum,
the other policies review to get out of issues that our strategy like implementation planning and what we do going forward.
Can you see it at our website that some of the things that we practise in the public sphere, the very light language that we use,
the way that we speak about things, about the collection is changing and that will be the kind of language that we use.
But we I think the policy is to support the centring of that kind of shift the focus around from like objects,
the history of the objects to the people, the people that made the objects, the people, that the objects were used by the people,
that the objects are for the people that have the objects need things today and like the contemporary of the future for it,
say, yeah, there's lots of food for thought it would be a really good exercise to rewrite this policy.
Thanks so much for your great insights. And also.
It's really interesting for us to get like a window into the worlds of curator and the work you've been doing.
I just want to say like, I'm very excited just because like I think sort of everyone that we've interviewed has sort of emphasised the same thing,
which is an emphasis on relationships between people and and cultivating those relationships.
So it's really good to see that people on both ends are sort of thinking the same thing and emphasising the same thing.
Yeah, I think Randy, where they're like getting it right,
having the magic formula for like writing a policy that is is too good to be stands up to what we believe of what like this is favoured.
So so I think it's still there, still quite a lot to be done at the same rate that you guys are excited.
I kind of felt slight driven fear. But it is, as I hear you say, yeah, be interesting to see what happens next.
He is. And I'm wondering, like with the dreads, unfair, whatever it is,
that at some point the museum definition will change so much that it doesn't really seem like a museum institution is the way we know is or.
But it could also be at the moment.
I'm still very hopeful that it sort of naturally change into a different kind of institution with a different purpose.
But perhaps people feel so closely connected to museums as we know it that it's not really a transition that's doable.
I still feel really positive about an organic transition.
Yeah, I think it would be really sad to have a future with the zooms because like, you know,
the purpose of museums becomes redundant because I think that it's just a case of,
like you say, transitioning like having a New York City museum because know the future of collecting doesn't have to be the pass.
The collecting pass, you know, like it can be, it can be different.
That could be an equitable collecting practise. I think I really exciting collecting practise where visitors are filled with things
because I still I don't think it's like a bad thing that things are in the museum.
But like you say, the relationships you build, collect these things while you collect them.
What are they saying? What's the purpose of what are they serving?
Because having these difficult conversations in museums are actually a really unique place where we can talk about
these things because we are part of the problems with access to talk about it right to life and being comfortable.
It particularly matters the really big believer of this in terms of services being a place of activism and a place to
store some of these contemporary issues that are affecting people like really relevant things like purgatory precarity.
I might be up for the big issues that I think is fit a fairly unique place to your app to engage in.
So thank you for you for coming on and your insight. Oh, you're welcome.
Good luck. Thank you so much. That was the Rivers Museum's Matters of Policy podcast produced by Bessie Woodhouse,
yet bomb maker man Alexis Barriere and Global Sound Music by Jack Forcett,
voiceover by who led a special thank you to Muranga Thomas from Oslo and the Knowledge Exchange.