The museum of the imagination:curating against the colonial insistence on diminishing Indigeneity

• Main Author: O'Sullivan, Sandy
• Other Authors: Carlson, Bronwyn, Day, Madi, Kennedy, Tristan
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/2adee81a-fbb1-4f99-a956-962a350cef28; https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003271802-26; http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85169767099&partnerID=8YFLogxK

In delivering a future where Indigenous peoples determine and shape our own paths, what practices resist colonial trappings that narrow representations by creating instead an expansive recall of both past and present realities? This chapter draws on an examination of First Nations representation in museums to understand strategies, pathways and ongoing barriers to promoting the complexity of who Indigenous peoples are, and through a casting of Vizenor's thesis of ‘Indigenous survivance' (1999), who we always will be. While arriving at a conclusion around agency, the chapter concludes by proposing how other sites of cultural consumption—outside of the museum space—resist stereotype by proposing a shared, yet singular disruption that resists and expands.