Haida weaver Lisa Hageman Yahgujanaas visits ancestral collections in UK

I am so happy that the Origins and Futures Fund has been able to partner with the YVR Foundation this year to begin a bursary programme for visiting Indigenous researchers! Lisa Hageman Yahgujanaas has been the inaugural scholar.

Over the past week, Lisa Hageman, an accomplished Haida weaver specializing in Raven’s Tail weaving, has been able to learn from a range of ancestral Haida items in the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum and British Museum. Supported by the Origins and Futures Fund at the University of Oxford, which supports bursaries for Indigenous researchers to visit heritage items, and the YVR Foundation’s Masterpiece Study Program for Indigenous researchers from British Columbia and the Yukon, Lisa viewed both woven and carved items. 

Lisa Hageman Yahgujanaas with PRM staff member Nicholas Crowe examining naaxiin apron [PRM 1884.56.82], January 2018

Reflecting on the Pitt Rivers Museum part of the trip, Lisa said,

“This week, spent in intensive study of a wide range of ancestral pieces, from a naaxiin apron to my great-great-grandfather Charles Edenshaw’s engraved silver cane decoration, has been inspiring and laid the groundwork to begin expanding my current artistic practice into new areas. At the same time, it has strongly reminded me that the standard to which we contemporary artists must strive for is incredibly high.

Studying the naaxiin apron [PRM1884.56.82] in particular has reawakened in me the curiosity to explore the dying techniques that weavers employed. I am motivated to try dyeing with wolf moss to achieve the yellow colour on this dance apron. The wolf moss has been gifted to me by my great-aunt Dolores Churchill and I’ve been saving it for the right moment. The right time has now arrived.”

Dolores Churchill’s version of this apron has featured in many exhibitions and has become a very visible symbol of the determination to pass on naaxiin weaving techniques. Lisa worked with the apron for several days, and says: “This apron has particularly finely spun warp and weft. The weft looks to be the same as contemporary lace weight yarn; the only place that does not hold true are the two blue components which are a heavier weight.” She also noted that the apron did not have fur trim when it was made. 

Lisa credits the foundation blocks of her artistic practice to her early teachings by Dolores, Lisa's great grandmother Selina Peratrovich, cousins Holly Churchill and April Churchill and her tutelage under cousin Evelyn Vanderhoop as an adult.  The incredible teachings of Evelyn Vanderhoop and these other remarkable and gifted women allowed Lisa to forge her own path.  “I properly acknowledge and give my gratitude for the knowledge Evelyn and my Eagle relatives shared.  They allowed me to achieve my own successes with the tools they empowered me with.” Visiting with the ancestral pieces at the Pitt Rivers Museum has “further added to and strengthened my ongoing creative exploration. It has also reaffirmed that the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know.”

Working with these items across the week showed the complex, multi-layered research methodology that artists like Lisa bring to such work. With the objects in front of her, Lisa

engaged with her own experience, knowledge and practice. Museum staff also retrieved books and searched online to find comparative items in other collections. James Swanton’s ethnographic field notes were called up online to look up which families possessed certain crests. Conservators were brought in to the research space to consider whether strings used as riggings for masks had been re-spun by Haida women from commercial cotton fibre, and what kind of hair was used on one mask. 3D and infrared imaging were commissioned for several items, “so that when I’m not here I can continue to revisit the piece and continue to learn from it.”

In thinking about the week overall, and the experience of coming to Oxford to work with Haida ancestral treasures, Lisa noted, “historically, anthropologists, curators, museums and private collectors held Haida art in high esteem. To me it seems quite normal to have to come here: someone valued it enough to save it and thus we might learn from it and now these pieces might revisit the islands from which they originated.’

