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Welcome to the Rivers Museums.

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Matters of Policy podcast, this is a podcast in which we explore the museum's collections development policy,

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speaking with guests from across the globe to delve into the language used and consider what really matters in this policy.

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Hi, I'm Alexis. And hi, I'm Yip. And today we're talking to Echo Soga, a Japanese artist who has worked closely with EU communities,

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and she's here to talk about her experiences working with the 5th Rivers Museum and City Collection development policies.

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All right, so first question, can you tell us a bit about your experience working with the pet rivers?

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How did you get involved? There are two stories to tell.

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One is I had my first encounter with Pitt Rivers in 2016, when I was working as a freelance artist.

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Also as a visitor to the museum. The second story is my experience of working with my anchor.

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So these two are quite different experiences. Shall I talk about boss experiences?

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Both would be great. Working with Marenco husband been really, really wonderful.

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We met through our mutual interest in AI, in the community and the culture.

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I think you have around 330 artefacts of the community.

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Sorry, I can't remember how we met.

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We haven't physically met because of the COVID, but we connected and we talked a lot about the idea of decolonisation.

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And I was in Hokkaido, Japan, working on my fieldwork with their own community.

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So I was sharing my experience with my rank and I was appreciating approach to the idea of decolonisation and how the museum can change or progress,

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or basically what they can do to make things more positive for everyone.

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My second point, but the more first experience with the museum,

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I was a freelance artist and I was already working with the Asian community for my project,

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and I knew Rivers had quite good collection of artefacts, so I got in touch with some museum and asked if I could engage with some of the artefacts.

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And unfortunately, I was declined because I didn't belong to any institution or I wasn't formally a researcher,

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so I didn't have any access or couldn't find anyone who could help me, so I just had to give up.

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So that was kind of the first encounter, but I did go to the museums and that was great.

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It seems like two different experiences. How do these experiences compare with your initial reaction to reading the policy?

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So that's a very tricky question for me because when I first thing goes to the museum, I didn't go in enough.

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Having read these policies, I had no idea about it.

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But now, you know, I've been working with Marenco, so I have a better sense of what museum is trying to do.

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I think there's a gap between what's written and what's being communicated through spoken communication.

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I have dyslexia. And so for me, understanding policy and was quite specific language is quite a big challenge.

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I don't know if I should pick up some specific points or really general response.

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Yeah, I mean, go as specific as you would like, especially in regards to your experiences with access regarding the Pitt Rivers collections.

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Do you think the Pitt Rivers is successful in maintaining a degree of access to its collections?

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I think being us, if it's successful, is a little bit challenging.

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So I'm just thinking about the idea of success.

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Well, you know, we can always make changes and we can always have more and more conversations to make things better.

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So, you know, when I read the policies in written for months, the language is quite somehow top down and very formal.

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And I guess and there has to be formal, but it's not very accessible for me.

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And I say this because when I work with the final community, elders often say, Oh, you know,

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like all the researchers and academics come in to work with us, but they speak the language we don't understand.

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And I really feel in a way they say what?

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They said to me there's so much gap between human to human and pathetic language,

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to what can be written as paresis feels like so much space in between.

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So maybe there's room to fill that gap, whereas, you know, if I go into the museum in person,

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so lots of beautiful, amazing artefacts that are created by people.

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It's full of details and cares and human qualities.

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I do wish the policy can be somehow returned in a more compassionate language if that's possible.

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Yes, sir. Would you say that's the policies and sure to honour the emotional and spiritual connexion between the people and objects?

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Or is it creepy bypassing this connexion between objects and people?

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I was thinking, You know, I understand the format and common sense or in a policy culture, but often like if I were in the reverse,

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artefacts come from communities and culture of people who didn't have written formal language.

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To me, that's a really important aspect because if we I say we because we show who we work a lot for is like a written language.

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And I'm Japanese, and I raised condition to don through written language.

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For example, you're not school or even now as a researcher or, you know,

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you can sit at Oxford and require to read a lot and make sense of the world through written language.

