From Kenya to Kendal: reconnecting communities through natural and social history collections

From Kenya to Kendal and back again: reconnecting communities through Kendal Museum’s natural and social history collection. Joe Rigby: University of Chester/ Kendal Museum This presentation draws on recent work carried out by the author in collaboration with Kendal Museum, in Cumbria, northwest England. One of the major donors to, and benefactors of, Kendal Museum in the 20th century was Colonel Edgar Garston Harrison, a big game hunter and soldier in the British colonial army. Harrison donated a large collection of hunting trophies to the museum, predominantly shot in eastern Africa at the turn of the 20th century, along with dozens of cases of taxidermy birds, preserved moths and butterflies, and a small number of cultural artefacts. Researching Harrison’s military and hunting activities revealed significant connections between Harrison’s collection and the dispossession of the Nandi people of western Kenya, including the assassination of the celebrated Nandi resistance leader Koitaleel Samoei. The author is now working with the museum, local council and representatives from the Nandi community to incorporate the history of Koitaleel Samoei and the Nandi resistance to British colonialism into collection interpretation and displays, and to bring communities in Cumbria and Nandi County together to collaboratively explore their connected histories. This includes the possible repatriation of three horned musical instruments currently in the museum’s care, previously recorded as ‘untraced finds’ but now identified as likely taken from Nandi by Harrison. The presentation will use this example to try to sketch some broader lessons for thinking about how working with natural and social history collections at smaller provincial museums like Kendal could help identify opportunities for cultural restitution and social justice education, and to bring communities together that were previously connected by colonialism but might now be unaware of their shared past.