Lisa Hageman Yahgujanaas is from Masset, Haida Gwaii, British Columbia. She wove the Chief’s Robe for Chief Idansuu (James Hart) and her latest robe will be installed in the Canadian High Commission in Paris in spring 2018. Her website is at: http://www.ravenweaver.com

The Great Box goes home

Recently, I attended a potlatch on Haida Gwaii in which a respected activist, artist and political leader stepped into the clan chieftainship of the Ravens of Skedans. Although I have worked with Haida people since 1998 and made many trips to Haida Gwaii, I had never before had the opportunity of attending a potlatch. And while anthropology lecturers at Oxford have taught about “the potlatch” for over a century, based on anthropological literature, none had ever been invited to attend a potlatch as a witness. So I went to “honor the invitation,” as the Haida say; I went to show respect for the man who has become Chief Gidansta and his family; I went to renew relationships with many Haida people; and I went to see the new version of the Great Box, the Great Box’s child, being used in a potlatch, as it was originally meant to be used.

In anthropological terms, a potlatch is an event involving a change in status or identity: a wedding, a funeral, an adoption, becoming a chief. The host clan invites, feasts and presents gifts to guests, who witness the business conducted and not only provide collective support for it but are also responsible afterwards to witness and affirm the identity of the person(s) at the centre of the business. In my case, I affirm that Guujaaw is now Chief Gidansta, and I was with about a thousand people who saw it done, so it’s true. The host clan’s specific crests are displayed and affirmed, told through stories and dance and song, reminding people which crests belong to that clan. A totem pole, also with the clan’s specific crests, may be carved and raised to commemorate the event. History is re-told in art and dance, and added to.

I had been told that the Great Box’s child would feature in the potlatch in some way. As a curator, I see masterpiece-level Haida art sitting on shelves, held motionless in displays by elaborate supports, or wrapped in tissue paper in acid-free boxes. I’ve learned that when such items are performed by Haida people—old masks brought to the face and danced, ancient hats worn on the head, gambling sticks used to gamble with—something very special happens. This was initially a source of tension (as a curator, aren’t I supposed to keep things physically safe?), but I’ve had excellent Haida teachers, and have learned to treasure these magical moments when long-dormant treasures come to life. Those moments of cultural renewal and continuity are precisely what the 1884 revisions to the Indian Act that made the potlatch illegal, tried to kill. The historic Great Box was removed from Haida Gwaii, along with nearly every other masterpiece-level treasure, during the years of missionisation, assimilation policies, and residential schools. That’s how most of those ancestral treasures that I see sitting on shelves got to Oxford. Those rare, magical moments when items are danced, when they move, when they are lovingly held by Haida people, affirm that although hearts were often broken during those years, Haida culture was not. If it went quiet, like the masks on shelves, it has been woken again and is dancing.

What happens when a long-absent masterpiece comes home? And what, I wondered, would happen when it was used in a potlatch, mending part of the rupture in Haida cultural history that the collection of the historic box, its removal from Haida Gwaii, was part of?

The new box sat in front of the chiefs’ table, beside the podium and near an ancient clan box borrowed from the American Museum of Natural History in New York for the occasion. It was flanked by coppers, witnessing and framing the events, placing this potlatch within an ongoing history of potlatches by the host clan. Front and center in the action, the Great Box’s riveting design was echoed by the designs on the chief’s seat and the banner behind the chief’s table, taken from sibling boxes identified by Gwaai and Jaalen Edenshaw as having been made by the same artist. The meal was served to the chiefs by host clan members who made their way around the box, carrying plates and coffee pots and water jugs. People came up during lulls in the action and visited with chiefs, admired the boxes, took pictures; occasionally someone came and spent a long time going around every side of the box, mesmerized. At the pivotal moment in the ceremony, the new box was used as it was meant to be: as a box of treasures, from which the new chief’s regalia was unpacked by his family as they lovingly dressed him during that moment of transformation.

