This past
term, graduate students in the University of Oxford seminar ‘Powerful Things’ (offered in the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography) acted as the eyes for
two different Indigenous communities, recording visual information and taking
notes on two different items of material heritage. In the first session, the
students examined and photographed and sketched a Plateau dress [1893.67.7] from
HBC officer Edward Hopkins’ collection, thought to have been acquired in 1841.
Two weeks later, the students did the same with a Chilkat apron [1884.56.82] that
was in General Pitt Rivers’ collection by 1877.
The idea
for these sessions came from members of the Kalispel community in western USA, who
had found information about the dress online and asked for images of the
address. As with many items in the Pitt Rivers Museum collection, the museum
had not yet photographed this important item. Normally I might have gone down to
the textile store and taken some photographs myself. As I knew I would be
teaching the seminar, however, I had the idea to ask all 12 students to observe,
photograph and record everything we could about the dress. Then I thought it
would be interesting to give the students the chance to observe and photograph
a second object made of very different materials. For each item, Indigenous community
members contributed questions about the object for the students to answer. This
contact between the communities and the students was really helpful for the
students in their learning.
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| Students in the 'Powerful Things' seminar in action |
Both
sessions were very successful. The students got to learn from important
historical teachers, and they also learned what a privilege it is to have
access to such collections. At the beginning of each session, I acknowledged and thanked our teacher and told the
students that it was our responsibility to provide as much useful information
to the communities of origin as possible because it was quite likely that most
members of those communities would never have the chance to see this object in
person. That is a regrettable truth about Indigenous collections in museums in
Britain.
The
students took this responsibility very seriously. In each session they produced
over 100 photographs and sketches, and tried to answer all the community
questions for each item. We have now uploaded images to a dropbox for each
community and will be putting them online as well.
This
process has taught me that it is possible for students to work as volunteers
for Indigenous communities and to provide some visual access to material
heritage held in overseas collections. I look forward to talking with members
of these two communities about how to make such images and information most
useful to them.
