Conclusion: Why Toxic Heritage Matters

Abstract

Critical perspectives have developed to reconfigure heritage as a tool for constructing a just future while heritage is historically founded with imperialism and settler colonialism. Toxic heritage stands, therefore, as a counternarrative to the denial and amnesia that often serve corporate and state interests, just as it has the potential to activate citizen awareness and advocacy. The stories of pollution, contamination, and their effects on people's health and livelihoods are particularly compelling when they engage those affected populations in participatory heritage strategies. Rankin et al. discuss how the authorising framework of heritage management can surface toxic harms to indigenous communities which have been hidden through centre/periphery dynamics of isolation. Fiske uses both tours and graphic narrative techniques more commonly associated with valourising heritage to reveal harmful pasts in the Ecuadorian Amazon, and Baptista's toxic tours similarly expose the intersections of unjust practice that have created Newark's sacrifice zone.