Living Cultures: Decolonising Cultural Spaces (Livestream)

masaai prm event

What happens when museums and Indigenous People work together to decolonise cultural spaces?

The Pitt Rivers Museum and InsightShare Network invite you to explore this process during a live-stream of discussion, film screenings and presentations with Maasai community leaders from Tanzania and Kenya.

The live-stream will be available from at 2.30pm on 7th February 2020 here. The live stream will take place from St Luke's Chapel, Oxford hosted by TORCH.

At this event we will showcase participatory films made by the Maasai collective Oltoilo Le Maa, focusing on activism for land rights and cultural preservation in Maasai territories and on their efforts to decolonise our own cultural institutions. We will explore why decolonising cultural institutions like museums is related to, and contributes to, the success of local struggles for land and cultural security. Reflecting on the outcomes of this most recent visit, we will imagine the future of our partnership and cultural and educational spaces.

Speakers will include Dr Laura Van Broekhoven (Director of Pitt Rivers Museum), Nick Lunch (Director, InsightShare) and delegates from Maasai communities in Kenya and Tanzania: Lemaron Ole Parit, Samwel Nangiria, Amos Karino Leuka, Yannick Ndoinyo, Juliana Naini Mashati, Evelyn Paraboy Kanei, James Meipuki Ole Pumbun.

Background to this event:

In January 2020 seven Maasai representatives from Kenya and Tanzania will be coming to Oxford. This visit follows on from a visit in 2018 and will focus on next steps of the conversation and guidance on the collections.

Living Cultures is a unique collaboration between the Pitt Rivers Museum, InsightShare and Maasai partners, working together to realign narratives, objects and their attributions and work towards descriptions of artefacts that showcase their contemporary significance and meaning as part of a living culture. It also includes conversations around future ways of working especially around artefacts considered to be sacred, those taken during colonial times or as part of colonial violence.

 

This event is part of the Humanities Cultural Programme.