The Homeward Project: Honoring Our Commitment to Indigenous Communities

ID: WMA2026_633

Track:

Museums across the world are confronting the responsibility to return Indigenous belongings and ancestors. This session shares how the Museum of Us is expanding its Cultural Resources team and developing institution-wide strategies to return all holdings to their homelands while strengthening relationships with Indigenous communities. Attendees will gain perspectives on relational repair, consent-based stewardship, and institutional transformation.

Session Information

Format: Regular session/panel (roundtable, single speaker, etc.)

Uniqueness: This session pushes museum professionals and those in related fields to consider action-based repair with Indigenous communities through the case study of the Museum of Us' newly launched, The Homeward Project. The panel will answer, how can healing happen between communities and a museum when all belongings in their collection are slated to be returned?

Objectives:

1. Audience members will reflect on their institutions' histories with and current standing with Indigenous communities, both domestically and internationally
2. Both small and large steps are important to creatively planning for a decolonial future
3. There are many institutions and colleagues working collaboratively towards repairing violences caused by museums in the past and even today

Engagement: Attendees will hear about a variety of examples of how to move forward with relational repair, consent-based stewardship, and institutional transformation.

Relationship to Theme:

Audience

Audiences: Curators/Scientists/Historians Development and Membership Officers Marketing & Communications (Including Social Media) Registrars, Collections Managers 

Professional Level: All levels 

Scalability: This session includes speakers from various departments and positions at the Museum of Us. The hope is that these speakers will show diverse organizations that steps towards correcting past wrongs can be done through both small and large steps. Folks will walk away knowing that through persistence, collaboration, and creative thinking, there are ways to plan for decolonial futures.

Participants