Hey, white museum leaders! Here's what not to say when First Nations staff point out racism.

People tell me things. One of the things I hear too often from colleagues, friends and acquaintances in the museums sector is the wildly fragile responses that drop from the mouths of white museum leaders when the topic of racism comes up.

First of all, it should come up. Regardless of contemporary intentions, museum origins are steeped in colonial imperialism, racism and domination through narrative. Ideas about the cultural, intellectual and technological superiority of white settlers remains baked into the knowledge systems museums use to interpret and present the stories of every colonised place, including what is now known as Australia.

First Nations workers and other workers of the Global Majority—often called ‘people of colour’—don’t point out racist practices, language or situations because it’s fun.

It is not.

But too often, it’s necessary. These moments are bound to be uncomfortable for you, dear white museum leader. Now, imagine how hard it is for that staff member to be the one to do it. Again. And again. And every time the institution’s leadership changes.

In these moments, workers who point out the problem often are made to feel like they are the problem. Or worse, that the problem is theirs to solve.

It is not.

Listen | Pause | Reflect

And avoid the following responses when, not if, racist practices, language and situations get pointed out at your institution.

“How is that racist?”

Racism isn’t new. It is also not the job of Bla(c)k and other racialised people to explain it, over and over again. People have been writing, thinking and speaking about racism for centuries. There are thousands of books, peer-reviewed papers, documentaries, videos, graphic novels, poetry slams, cartoons, comics and more about racism’s roots, experiences and harms.

Racism and white supremacy exist as systems of dominance in all places that were colonised by western European powers. These systems benefit members of the dominant culture (read: white and white-adjacent folks) at the expense of colonised cultures and descendants of enslaved peoples around the world.
These systems are the water in which our societies and our institutions swim.

Don’t follow the cynical advice that was spread via sloganeering during the Voice campaign. If you don’t know, find out.

“You're so angry!”

Tone policing is just another way power undercuts critique. People who speak up are often labelled divisive, unreasonable or emotional. What you hear as frustration is more likely exhaustion from carrying colonial load.

If you haven’t been on the receiving end of racist acts, statements, systems and structures, you come to the party with a limited ability to see them for what they are. Conversely, when someone has experienced racism, discrimination and other racial violence, they know it when they see it. They see something you’ve had the luxury of ignoring.

Racial stress lives in the body and it has a cost. Over time, it can do real damage and show up as heart disease, depression, anxiety and thoughts of self-harm.

You’d be anxious, too if you had to put up with racism plus a workplace full of Devil’s advocates.

“It's just too uncomfortable.”

Fortunately, there’s a great technical phrase to cover this excuse:

Yeah, nah.

White settler comfort cannot be your priority, whether you’re presenting contested histories or looking at staff and board diversity. The longer institutions keep upholding this narrative, the longer racism, colonialism and white supremacy culture will thrive.

Learning is often uncomfortable, but worth it. The other, essential, side of truth-telling is truth-listening.

In the political economy of comfort, the price of settler comfort is Indigenous discomfort and dispossession.

“We hire/promote based on merit.”

Oh, really? So it’s never seemed odd to you that the vast majority of people most qualified to be executives and managers just happen to be white, middle-class and highly educated? And board appointments? Think about the proximity to political and commercial sector power someone must have to even be considered for a spot on a statutory board.

The familiar pale, stale, male board and management lineup hasn’t happened because Indigenous and other people of colour aren’t qualified for those jobs. Too often it’s because hiring and selection committees have unquestioned ideas about what “merit” looks like, how it talks and who it knows.

Think about how long it was legal for hiring practices to specifically exclude non-white applicants. Now think about the selection “preferences” that might still be lurking in the dusty corners of your institution.

How do these responses feel to First Nations and other workers of the Global Majority?

And deeply unsafe.

