In a quiet gallery in a Western museum, a sacred object from Zambia rests behind glass. It might be a clay mbusa figurine from a Bemba Chisungu initiation, once used by elder women to mould a girl into womanhood through secret teachings on social responsibility, becoming a woman and the physiology and psychology of being a woman. Or perhaps it is a Makishi mask, which for the Luvale and related peoples is not a costume but the living embodiment of an ancestor, whose power is activated within the secluded, sacred space of the mukanda male initiation camp. To the uninitiated, its purpose was to be unseen, its knowledge guarded. Today, it is exposed to the casual gaze of thousands, its story flattened by a small text panel.
This act of display, seemingly one of preservation and education, is in fact a profound dislocation. The journey of such objects from the firelight of a ritual enclosure to the sterile illumination of a museum vitrine is a story of colonial extraction and epistemic violence. The glass box is not a neutral frame; it is a colonial one that strips the object of its context, silences its power, and violates the very secrecy that gave it meaning.
Now, a growing decolonial movement is forcing a radical reckoning within these institutions. In a move that seems counterintuitive, museums across the world are beginning to cover their displays and empty their vitrines. They are doing so not to hide these objects, but to finally begin to see them for what they are, by acknowledging that for some sacred items, the most respectful and honest form of display is no display at all.
From living archive to silent artifact
In Zambian societies, as in many indigenous cultures, knowledge is not a static text to be read but an embodied experience transmitted through performance, ritual, and tangible teaching aids. The secrecy surrounding initiation rites was not about arbitrary exclusion; it was a crucial mechanism for preserving the integrity and potency of this knowledge. The learning process was personalised and experiential, designed to transform the initiate physically and socially. To make this knowledge openly accessible would be to risk its misinterpretation and desecration, diluting its power and rendering it ineffective. The mbusa emblems, for example, are meaningless without the accompanying songs, dances, and esoteric instruction from the banacimbusa (female elders). The awe and fear inspired by a Makishi ancestor depends on the strict separation between the initiated and the uninitiated. These objects were never meant for public consumption; their agency was contingent on their restricted context.
The colonial encounter violently disrupted this system. Missionaries and ethnographers, operating within the colonial project, collected these objects under a ’salvage’ paradigm, claiming to preserve cultures they were simultaneously working to eradicate or transform. This process, which scholars call ’musealisation’, is a form of death. The object is severed from its lifeblood—the community, the ritual, the secret knowledge—and is reborn as something else entirely: an ethnographic specimen, a scientific curiosity, or a work of ‘primitive’ art.
Once inside the museum, the object is subjected to a Western framework of knowledge that privileges the visual. Placed in a well-lit vitrine, it is offered up to the ‘empire of sight’, to be analysed for its form, material and aesthetic qualities. Its spiritual power and pedagogical function become secondary, often reduced to a brief, essentialising description on a label. The museum, through its very architecture and display techniques, asserts its authority to define the object, transforming it from an active agent in a living culture into a passive ‘dumb’ thing whose story is told for it.
The ethics of exposure
The central contradiction of displaying a secret-sacred object is that the act of exhibition fundamentally undermines its nature. To place an object whose power is derived from concealment into a transparent box is to perform a continuous act of desecration. It prioritises a Western public's perceived ‘right to know’ over the source community's right to control its own cultural and spiritual heritage. This is not education; it is the perpetuation of a colonial power dynamic where one culture's epistemology is imposed upon another's.
In recent years, a wave of decolonialising critique has forced museums to confront this uncomfortable history. This movement demands more than just repatriation or rewriting labels; it calls for a fundamental shift in museum practice, from a model of institutional authority to one of community collaboration and shared power. The question is no longer simply ‘What does this object mean?’ but ’Who has the right to decide and share its meaning?’
The power of the empty case
The most radical and, perhaps, most meaningful response has come from a growing number of institutions that are choosing to remove culturally sensitive items from public view. Spurred by updated regulations like the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in the United States, major museums like the American Museum of Natural History, Chicago's Field Museum, and Harvard's Peabody Museum have recently closed entire galleries or covered display cases containing sacred and funerary objects.
This is not an act of censorship or erasure. It is an act of listening. It is the museum finally acknowledging the limits of its own authority and respecting that some knowledge is not universal property. By removing an object from display with the consent of or at the request of its source community, the museum honours its true nature in a way that a thousand words on a label never could. The empty space in the vitrine becomes a powerful statement in itself, speaking to the object's sacredness, its history of removal, and the museum's commitment to a new, more ethical future.
