Negotiating Indigenous participation and heritage at a multicultural museum event in Norway

Abstract

This article investigates how Indigenous participation and heritage are negotiated at a multicultural festival at the Norwegian Railway Museum. While such events respond to the call for meeting places fostering social inclusion and belonging, researchers within museology and festival research warn against promoting superficial and biased understandings of Indigeneity. Based on fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with festival organizers and Greenlandic contributors, we found that Indigenous participation was negotiated along two lines. First, the organizers and the Greenlanders shared enthusiasm for the festival’s inclusive vision, yet they experienced different levels of ownership. The organizers were in charge; one Greenlandic contributor took on an active role while others became more silent consultants. Second, the negotiations revealed contrasting perceptions of Indigeneity, ranging from the organizers’ traditional understanding to the Greenlanders’ ambivalence toward the term. We argue that for multicultural museum and festival events to succeed in being inclusive, they must adopt critical and reflective approaches to ownership, as well as more complex understandings of Indigenous participation and heritage.