The Digital Museum of the North offers easy access to ethnological museums' collections. Different user groups can access them according to their specific interests. While some may want to gain a general overview of the cultures and ethnic groups of the North, others will seek additional information about the objects at deeper levels. But above all, Indigenous communities can get here an overview and easy access to important parts of their cultural heritage scattered around the world. With their narratives about the objects, they are given an image and a voice with which they convey authentic knowledge and emotions about the objects to us. With great joy and dedication, they played a decisive role in the presentation of their objects. They also express their pride that the museums of the world show the richness of their culture in foreign countries – as well as with this website.
While the collection of the Siberian Cultural Foundation is already fully documented in this way, for other museums that have already joined this initiative, only first examples from their collections are shown, but these will be added to. The content of this website was created by team members who are either from Russia or have many years of research experience there, in co-production with indigenous communities of origin of the respective objects. This team included Erich Kasten, Stephan Dudeck (Foundation for Siberian Cultures), Dmitrij Oparin (Paris), Roza Laptander (Leeuwarden), Vera Solovyeva (Washington D.C.), Nadezhda Mamontova (Birmingham), Liliya and Mark Zdor (Fairbanks and Hamburg).
This website is based on the catalog “Sprechende Objekte – Ethnographica und ihre Erzählungen” (Talking Objects – Ethnographica and their Narratives), which is published at the beginning of 2025 and will soon be available in English and Russian as an electronic edition. Further topics related to the peoples of the North are explored on the websites Digital Humanities of the North and Ecological Knowledge of the North of the Kulturstiftung Sibirien.
