Revisiting Colonial Legacies: Unprovenanced Ethnological Collections at the Livingstone and Moto Moto Museums in Zambia

In Zambia, museums have been predominantly viewed and even celebrated as institutions that preserve the nation's heritage for education and posterity. This conventional view of museums, which had long been inscribed in the National Museums Board of Zambia's mission, obscures the problematic colonial contexts and heritage on which most of the national museums in Zambia were founded. Both the Livingstone Museum, Southern Province, and the Moto Moto Museum, Northern Province, established during the colonial period in the 1930s and 1950s, respectively, were part of the colonial apparatus of governance. Despite possessing an extensive collection, they are inadequately represented in its inventories. This lack of adequate documentation, rooted in colonial-era collecting practices aimed at salvage ethnography, makes it difficult to properly understand many objects from both ethnological and historical perspectives. Focusing on the Livingstone and Moto Moto museums, this article explores these colonial contexts and the resultant histories of unprovenanced collections, shedding light on colonial legacies and the ongoing challenges of undoing these problematic foundations. This article employs a mixed methodological approach, drawing on archival research, oral histories, contemporary museological frameworks and provenance studies on selected ethnological collections in the museums. It demonstrates that collectors in colonial Zambia obscured the wider political, social and historical contexts under which they studied and collected. They inadequately documented objects using improper channels of acquisition, and Indigenous communities had almost no opportunity to evaluate or reinterpret the displayed or stored collections. By unravelling the colonial legacies that underpin these institutions and their collections, we open pathways for reimagining museums as spaces for inclusive and dialogical engagement with the past. Addressing the obscured histories of unprovenanced objects is not only an act of historical justice, but also a step towards transforming museums into institutions that genuinely reflect and serve the diverse communities they represent.