Towards a decolonised archaeology : A case study of the national Museum of Namibia

Abstract

There is a need for museums and their collections to stay relevant and be responsive to pressing social issues such as indigenous rights. Museums and their collections are established for a variety of purposes. They are particularly meant to serve as recreational facilities, scholarly venues or educational resources, and promote civic pride or nationalistic endeavour. Museums should aim at engaging with communities, but some of them are lacking in this most important respect thus making them to compromise their significant role. The study aimed at finding course actions to decolonised museum collections specifically the archaeology collection at the National Museum of Namibia by encouraging greater collaboration with indigenous people, reconsidering foundational knowledge, and effective community engagement in museums. The dissertation thus critically discusses and reviews decolonisation with specific regard to museum collections. It further explains and discusses the general value of research done in the archaeological collection of the National Museum of Namibia and reviews the dominant theme(s) in the archaeological collection of the National Museum of Namibia. To address the research question posed for this study, I sent out questionaries and conducted open-ended interviews with a sample comprising 6 participants: 2 museum curators, 2 former curators and 2 museum officials. The data collected from the interviews were presented in narrative form. The data analysis revealed that the archaeology collections from the museums that were considered were established during colonial times and upheld largely Eurocentric worldviews and not the Afrocentric views.