Reconnecting Source Communities with Museum Collections: A Minpaku Info Forum Museum Project

摘要

In April 2014, the National Museumof Ethnology, Japan (hereinafterMinpaku) started research aimed atcreating an ‘Info-Forum Museum forCultural Resources of the World’. Aspreviously reported by Kishigami (2017,Minpaku Anthropology Newsletter45:4-5), eighteen projects for databaseestablishment and improvement havealready been started, and some of themhave already been completed. Althoughthe objectives were separate for eachproject, the general aim of each projectwas similar. Each was aimed atimproving the documentation anddigitization of collections and accessfor using collected materials throughinteractive database systems. Theseefforts required academic and practicalcollaboration between researchers,museums, and members of the sourcecommunities (makers and users ofmaterials and their descendants). Here,I describe a project carried out fromJune 2014 to March 2018, look backon implementation of the project, anddiscusses the effectiveness of usingvideo to document artifacts and sourcecommunity responses. The project‘Documenting and Sharing Informationon Ethnological Materials: Workingwith Native American Tribes’ involvedabout 2,200 collected items belongingto the collections of fourteen museumsand a private collection in Japan, theUnited States, and the United Kingdom.The source community in this casewas the Hopi people (population: about12,000) in the southwestern part of theUnited States. Twenty-two individualshave participated in collections reviewto date.