Contestations of cultural memory at a disaster monument: the case of the Aceh Tsunami Museum in Indonesia.

In any post-disaster contexts, the affected societies will inevitably be involved in tensions between remembering and forgetting the past disaster experiences. They need to forget the disaster in order to return to their daily lives; at the same time, they also need to remember the disaster, which will usually involve canonization programs of the cultural memory of disaster. This study explores, how these programs, manifested in post-disaster monuments and commemorations, entail meaning contestations, through which the cultural interpretations of the disaster are formed and disputed. This paper uses the example of the Aceh Tsunami Museum in Indonesia as a part of a canonization program of the cultural memory of a tsunami. This museum was erected as a memorial to the success of the post tsunami reconstruction programs lead by the Indonesian government. While the monuments' managers have proposed certain narratives by which to remember the disaster, the visitors construct their interpretation of these through their daily practices. Hence, the shaping of the cultural memory of a disaster involves the social functions of the disaster monuments. For the locals, this museum has diverse functions: recreational, memorial, educational, and economic ones; however, the memory of the success of the post-tsunami reconstruction programs has been forgotten by the locals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]