On April 17th, 2026, the UC Berkeley Institute of European Studies hosted a lecture by Arnoud Arps, Assistant Professor of Extended Cinema, Film Heritage and Memory at the University of Amsterdam and a Rubicon Visiting Assistant Professor of Comparative Media and Memory Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, entitled “Who Owns Intangible Cultural Heritage from a Shared Colonial Past? The Rijsttafel, Food Media, and the Dutch East Indies.” The event focused on the relationship between food, colonial memory, and cultural identity in the context of Dutch Indonesian history, examining how colonial legacies continue to shape modern understandings of heritage.
The lecture opened through an introduction to rijsttafel, an Indonesian Dutch dining tradition. Arps discussed what this concept looks like in practice across different countries, and importantly, who claims it as their own. He intentionally avoided giving a definitive answer, instead arguing that the uncertainty itself reveals the complicated nature of colonial memory. Rijsttafel developed during the Dutch colonial period in Indonesia, formerly known as the Dutch East Indies. Although today it is often associated closely with Indonesian cuisine, Professor Arps emphasized that rijsttafel itself was largely shaped by Dutch colonial elites who transformed Indonesian dishes into elaborate dining experiences for European audiences. Therefore, the dish simultaneously reflects both Indonesian culinary traditions and Dutch colonial influence. Arps highlighted that even though various Dutch communities view rijsttafel as part of their own cultural heritage, critics argue that this statement perpetuates colonialism, reminiscent of the unequal dynamics that were present in the colonial period. Referencing a visual counterpart to his lecture, Arps described the food as a lasting example of cultural appropriation, a tradition hindering decolonization through the preservation of colonial identity. Arps connected this concept to broader media, restaurants, and heritage organizations across the Netherlands that commonly present Indonesian food through nostalgic colonial imagery. Arps referenced newspaper articles, food websites, and public debates surrounding efforts to officially recognize rijsttafel traditions as Dutch intangible heritage. This concept has appeared more broadly across Europe as well as repeatedly in the Netherlands, citing kapsalon as a recent example.
To conclude the lecture, Arps highlighted the three “entangled forms of remembrance”: preserving the past, recovering the past, and transnational remembrance through shared heritage. These concepts demonstrate how food traditions can function simultaneously as historical preservation and as cultural negotiation. As a final thought, Arps stated that “rijsttafel is a legacy of colonialism that has become part of an Indonesian culinary odyssey,” connecting Indonesian and Dutch cultures, serving as an example that tradition cannot be separated from colonial history.