Abstracts
Abstract
In 2008 two Dutch museums and two Greenland museums started a cooperative venture to share the photo collections of museums in the Netherlands. The photographs were taken from 1965 to 1986 by husband and wife Gerti and Noortje Nooter in Diilerilaaq, a village in the Sermilik Fjord (East Greenland). Gerti Nooter, then curator at the Museon in The Hague and at the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, was doing fieldwork in that changing hunting community and, as part of that research, took photographs and collected museum objects for both Dutch museums. The National Museum of Ethnology in particular has long had a working relationship with Greenland museums and the local Tunumiit community. Through the visual repatriation project Roots2Share, these photographs have been scanned and returned to the communities where they originated and where they can now be accessed locally. As a product of cross-cultural interactions, they depict ancestors of present-day Tunumiit and carry multiple meanings: ethnological or exotic ones for a Dutch public and historical or ancestral ones for the people of Diilerilaaq. Many stories have been told about them. This article explores the relationship between the photographs and Tunumiit knowledge, as well as issues of cultural heritage, ownership, and sharing of these images.
Résumé
En 2008 deux musées hollandais et deux musées groenlandais ont entamé un partenariat pour partager des collections photographiques conservées dans des musées des Pays-Bas. Ces photographies avaient été prises entre 1965 et 1986 par les époux Gerti et Noortje Nooter à Tiniteqilaaq, village situé dans le fjord de Sermilik, dans l’est du Groenland. Gerti Nooter, qui était alors conservateur du Musée de La Haye et du Musée National d’Ethnologie de Leiden, avait mené une recherche anthropologique dans cette communauté de chasseurs en pleine transformation. Il y avait pris des photographies et collecté des objets pour les deux musées des Pays-Bas. Le Musée national d’Ethnologie avait entretenu une longue collaboration avec les musées du Groenland ainsi qu’avec la communauté tunumiit locale. Le projet de rapatriement visuel Roots2Share fut lancé pour restituer ces photographies à leurs communautés d’origine et permettre à ces dernières d’y avoir accès. Ces photographies sont l’aboutissement d’interactions interculturelles; elles représentent les ancêtres des Tunumiit et véhiculent des sens multiples, à caractère ethnologique ou exotique pour un public hollandais, historique ou ancestral pour les gens de Diilerilaaq. Ces photographies ont suscité de multiples récits. Cet article explore la relation entre les photographies et le savoir des Tunumiit, ainsi que les questions de patrimoine culturel, de la propriété et du partage de ces images.
Appendices
Appendices
References
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