Giving Space for Grandma: Digital Restitutionary Work of Indonesian Colonial Collections
The Dutch–Indonesia restitution policy on colonial collections remains colonial through sidelining the interests of source communities, while digitised records continue to reproduce colonial legacies through Eurocentric categories and inaccuracies.
In this Spark Session Made Naraya Sumaniaka presents his thesis work, in which he draws on focus group discussions with communities from Aceh, Bali, and Surabaya as well as experimental digital ethnography.
He finds that digital platforms function as knowledge entry points, transforming communities from passive recipients into active agents of intervention.
Such interventions work to address epistemic and historical injustices, even within persistent structural asymmetries.
To capture these dynamics, the thesis introduces “digital restitutionary work” as a conceptual framework for future research and practice on colonial collections within digital transformations.
