Developing a Common Language Around Cultural Appropriation

For more than 50 years, the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection (HLATC) has been a destination for those passionate about global textile traditions. And for the past five years, the collection has been the foundation of a curriculum that seeks to help those visitors understand the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. The collection serves a wide range of researchers and community members as well as scores of UW–Madison students.

Many of these students, especially those in art and design-related majors, turn to our collection for “design inspiration.” While students have likely learned how to responsibly quote and cite written materials, they do not necessarily know how to navigate the power dynamics inherent to the study of diverse cultural materials. Indeed, the CDMC staff realized that students lacked a framework for engaging with diverse cultural materials.

In an effort to support these students and faculty, the CDMC started what has become the “From Cultural Appropriation to Cultural Appreciation” curriculum in the 2018-2019 academic year. Over several years of iteration, pilots, and initial evaluation, hundreds of participants have experienced the curriculum–primarily through invited sessions within university classes and special workshops for community groups and professional colleagues. In 2023, we turned our focus to evaluating this pilot in preparation for sharing this curriculum more widely. The team leading this project is purposefully diverse, composed of Indigenous and non-Indigenous collaborators as well as UW faculty, staff, and graduate students. This work has been generously supported by the School of Human Ecology’s Equity and Justice Network and the Indigenous EcoWell Initiative.

Our cultural appropriation curriculum offers collection-based case studies in which participants practice engaging with the three key themes: ownership, power, and impact. As visitors look to our collection for inspiration, we want to facilitate meaningful, respectful, and transparent interactions with the objects we care for and the cultures and communities from which they originate.