Institutions like the Wellcome Collection and the Museum of Anthropology have formalised this approach, creating policies that commit them to working with source communities to determine the appropriate care, storage and display for culturally sensitive items, explicitly recognising that this may mean keeping them secret.
For the sacred Zambian objects held in Western collections, this offers a path forward. It suggests that their stories can be honoured not by subjecting them to the stripping gaze of the vitrine, but by acknowledging the sanctity of their origins. The future of these objects may not lie in better lighting or more detailed labels, but in the quiet of a secure storeroom, accessible only to those community members who hold the knowledge to engage with them correctly. It may mean returning them, not just to their country of origin, but to the communities who can reactivate their purpose. Or it may mean leaving the vitrine empty, a silent testament to the understanding that true respect sometimes means looking away.
Further Reading
On Zambian Initiation Rites and Indigenous Knowledge
Richards, Audrey I. Chisungu: A Girl's Initiation Ceremony Among the Bemba of Zambia (1956). The classic and most detailed ethnographic study of the Chisungu ceremony, providing a foundational understanding of the rituals and the use of sacred mbusa objects.
Shikanda, C. "Problematic museum heritage in a postcolonial context: The case of the Moto Moto Museum in Zambia" (2018). This article offers a critical look at the history of the Chisungu ceremony, its documentation, and the collection of its sacred objects by missionaries.
Rasing, Thera. "Bemba female initiation rites: their meaning and importance for Bemba women and their position in society" (2018). An analysis of the religious and cosmological significance of the mbusa and the verb 'to mould' (ukubumba) in the context of shaping a girl into a woman.
UNESCO. "Makishi masquerade." The official UNESCO entry details the cultural significance of the _Makishi_masquerade as an embodiment of ancestral spirits within the Mukanda initiation rite of the Luvale, Chokwe, Luchazi, and Mbunda peoples.
Kaya, H. and Seleti, Y. "African indigenous knowledge systems and relevance of higher education in South Africa" (2013). This paper explores the nature of African Indigenous Knowledge Systems (AIKS) as embodied, performance-based systems of knowledge transmission.
On the Colonial Encounter and the Creation of Museum Collections
Shikanda, C. "From chisungu to the museum: A historical ethnography..." (2018). This work examines the "epistemologically violent" process through which sacred objects were removed from their living contexts and transformed into ethnographic objects for colonial-era museums.
Mbewe, Mary. "Documenting the Mbusa Collection in the Moto Moto Museum in Zambia" (2016). Provides insight into the collection of mbusa objects by Father Jean Jacques Corbeil and discusses the secrecy integral to the objects' meaning, which is compromised by open access.
Arinze, Emmanuel N. "What do museums do to religious objects?" (2019). This article introduces the concept of 'musealisation' as a process that severs an object from its original function and context, effectively a form of cultural death.
On Museum Theory, Display, and Decolonisation
Casey, Val. "The Museum Effect." Explores how museums create meaning and value through the act of display, and how objects are often rendered "dumb" and passive once placed within the institutional frame.
Bruyneel, Kathryn. "Decolonizing the Museum Vitrine" (2021). A thesis that critiques the historical role of museums as colonial institutions and explores contemporary efforts to create more collaborative and democratic practices.
"Decolonizing the White Cube," International Journal of Student's Research (2020). Discusses how the Western museum's emphasis on visual analysis (the "empire of sight") privileges an aesthetic reading of objects over their cultural and spiritual function.
Macey, Emma. "Notes on Object Agency." Argues that an object's agency, or its power to affect people, is diluted or lost when it is removed from its original context and system of relations.
"Changing museum practices towards a community-centered approach," Medium (2015). Discusses how displaying an object in a museum inevitably charges it with a Western epistemology, even when source communities are consulted.
On Contemporary Museum Policies and Actions
"US museums cover Native American displays as revised federal regulations take effect," The Art Newspaper(January 29, 2024). Reports on the widespread actions taken by major US museums to cover displays or close galleries in response to updated NAGPRA regulations.
"New York museum to close halls featuring Native American artifacts," The Guardian (January 27, 2024).Details the American Museum of Natural History's decision to close major halls, with its president acknowledging that the displays are "vestiges of an era when museums such as ours did not respect the values, perspectives, and indeed shared humanity of Indigenous peoples."
Wellcome Collection. "Statement of intent regarding culturally sensitive items in our collections." An example of a formal institutional policy that commits to working with source communities to determine appropriate care, storage, and display for sacred and secret items.
Museum of Anthropology. "Management of Culturally Sensitive Material." A policy document that explicitly recognizes that the museum does not own the ritual or spiritual rights associated with objects and commits to discussing proper care and display with originating communities