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But how can we understand the people and culture whose social norm has been nurtured through non written language?

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So I think that's the biggest gap between the facts and the policies written on the paper.

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Do you think the bid for Everest Museum has done more to ensure such care between people and objects and currently reflects it's in the policy?

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Or is this still absent in practise as well?

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Well, my experience with museum is limited, so I'm probably missing a lot of things that is happening at some museum.

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But I think we can do a lot more with effort to understand the culture, the barriers, the spiritual sense and emotional aspect,

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like we need to unknown our social norms and learn from those communities that has very different cultural norms.

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So these policies are a standard of the Western novel, right or the British norm.

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But if you're working with different communities, we have to step towards their barriers and understand them.

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So yeah, I think any agreements and policies means to have a space, to have long conversations that requires sensitive understanding,

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ideally like invite people from the community and scholars and be open to keep working on differences.

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Sorry, did I answer your question? Yeah, I think it also answered the question that I was going to ask on How do you think museums can

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better incorporate indigenous ways of knowing into their collection policies going forward?

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I just want to read you a quote by this scholar in Canada.

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She's called the young Simpson, who wrote a book titled Dancing on Our Toddlers back in 2007.

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She said the starting point to visiting indigenous theoretical frameworks, then is different.

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Sounds from within Western Series, which is the spiritual world is alive and influencing.

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Colonialism is contested, and storytelling or narrative imagination is attuned to vision as our existences

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outside of the current ones by critiquing and analysing the current state of affairs,

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but also by dreaming on visioning as a community.

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And I really value what she wrote in that.

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For example, invite this The Simpsons. She's like wonderful and like, organise a conversation or workshop someone like her.

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She's both academic and an artist who has an insider point of view as an indigenous person.

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But having said that, each community have different.

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Systems and ways of sustaining their social norms and culture norms,

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so whenever you have a different project or a specific project with specific communities,

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best is to just have a conversation, ask them, like ask them barriers and then like discuss what's best for both ends.

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Or people who are involved. So there's no one answer.

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It seems like there's more of an emphasis on relationships between people rather than a sort of hierarchical exchange.

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If that makes sense. Yes, I think we need to be open to unexpected conversations and unexpected needs.

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You're right, it has to be like human to human conversation first before anything written on paper,

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because the most important thing is when I work with own culture and culture is very diverse.

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Traditionally, more and more region specific, that culture was region specific.

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Considering their natural resources, they had an geographical condition.

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So even like looking at the owner community, you can't just talk about them as one community.

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There are so many different sorts wishes and different backgrounds.

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This region specificity is really important as well. So anything written can be useful, but also become a barriers.

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And so then we're looking at trying to get oral sources represented in the museum to right.

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So not just focussing on written sources, do you have any artistic examples or any ideas of including oral sources within the museum space?

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Yes. I think what I really wish to see when I go to the museum is the people's voice,

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a strong voice and smell sound and like sensory stimulation or sensory information.

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I do interview a lot.

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We say in the community, and it is the voice that is so important to me because it includes feelings and the subtle nuances of their thoughts,

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which can open up a lot of understanding towards their culture.

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And also, the language like language is a really important aspect to me.

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If you go to the museum now, everything,

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it's written in English and I wish to understand different communities languages that would provide us different world view.

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So anything next spoken in their own language is also important.

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So speaking about different ways of displaying and representing objects in a museum, could you elaborate on the work you've been doing to represent?

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I know objects in different ways. Yes, we saw some issues in your own right.

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I wanted to think about ecology, of spoken words and feelings and how shared thoughts are such intangible and ephemeral

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and tangible things that generate thinking and future and understanding the past.

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So that's something I did through making a video work by recreating a pair of fish who I learnt to make my own community in Hokkaido.

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There's another video work I made called Hunt one Chang also video work following an own hunter who is my age,

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and he quit all of his nine to five job to focus on practising his tradition as Ian Hunter and I made the video work with him to

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share my process of embodying his very system and his belief system because I've read about own hunter in books and read folklore.

