I am so happy to see the book
about the Blackfoot Shirts Project, Visiting with the Ancestors: Blackfoot
Shirts in Museum Spaces, finally available in material form!
It is available as a gorgeous
paperback, and as a FREE pdf download, from the University of Athabasca
press:
http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120249
Visiting
with the Ancestors
Blackfoot Shirts
in Museum Spaces
Laura Peers and
Alison K. Brown
In 2010, five
magnificent Blackfoot shirts, now in the collections of the University of
Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, were brought to Alberta to be exhibited at the
Glenbow Museum, in Calgary, and the Galt Museum, in Lethbridge. The shirts had
not returned to Blackfoot territory since 1841, when officers of the Hudson’s
Bay Company acquired them. The shirts were later transported to England, where
they had remained ever since.
Exhibiting the
shirts at the museums was however, only
one part of the project undertaken by
Laura Peers and Alison Brown. Guided by the Blackfoot, the project included a
process
of reconnection with these important heritage items. Prior to the
installation of the exhibits, groups of Blackfoot people—hundreds
altogether—participated in special handling sessions, in which they were able
to touch the shirts and examine them up close. Engaging with the shirts, some
of which are painted with mineral pigments and adorned with porcupine quillwork
and locks of human and horse hair, was a powerful experience for those who saw
and touched them. Stories, knowledge and memory came together, and many
participants described a powerful sense of connection with the spirits of the
ancestors who made and wore the shirts.
In the pages of
this beautifully illustrated volume is the story
of an effort to build a bridge
between museums and Indigenous communities, in hopes of establishing stronger,
more sustaining relationships between the two and spurring change in museum
policies. Negotiating the tension between a museum’s institutional protocol and
Blackfoot cultural protocol was challenging, but
the experience described both
by the authors and by Blackfoot contributors to the volume was transformative.
For Blackfoot people today, these shirts are a living presence, one that
evokes
a sense of continuity and inspires pride in Blackfoot cultural heritage.
