New project at the National Museums of World Culture, Sweden explores crowdsourcing to decolonize data
Thank you for speaking with us today! Can you tell us about your institution?
The national museums of world culture are responsible for the non-European collections in Sweden. Within this administration there are four museums: in Stockholm, the Museum for the Far East, the Museum for the Mediterranean and the Near East, and the Ethnographic Museum; and the World Culture Museum in Gothenburg.
What does your work focus on? And how did it develop?
Together, Sweden’s national museums for world culture and the University of Gothenburg lead a project entitled ‘Digital Repatriation of Cultural Heritage in the Global South’. This project focuses on the Swedish database for museum collections “Charlotte”especially on digital representations of objects originally belonging to the indigenous people of the Brazilian Amazon, particularly the Wai Wai.
Over the last few months, our goal has been to experiment with a tool to improve the decolonization of data, in terms of changing the balance between who produces knowledge and to whom. The Western idea of the archival and museological traditions that Swedish collections reflect can bring problems with incorrect or problematic categorization and the traces of racist beliefs. For example, the Carlotta database does not allow users to create new paths linking objects stored in Sweden to indigenous peoples and communities, to which the project aims to give a voice as the most important stakeholders. In the picture leading this post, you can see Eliane Waiwai telling the myth of cassava production through the objects. The objects were previously labeled by the function (produce cassava) but with Eliane’s input we understand their relevance to the story, a creation myth. The new context is not “merely functional” but places the objects in the history of the Waiwai people.
In collaboration with researchers from the University of Brasilia, the project team started a pilot project using an open source tool developed by them – Tainacan – which enables the creation of digital collections on the Internet, opening up new possibilities for dialogue and discussions about the power of data in terms of decolonizing collections.
What was the result – how can someone use it?
We worked on the report with the belief that our experience in Tainacan could encourage new ways of co-curating and re-categorizing cultural heritage, and an open dialogue through digital means. We hope that other institutions will be able to use the tool and test it on other collections, based on our findings.
What have you learned from this experience about crowdsourcing for cultural heritage?
We have learned that although much has been written about database decolonization, it is not easy to find practical examples. With Tainacan and the new plugins created by the team, it feels like we have a real opportunity to involve people through crowdsourcing. We needed a tool that can be used with poor internet, in poor areas, like the Amazon in this case.
How can crowdsourcing initiatives be designed to meet the needs of researchers?
In this case, it is a must. Without the involvement of researchers, we could never have the discussion within our institution, not only because of resources, but ideologically we needed ideas coming from outside.
What are your plans for the future of the project?
We plan to continue exploring the opportunities opened up in this process. We have created a prototype of a database but need to be tested by many actors. We are currently looking for funding sources and with that we hope to develop our pilot project in a more structured way.