What white leaders need to be doing instead

If you hold a leadership position in a museum or other public institution, First Nations and other workers of the Global Majority need you to lead. This requires interior reflection on your own biases and external behaviour that demonstrates you have their backs and you take feedback sincerely. Lupe Poblano, equity trainer and consultant based in Oakland, California, offers sound advice:

ALL leaders in the organization need to develop a critical analysis on race, class, power, and privilege. White leaders (and yes, even those on the board) need to locate their own cultural whiteness and become aware of how their internalized superiority shows up and how it negatively impacts [Indigenous and other] POC inside their own organization. [...] Put bluntly, don’t seek to hire a few more [people of the Global Majority] and expect them to change you. You, leaders within the white dominant leadership structure, need to be willing to change you first.

Resources

The following is by no means a comprehensive catalogue of works to guide you through the process of building anti-racism muscles and practices, but it's a place to start. Sure, you'll stumble. But it is essential that you begin.

Writing to ground you in the WHY of anti-racism

• All about Dr Mary Graham - Kombumerri Elder, educator and philosopher. Dr Graham's writing "has played a vital role in bridging Aboriginal and Western worldviews, offering insights into ethics, governance, and ways of living that centre balance, reciprocity, and care for Country." A collection of articles, papers, webinars, and podcasts curated by The Commons Library.
• Black to the Future: Making the Case for Indigenist Health Humanities. Watego et al, 2021. An article about so much more than the Indigenous experience in the Australian medical system. Drawing on expertise from researchers in medicine, critical social science, journalism, philosophy, political science, law and critical race theory, the article illuminates a way forward toward "Indigenous health and wellbeing in its broadest sense, encompassing the historical, political, cultural, social, and economic conditions of Indigenous life worlds."
• Decolonizing Solidarity: Clare Land, 2015. This book club guide at the Commons Library offers a framework for reading and discussing Land's book and addressing barriers to genuine, anti-oppressive solidarity.
• 101 Links to Black Writers & Voices, compiled by Dr Sandy O'Sullivan.
• Apron Sorrow, Sovereign Tea: Natalie Harkin, 2025. Harkin engages her methodology of archival poetics to produce "an embodied reckoning with Aboriginal women’s domestic labour and servitude drawing from oral history and the State’s official record. It explores the complexity of Aboriginal women’s experiences and survival strategies, and intergenerational stories that span loss, love, sorrow, solidarity, resistance, and refusal."

To broaden your anti-racist & decolonial horizon

• An uncomfortable library of resources on museums, race, identity and curation assembled by Alice Procter, author of The Whole Picture: The colonial story of the art in our museums & why we need to talk about it (linked above).
• This bridge called my back: writings by radical women of color: Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, 2015 (1981)
• The collected works of bell hooks
• Complaint! Sara Ahmed, 2021. By pointing out a problem, you become a problem for the institution. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Pairs well with Ahmed's “The Nonperformativity of Antiracism”
• Another Day in the Colony: Chelsea Watego, 2021. A collection of truth-telling essays, straight out.
• Decolonize Museums: Shimrit Lee, 2022. Meticulous interrogation of museums’ colonial-imperial origins and their use as a technology of ongoing settler justifications for the eradication of colonised peoples and cultures. Excellent to read in tandem with The Brutish Museums by Dan Hicks.
• Museums and Wealth: The Politics of Contemporary art Collections: Nizan Shaked, 2022. From the introduction: “…this book shows public money for the arts serves private wealth accumulation and sustains the status quo, which is widely understood today as having been, and continuing to be, white supremacist. […] A broad constituency of creative, scholarly, and audience communities see the museum as ours and want to see it administered in ways that represent our open-ended vision of a just society, itself a work in progress.”
• The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence: The Care Collective, 2026 (2020). Calls for an acknowledgement of our interdependence and a rejection of neoliberal hyper-individualism. Offers ways of centring an ethics of care in economic, community and political life.
• “Anti-capitalist and decolonised cultural governance”: Sunitha Janamohanan, chapter in The Routledge Companion to Governance in the Arts World, 2025. I met Sunitha when she keynoted the November 2025 Arts & Health Leadership Symposium at Flinders University. A brilliant thinker. This chapter presents case studies in socially engaged arts practice and self-organised collectives in South East Asia to provoke broader ways of thinking about how cultural activity is organised and governed.