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I spoke with elders, but I never really understood it properly when they talk about the idea of Comrie,

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which is often translated as spiritual beings or gods.

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But this word commonly refers to like nature animals and you choose everything things get apart from humans.

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And I do understand what this monster hunt meant when he first come me, but I went to the mountains to watch him hunt,

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and I saw him praying to the fire gods and the way he engaged with trees or like plants.

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So, or the sky. And then I finally.

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No sense of understanding towards his firing system. It's really hard to recreate my embodiment of his various systems,

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but I fear that making that walk or video work can maybe offer one more step to understand different codes, different values.

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It's just an effort, and the attempt to try and do something is really important to me.

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There are a number of passages that stood out to us.

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One of them is, you know, the museum is committed to making its collections accessible to the widest possible audience,

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as detailed in the museum's access policy in the CDP. There's not a lot of attention given to access to ensuring equal access,

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especially in regards to indigenous stakeholder communities where a lot of these objects and artefacts are originally from.

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So I suppose the question is what do you envision to make museum collections more accessible to indigenous

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communities and what could be changed in order to better reflect the voices of indigenous communities?

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The equal ownership of indigenous communities to their own artefacts, to their own heritage, specifically regarding in the CDP?

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I think that is a very big question. But again, I go back to the idea of having a good conversation with the artists who make the artefacts,

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have good conversation with community and understand that ferry systems have more and more conversation about,

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I guess, critical theory around what it means to do field work, what it means to decolonise what those postcolonial routes means.

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Those conversations to happen a lot more.

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But in terms of the policies written, there are so many things, I guess,

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important things that to make sure to document humans the artefact in which region,

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because we see I arch [INAUDIBLE] up the Rivers Museum, most of them were documented.

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As I know, Hokkaido, Japan, that's all. So it's really hard to track back where this artefact came from.

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In Hokkaido, because there are so many communities, different tribes, different communities there,

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and we can just guess from looking at the pattern of the kimono or the little details suggests some information,

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but not enough to track down who made it. Also,

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I was thinking that maybe more collaboration with different institution can be helpful

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because I know in England there are two or three more institutions that hold own collections.

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And once I came across this photograph of people and one person in the photograph looked so familiar or it was from 100 years ago.

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And so I took the screenshot of the photo and sent it to my friend.

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And he said, Oh my God, it's my uncle.

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And you know, that is a very important finding, but that was a very unexpected encounter, like an intended encounter.

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But those things don't open up so much at the moment.

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A lot of information is so hidden or not exposed to the public.

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You have to really dig so much to find out what's there, so maybe have open access to the information.

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At the moment, you have to know what's the museum, have to find what you're looking for.

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You can't just encounter them unexpectedly and you go to a museum.

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But there's so much more in the story to write. Do you think that the current system of documentation forms a barrier to access to objects

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because it's very difficult to even know what's in the collections and adding to that?

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Have you had any other experiences or heard about experience from people like

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trouble or for whom it's difficult to get to know what's in the collections?

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I think the to begin with a lot of people I met in my own community, for example,

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I've never been to England, many of them, many of them have been Typekit members,

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but it's just a visit for a day or a visit for two days to like, check out the collection,

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faisant enough times or chunks for the community to understand the museum and the wonderful collection.

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It's not even a point of it. Don't have enough access to that, folks.

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You know, they don't even know the existence of this collection at the museum.

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So that could be maybe walked on. You know, when I was in Hokkaido, I spoke about your collection a lot to the people I was working with.

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They're all fascinated. They're all wants to see them. But first thing to say is that we can't go to England.

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We wish to see them, but we can't. That was always like the sadness we talk about.

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So somehow maybe the collection can go to Hokkaido or can be arranged to have extremism and invite the people there or something.

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Yeah, because I think the policy also states that the aim is to make sure that the collection is available to the widest possible public.

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But like hearing from this conversation,

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it sounds as if I knew people are not always included within this notion of the public, and that might be a problem.

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Yes. No. Single public How much can museums step outside of the museum?

