I’m really
excited to teach my graduate seminar this term. We are focusing on 3
spectacular items of Indigenous heritage, with discussion sessions around
those, and working with two different communities to answer their questions
about the items we are examining. This should be fun: I am asking all 12
students to turn their keen eyes, minds, sharp pencils and cameras toward these
items. This is the first time I have linked student engagements with material
culture and community questions, but it seemed a really good way to answer some
research questions that came in from one community about one of the items we’ll
be looking at.
[And it's 12 students because that's all I can fit in the research room!]
We are
starting with Powhatan’s Mantle at the Ashmolean, which we will examine in its
case, but it is an ancient and powerful object to help us develop a material
and visual research strategy for the items we are looking at out of case, and
to begin to think with objects. This item came from Pocahantas’ father Powhatan
c.1630s, during the early diplomatic negotiations between English settlers and
Indigenous peoples on the east coast.
Then we’ll
go on to look at two items in the research room (ie not behind glass):
A hide
Plateau dress, collected by Sir George Simpson and his secretary Edward Hopkins
of the HBC in 1841 [PRM 1893.67.7]. Kalispel tribal member Annette Pierre has
been liaising with community members to compile their questions for our study
of this dress.
And
A woven
Chilkat apron, probably Tsimshian, possibly Tlingit [PRM 1884.56.82]. We know
nothing about the provenance of this apron, but it was in Pitt Rivers’ personal
collection by 1877. A version of this
apron was made by Dolores Churchill while she was studying with Cheryl Samuel,
and Dolores Churchill, and Dolores and her daughter Evelyn Vanderhoop are
kindly contributing questions and thoughts to our study.
 |
| PRM 1884.86.52 |
Both study
sessions will result in extensive documentary records, photographs and
sketches, and ‘mapped’ photo-shopped detailed images of the items (visual
condition reports) which will be made available publically, online as well as
through Indigenous community networks.
In between,
we’ll be discussing the changing meanings and roles of material and visual
culture across time and cultures, focusing on the social and political roles of
heritage items today as Indigenous societies strengthen distinct identities in
postcolonial contexts through re-engagements with material and visual heritage.
We’ll be thinking about issues of hybridity, cultural change and persistence,
heritage, postmemory and sensory engagements with heritage items in the legacy
of trauma, and Indigenous survivance.
Very glad
as always to have the excellent Giovanna Vitelli along for the course! It will
be really challenging, fun, and productive.
