Museums and Source Communities
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MUSEUMS AND SOURCE COMMUNITIES The growth of collaboration between museums and source communities – the people from whom collections originate – is one of the most important developments in modern museum practice. This volume combines some of the most influential published research in this emerging field with newly commissioned essays on the issues, challenges and lessons involved. Focusing on museums in North America, the Pacific and the United Kingdom, the book highlights three areas which demonstrate the new developments most clearly: • The museum as field site or ‘contact zone’ – a place that source community members enter for purposes of consultation and collaboration. • Visual repatriation – the use of photography to return images of ancestors, historical knowledge and material heritage to source communities. • Exhibitions – case studies reveal the implications of cross-cultural and collaborative research for museums, and how such projects have challenged established attitudes and practices. As the first overview of this significant area, this collection will be essential reading for museum staff working with source communities, for community members involved with museum programmes, and for students and academics in museum studies and social anthropology. Laura Peers is Curator for the Americas Collections, Pitt Rivers Museum, Lecturer in the School of Anthropology, and Fellow, Linacre College, at the University of Oxford. She has published on First Nations cultural histories. Alison K. Brown is Research Manager (Human History) for Glasgow Museums and was formerly a researcher at the Pitt Rivers Museum and Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. She has worked with First Nations communities in western Canada, and has published on collecting histories and contemporary museum practice. MUSEUMS AND SOURCE COMMUNITIES A Routledge Reader Edited by Laura Peers and Alison K. Brown First published 2003 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2003 selection and editorial matter, Laura Peers and Alison K. Brown; individual essays, the contributors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Museums and source communities : a Routledge reader / edited by Laura Peers and Alison K. Brown p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Ethnographical museums and collections—Social aspects. 2. Museums – Acquisitions – Social aspects. I. Peers, Laura L. (Laura Lynn), 1963– II. Brown, Alison K. (Alison Kay), 1971– GN35.M88 2003 305.8′0074—dc21 2002037123 ISBN 0-203-98783-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0–415–28051–6 (hbk) ISBN 0–415–28052–4 (pbk) CONTENTS List of illustrations ix Notes on contributors xi Acknowledgements xv Introduction 1 LAURA PEERS and ALISON K. BROWN PART 1 Museums and contact work 17 Introduction 19 TRUDY NICKS 1Yup’ik elders in museums: fieldwork turned on its head 28 ANN FIENUP-RIORDAN 2The object in view: Aborigines, Melanesians, and museums 42 LISSANT BOLTON 3The Arts of the Sikh Kingdoms: collaborating with a community 55 EITHNE NIGHTINGALE and DEBORAH SWALLOW 4Integrating Native views into museum procedures: hope and practice at the National Museum of the American Indian 72 NANCY B. ROSOFF v CONTENTS PART 2 Talking visual histories 81 Introduction 83 ELIZABETH EDWARDS 5Taking the photographs home: the recovery of a Ma¯ori history 100 JUDITH BINNEY and GILLIAN CHAPLIN 6Looking to see: reflections on visual repatriation in the Purari Delta, Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea 111 JOSHUA A. BELL 7Remembering our namesakes: audience reactions to archival film of King Island, Alaska 123 DEANNA PANIATAAQ KINGSTON 8Snapshots on the dreaming: photographs of the past and present 136 JOHN E. STANTON PART 3 Community collaboration in exhibitions: toward a dialogic paradigm 153 Introduction 155 RUTH B. PHILLIPS 9How to decorate a house: the renegotiation of cultural representations at the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology 171 MICHAEL M. AMES 10 Curating African Worlds 181 ANTHONY SHELTON 11 Objects, agency and museums: continuing dialogues between the Torres Strait and Cambridge 194 ANITA HERLE 12 Transforming archaeology through practice: strategies for collaborative archaeology and the Community Archaeology Project at Quseir, Egypt 208 STEPHANIE MOSER, DARREN GLAZIER, JAMES E. PHILLIPS, LAMYA NASR EL NEMR, MOHAMMED SALEH MOUSA, RASCHA MOATTY NASR AIESH, SUSAN RICHARDSON, ANDREW CONNER and MICHAEL SEYMOUR vi CONTENTS 13 Glenbow’s Blackfoot Gallery: working towards co-existence 227 GERALD T. CONATY Afterword: beyond the frame 242 PAUL TAPSELL Bibliography 252 Index 274 vii FIGURES 1.1 Wassilie Berlin ‘hunting’ in Berlin 31 2.1 ‘The Wonder of It All’. Cartoon by Charles Barsotti, 1986 42 3.1 Bhangra dance performance by the Jugnu Bhangra group from Gravesend on the entrance steps of the Victoria & Albert Museum 56 5.1 Pinepine Te Rika, Auckland, 1916 101 5.2 Rua’s arrest, 2 April 1916. His eldest son Whatu is handcuffed to him 102 5.3 Hiona, Rua’s court house and meeting house, April 1908 103 5.4 The women dressed in white for Christmas day, 1908 104 5.5 The Levites, April 1908 105 5.6 The women under guard. Two policemen stand beside them, one with a drawn revolver in his hand 106 5.7 The police posing behind the tree stump. Tom Collins identified the three policemen in the marked inner portion 107 5.8 Whatu (left), Rua (with hands outstretched), and his second son Toko (right) who was shot by the police in the assault, waiting for the police on the marae 108 5.9 Bringing in the flowers. The women are Whakaataata, Matatu Mahia, Te Aue, Pinepine 109 5.10 Te Akakura and Putiputi, Rua’s daughters, at Rua’s house at Maai, 21 January 1978 109 6.1 Engaging with photographs in the Koriki Village of Kairimai, 2001 117 8.1 Val Takao Binder’s sculpture ‘Mia Mia Dwelling Place’ installed in the foyer of the Western Australian Museum 149 10.1 African Worlds exhibition development process 182 11.1 Islanders in museum storeroom recording information about baskets in the ‘Haddon’ collection 201 12.1 The logo for the Community Archaeology Project at Quseir 224 13.1 In the clan camp area there is a sense of the outdoors 235 14.1 Tauwhitu, Ohinemutu Village, Rotorua, c. 1900 243 ix CONTRIBUTORS Rascha Moatty Nasr Aeish is a part-time researcher for the Community Archaeology Project at Quseir and administrator for the Quseir Heritage Preservation Society. Michael M. Ames is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, was Director of the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology from 1974 to 1997, and Acting Director 2002–3. He received his PhD from Harvard University and has conducted research in South Asia, Canada and Australia. In 1998 he received the Order of Canada. Joshua A. Bell is a doctoral candidate in material anthropology and museum ethnography at Oxford University and has recently completed 19 months of fieldwork in the Purari Delta of Papua New Guinea. His interests include the anthropology of visual-material culture, museums and colonial cultures of collecting, the interface of history and anthropology, and the politics of representation in contemporary indigenous art. Judith Binney is Professor of History at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her books include Mihaia (with Gillian Chaplin and Craig Wallace); Nga¯Mo¯rehu(with Gillian Chaplin); and Redemption Songs: A Life of the Maori Leader Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki. She has been chairperson of the Australian Sesquicentennial Awards in Oral History since 1990. In 1997 she was awarded CNZM for services to historical research in New Zealand, and in 1998 was made Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Lissant Bolton is Curator of the Pacific and Australian collections at the British Museum. She has worked collaboratively with the Vanuatu Cultural Centre since 1989, as an advisor to the Women’s Culture Project. Her research focuses on both indigenous and introduced textiles, and on women’s knowledge and practice. Her book, Unfolding the Moon: Enacting Women’s Kastom in Vanuatu, was published in 2003. Alison K. Brown is Research Manager (Human History) at Glasgow Museums and was formerly a researcher at the Pitt Rivers Museum and Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. She has been involved in museum-based projects with several First Nations in western Canada and, with Laura Peers, is currently working on a photo- graphic history project with the Kainai Nation of southern Alberta. Gillian Chaplin has spent most of her working life in and around museums engaged principally in the public programmes arena. She has brought to this work a passion for the photographic image and a consciousness derived from being born into apartheid South xi CONTRIBUTORS Africa and growing up in New Zealand. She lives in Australia and is currently working as a consultant to museums of many types in the United States and Japan. Gerald T. Conaty is Senior Curator of Ethnology at the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Canada, Adjunct Professor at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College and Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary. Exhibits he has worked on include Nitsitapiisinni: Our Way of Life, The Fur Trade in Western Canada, Warriors: A Global Journey through Five Centuries, and Powerful Images: Portrayals of Native Americans.