Museum of Anthropology
Our Trips
How do Indigenous peoples enact their rights to their cultural belongings held in museums? How are they changing museums through activism, public discourse and evolving relationships?
In this program, students will tour selected cultural belongings and artworks by Indigenous artists, exploring themes of Indigenous self-determination and ethical dimensions of museum practice. Following the tour, students will visit the MOA Learning Lab and engage in a hands-on activity of the teacher’s choosing.
Teachers can choose either:
- An art making activity where students creatively imagine the future of museums, informed by the artist and knowledge keeper perspectives shared during the tour.
- An inquiry-based activity where students investigate and think critically about works from the touchable teaching collection.
Please note a required in-class activity must be completed prior to this program. See Teachers’ Notes for activity details.
To book this program, please submit a booking request.
How have Indigenous people used public events to claim agency over their representation during times of colonial oppression? How do our experiences, knowledge, and identities shape the way we interpret archival photographs?
In this program, students will visit To Be Seen, To Be Heard: First Nations in Public Spaces, 1900–1965, MOA’s feature exhibition exploring how First Nations people represented themselves as Indigenous in urban public spaces during the period of the potlatch prohibition and other forms of erasure in Canada. After visiting this multimedia exhibition, students will visit a selection of works in MOA’s core galleries to expand on the ideas of To Be Seen, To Be Heard. Finally, students will participate in a reflective art making activity using mixed media self-portraiture to explore themes of representation, agency, and futurity.
To book this program, please submit a booking request.
How can we learn from cultural belongings and artworks? What can these works reveal about the people connected to them?
In this program, students will enjoy a guided gallery tour spotlighting belongings and artworks that embody rich, diverse stories and histories. Students will be invited to make observations, inferences, and reflections about how these works inspire learning and inquiry. Following the tour, students will visit the MOA Learning Lab and engage in a hands-on activity of the teacher’s choosing.
Teachers can choose either:
- An artmaking activity where students reflect on how their personal belongings represent their own stories, histories and experiences.
- An object-based learning activity where students investigate belongings from the touchable teaching collection.
To book this program, please submit a booking request.
Visit the Laboratory of Archaeology (LOA) and be an archaeologist for a day! Discover the rich, 9,000-year history of the First Nations people who live along the lower Fraser River by learning about their ways of life, tools, and technologies. This program was designed in collaboration with archaeologists from the Laboratory of Archaeology at UBC. We also recognize with appreciation the Musqueam people whose knowledge guides the ongoing evolution of the program.
This program includes a hands-on introduction to cultural materials used long ago for hunting, fishing, wood-working and home life. Students will engage with real and replica belongings to determine how they were made, how they might have been used, and why they survived for thousands of years. After a brief introduction to First Nations’ use of the cedar tree and a rope-making demonstration, the program will conclude with each student making a cedar bracelet.
This program is part of an overall unit plan with prerequisite lessons that show the techniques used by archaeologists to find and identify belongings. The complete unit plan will be sent by email along with a booking confirmation.
To book this program, please submit a booking request.
