In the past years, museums in Europe have been slower than those in the Americas or in the Pacific to adopt attitudes associated with community-based research.
Only a few museums in Europe have developed long-term relationships with indigenous groups. On e may assume that collaborative projects between European museums and Indigenous communities have been less institutionalised due to geographical distance between the museums and many of the communities concerned whose artefacts are held in European colle ctions. My interest is, then to analyse the kinds of relationships that have emerged between European institutions and Saami museums.
For that, I will examine three main theoretical issues discussed in social anthropology: the concept of Indigeneity, th e politics of difference and the ownership of cultural property.
In my prospective PhD in Social Anthropology, I will look at partnerships between three Saami Museums and other European institutions. I will focus on Saami museums projects of drum identi fication, alongside the negotiation of loans and more permanent repatriations.
In Spring 2005, I will conduct a pre-fieldwork reconnaissance trip in Fenno-Scandinavia in order to observe the day-to-day activities of Saami museums involved in the identi fication of drums. I will then be able to arrange more precisely a fieldwork period for the academic year 2005-2006, in Norway, Sweden and Finland. An extensive period of six months in one of these Saami museums would enable me to undertake participant ob servation of the issues and activities at hand.
In addition, as my objective is to place Saami circumstances within a general indigenous context, during the 2005-2006 academic year, six months will be spent studying a collaborative project launched by a mainstream museum in Europe. At last, in July 2005 and 2006, I will attend the meetings on Indigenous Heritage Promotion and Legal Protection at the United Nation in Geneva led by the Saami council.