Toward a Critical Theory of Heritage

Abstract

This chapter locates heritage landscapes as central to ongoing debates and future contexts and offers insights and recommendations of how engagements with landscapes can include emancipatory discourse and/or be deployed in ways that mobilize agency. It suggests ways that heritage managers can move toward protecting the intellectual and property rights of Indigenous people in heritage initiatives that could include developing research protocols, in collaboration with Indigenous people that take on the political and historical contexts. Not only as a consideration of issues related to Indigenous heritage such as confidentiality, intellectual property rights, access, right of review, and ownership of data, but also as a way to bring in the controversial topics and concerns. The chapter suggests that to develop dialogue and expand the context for Indigenous knowledge in heritage and environmental management practices, scholars must restructure how we report our work and the laws and practices that guide investigations. This chapter argues that the field of critical heritage theory has much to offer as it moves away from a critique of shortcomings to instead provide recommendations and a new engagement with heritage landscapes that makes room for multiple understandings and brings in subjugated and stakeholder knowledge.