Abd el-Gawad, Heba; (2025) Respect, Recognition, and Rematriation: An Indigenous Egyptian Perspective on Meaningful Public Discourse on the Middle East and North Africa. In: Gardner, Chelsea and Higgins, Sabrina C, (eds.) Ancient Pasts for Modern Audiences: Public Scholarship and the Mediterranean World. (pp. 57-73). Routledge: London, UK.

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Abstract

Whenever there are efforts to publicly disseminate knowledge regarding the ancient societies that once flourished in the modern geographic region of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), these activities can typically be described as selective engagement, rather than as efforts to operate as a means for restorative justice and a condition for meaningful collaboration with communities of descent. The disassociation of public discourse from the descendant communities is a legacy of an imposed ancestral and cultural segregation between the region's ancient societies and modern nations by Western Europeans who colonised the region. Moreover, the compliance of public scholarship to responsible and ethical methodologies is, usually, measured by the Global North's perception of ethics, rather than those of MENA communities themselves. In this respect, public scholarship on ancient MENA communities can be critiqued as Eurocentric, extractive, and exploitive. This chapter, grounded in my lived experience as an Indigenous Egyptian public heritage and museum researcher and curator, offers a critical reflection of public discourse on MENA histories. In it, I argue for the need to approach the region from a settler-colonial perspective and to acknowledge MENA communities’ rights to Indigeneity. Moreover, this chapter also serves as a call to action for scholars and practitioners who seek to produce meaningful public discourse on ancient cultures of previously colonised communities, specifically by urging them to: respect Indigenous consent; recognise the rights and positionality of these communities; and engage in the rematriation of Indigenous ways of being, seeing, and doing. Finally, I invite researchers and practitioners of public discourse to self-reflect on their responsibilities and the extent to which they are complicit with the ongoing colonialisation of the cultures they study.

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