Museums decolonizing with holistic intentionality: curatorial and descendant community processes

While decolonizing museum practices and policies have gained momentum in recent decades, much decolonizing work remains to reset museum relationships with Indigenous descendant communities. In this thesis, the persistent legacy of colonialism underpinning institutional practices and cultures of museums is investigated by focusing on an examination of curatorial practices. A comprehensive literature review of the history of colonialism and museums, and approaches curators and descendant communities have taken to decolonize museum practice, is first presented, followed by three cases studies of museums working to decolonize museum practice. A discussion is followed by a set of conclusions and recommendations, and a decolonizing model, The Wheel of Practice and Concepts, is proposed. It is concluded that while collaboration is important, decolonizing museums also involves institutionalizing decolonizing policies and practices, understanding colonization history from the perspective of descendant communities, and willingness to create sustainable partnerships that heal the past and change the future.