Object (to) Sanctity: The Politics of the Object- Gerald McMaster

McMaster begins his article by discussing how Western history has used book-burning to limit the power of the Other and control knowledge. The Canadian governement's policy of aggressive civilization also had a hand in the rapid modernization and loss of culture, history and religion of the indigenous people. Nineteenth and twentieth century saw the salvaging of Aboriginal artifacts in response to the panic that the Aboriginal cultures were dying/disappearing. The government set up reserves for the "Vanishing Indians" to protect them from the outside world's harmful influences. The natives in the reserves were forced to modernize into civilized modern beings, and were forced to break ties with their past.
As for Native American objects, Europeans looted/took them to preserve them, not knowing that they had committed the biggest misdemeanor towards the natives. Part of the governement's aggressive civilization of Native Americans involved declaring obsolete the use of sacred objects in rituals.
McMaster proposes that museums should take the object's identity into account and then form a narrative around it. Just as some museums have their identity defined by the items in them, museums that display Native American objects should redefine their identity with due respect to their historical context. They should understand the place of these objects, their use, how to handle them and how to display them. Curators must have this knowledge and they must share it with their museum staff, so that everybody is aware of the cultural significance of the objects. However, this is not the case in today's museums. Today's museums display these objects as commodities for the public to look at. The public feels that tese objects enter the museum as "failed metaphors" because they are no longer useful in tribal traditions. The museums aestheticize these objects and reinstill them with a meaning and new appeal.