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To engage with the community could be perhaps important and also invites those people to the museum.

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I know these things are happening already. But as far as I know with the owner community, it's not done very much so far.

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We are working on it, which of course, is the core of it.

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It's this has become much harder task, even for me.

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I still haven't seen the collection that isn't in the display yet.

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So somehow I don't know how.

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But if the access to the artefacts in the stores has become much easier, like I notice a list of artefacts on the database,

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but a lot of them don't have photos just like written quite general information.

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So that's not really helpful because if I want to see one thing culturally, I know how hard it is for the museum to like,

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bring it out or to go and have a look at it just having like more photographs with help.

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That's interesting. One of our I think actually a number of our other guests suggested digitisation as a way

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of improving access to collections where the museum has such big large collections.

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Yeah, I want to do as much as I can do on my end to find out what do you have and without knowing what you have, I can't ask for it.

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Publicly open database. Transparency is key.

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Collaboration is key. Access is key. Yes, definitely more conversations.

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Was there anything else that you wanted to add?

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Anything that sort of caught your eye when you were going through the policy that you wanted to talk about?

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I mean, the most important thing is to actually talk with the community,

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and I so much wish I was with this kind of guy who I've been working with for that since last year for about a year.

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So when I had a conversation with this guy and my ranka over Zoom when I was in Hokkaido,

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we asked Mrs. Comunque what kind of detail she thinks that should be included in the agreement.

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For instance, one thing she said was she mixed in the kimono and she was talking about if only Kimono wants to go into the museum,

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which you already have a part of your collection.

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She said Kimono was meant to be worn, and if her kimono was going into the collection,

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she wants to make sure if anyone wants to wear it, it should be worn and it should be open to her descendants like her family.

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If there wants to come to revise and see that like, they should have access to the kimono.

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And you know, those two things are something I couldn't say on behalf of them.

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So the key is to speak with the community who practise the tradition or sustain the foreign system.

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Really interesting.

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I think that also ties in with the idea of access to objects because you can say if you're not using the objects in a way it was meant to be used,

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are you really accessing the object that's a barrier to. So it's great that your highlights the that we really need to start this

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conversations in order to hear how we should represent the objects in the museum.

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Sir, anything else you want to convey?

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Oh, one thing I want is to talk about is to maybe have more research on how each collection was collected, for example.

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You know, unfortunately, a lot of like artefacts are spoken about through an idea of like they were stolen or taken and negatives.

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You know, it's often talked about negative ideas, and the focus is on the negative aspects of past.

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But I know that is an artefact. A woman called Isabella Abad, British woman who travelled extensively in Japan and spent some time with own community.

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I think around the end of 9th century I might be wrong, but around that time and she's.

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I talked about my community was quite compassionate approach, and people said she was a good person.

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So what she collected was a genuine gift. Whether it's true or not, that's what people talk now.

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So I think talking about both negative side of the history, but also understanding there are some positives too.

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It's also important to me because I want to highlight the effort this woman has made and to understand the community.

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Therefore, she had some gifts, and her approach suggests,

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I think it's really important to remember those effort this woman made and save for a wonderful artefact is preserved.

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While it could have been sold domestically, it was left in Japan, for example.

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It shouldn't be mixed reviews and negative history. So I want us to be careful about that because it's not to justify the dark history,

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but also like that shouldn't dismiss the positive things that happened as well.

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Yeah, I think that well reflects the complexities behind the history of the collections.

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And again, it highlights how much we need conversation in order to discover the real truth behind these objects and the stories behind these objects.

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All right, let's wrap it up there as we don't want to take too much of your time. So thank you very much for the lovely conversation.

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If the interview gets so long, editing gets really hard.

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Yes, that was the Rivers Museum's Matters of Policy podcast produced by the Seward House IT Boom,

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Mega Man, Alexis Barriere and Global Sound Music by Jack Forcett.

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Voiceover Baiju, who let a special thank you to Muranga Thomas from Oakland and the Knowledge Exchange.