Indigenous language use in museum spaces

Abstract

In the summer of 2020, two museums in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, simultaneously hosted art exhibitions by Indigenous artists. The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) hosted an exhibition of works by Shuvinai Ashoona, an Inuk artist part of the Dorset Fine Arts Co-operative, based in Kinngait, Nunavut. At the same time, the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) hosted an exhibition of the work of Kent Monkman, a Cree artist known for exploring themes of colonization and sexuality in his work. Each exhibition offered signage in an Indigenous language: in Inuktitut and Cree, respectively. Reflecting on the ways Inuktitut and Cree were used in these exhibitions has led us to write this review article, in which we draw on recent scholarship that addresses questions of language in museum spaces (Sönmez et al., 2020; Lazzeretti, 2016).