The Toolkit

Reparative curation is an approach to managing cultural and historical collections that seeks to address historical injustices, colonial legacies, and systemic biases associated with those collections.

As part of this effort, ReConnect/ReCollect conducted a comprehensive inventory of the Philippine collections on campus, which involved uncovering unprocessed materials, identifying instances of harm across various levels of curation (from acquisition to utilization), and formulating recommendations for repair. These recommendations encompassed revisions to item-level descriptions, finding aids, and access systems, among other aspects.

Our project featured an iterative and inclusive approach to community engagement with U-M’s collections of Philippine materials

This included an ongoing initiative that welcomed participation from Filipino Americans in Michigan, Filipino American artists, and Philippine-based curators and Indigenous culture bearers. The structure for engagement varied. Our initiatives included single-day visits for local communities’ interaction with a selection of materials, three artists’ residencies that encouraged creative interpretations of our Philippine collections, workshops to explore knowledge repatriation and institutional partnerships with Filipino colleagues and Indigenous Peoples, and a visit to the Philippines to turn over copies of the collections to Indigenous communities. Through these engagements, we aimed to pilot programming that fostered meaningful connections between our collections and communities of Filipino descent.

Reparative Scholarship refers to a multidisciplinary and decolonial approach aimed at acknowledging historical injustices, addressing colonial legacies, and fostering a respectful and equitable engagement with the materials within the university’s collections.

This approach– which includes our research regarding the Philippine human remains in the collection as well as a K-12 curriculum and resource guide– recognizes the need to rectify past wrongs and establish new ethical protocols for the stewardship, representation, and access to these collections.