Beginning to Attune Our Ears

MONG ITS MANY ROLES, a museum is an important site of learning for students. This presents educators and learners with an opportunity to engage in a critical reading of texts that looks beyond the most evident narrative or storyline and asks questions about the voice that speaks through these texts. This paper aims to contribute to a pedagogy of voice that can be understood in the context of a historical or ethnographic museums. But how does a museum give voice to the people and objects represented in its exhibition, and how do visitors come to hear this voice? As this paper will attempt to show, a voice is imbued with contradictions and ambigu-ities when it is presented as a self-representing plurality of voices that belong to a historically marginalized group. A voice is more than the sound produced when speaking. A voice is more than the legacy of spoken words long after the speaker has gone. A voice is a product of broader social relations and cultural practices in which one is situated, and derives from historical and contemporary ways to thinking about and understanding the world. These social relations and cultural practices are conditions which both constitute and constrain a voice, limiting what it can say and how such things can be said. Similarly, the context in which a voice is situated influences how it is hear