It was where the historic box was meant to be, if it had not been removed from Haida Gwaii. The new box sat, powerful and beautiful, between chiefs and coppers and dancers, hearing Haida language and song, watching the aunties visit, admiring the excellent pies, smelling seafood. At one point, a toddler being given her Haida name danced to her naming song in front of it, bouncing up and down in a room filled with love and happiness. The Great Box took it all in. There was no hole in the room where it should have been. The Great Box’s child has come home.

The Great Box Project through which the new box was made was funded, in part, by UK research funding, for which I have to monitor the impact of research on the public. Impact is defined as "the demonstrable contributions that excellent social and economic research makes to society and the economy, and its benefits to individuals, organisations and/or nations," which can include "influencing the development of policy, practice or service provision, shaping legislation, altering behaviour," and "capacity building through technical and personal skill development."  

While I don’t have any difficulty with the concept of accounting for the use of public funds, I do wonder how to describe the impact of the Great Box’s return in such terms. Where does “mending ruptures caused by colonial processes” fit in such discourse? How would we measure it? How does bringing such a masterpiece home and using it as it was intended to be used fit into such registers of language? How do we translate the concepts of healing and cultural strength into “benefits to individuals, organisations and/or nations”?

I am struggling to find the right words. Whether I find them or not, my respect goes out to the Ravens of Skedans and to Gidansta and his family for their generous hosting at this most extraordinary feast, and to artists Gwaai and Jaalen Edenshaw for creating such an extraordinary work. Haawa’a, haawa’a, haawa’a.

The new Great Box being admired at the potlatch, March 2017. Photographer: Laura Peers.

Impact is defined at: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/research/impact-toolkit/what-is-impact/ 

Please support the Origins and Futures bursary!

I am delighted to say that the University of Oxford has now launched a major campaign to create a scholarship for members of communities of origin to spend time in Oxford learning from heritage items which are in the Pitt Rivers Museum collections.

The Origins and Futures programme was inspired by the work of Gwaai Edenshaw and Jaalen Edenshaw in carving a new version of the Great Box several years ago. While the Museum hosts many visits annually from Indigenous people and other communities of origin for the collection, the Great Box project made people think about the potential of such visits for both communities and for the Museum, and solidified a desire by Museum staff to support such visits in a regular way.

As a result of the positive impact of this project, we are now establishing a new bursary programme, Origins and Futures. We want to welcome Indigenous artists, elders, and researchers from communities around the world to study and reconnect with unique cultural objects cared for by the Museum. Such visits strengthen traditional Indigenous knowledge and cultural identities while giving opportunities for Museum staff and visitors to learn more about the heritage and significance of the precious objects in the Museum’s collections.

 This is where we need your support.

 Each bursary for a visiting researcher or artist costs £8,000. This email is part of an appeal to raise at least £24,000 to pay for one artist or researcher to visit each year for three years. I would like to ask you to consider supporting the Origins and Futures programme. All donations will be used for the bursary, the Museum will donate administrative costs.


If you would like to know more about Origins and Futures and how you can support the Pitt Rivers Museum please contact me (laura.peers@prm.ox.ac.uk) or visit the Museum’s Support Us page.

This bursary is something I have hoped to set up since I arrived in Oxford in 1998. It acknowledges the very real need of Indigenous peoples for contact with ancestral items in order to strengthen culture in the present, and it is part of the gradual establishment of positive relations and postcolonial shifts in thinking that we are working toward. Someday it may come to pass that heritage items will be returned to communities; it may also be that they are co-managed. I have tried to work toward co-management and the establishment of positive relationships during my Curatorship, as the building blocks for the next phase in our shared history. The Origins and Futures programme is the next step. Please consider supporting.

Material culture, politics, museums, and a Royal visit to Haida Gwaii

Photograph: Richard Lam, Vancouver Sun (reposted from The Province).

I greatly admire the respectful and diplomatic way in which the Haida nation recently hosted the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. In accordance with ancient Haida protocol, Haida people showed tremendous respect to their honoured guests. Haida teams made facilities secure, prepared activities and decorations, registered and transported local guests, and paddled the royal couple to the beach at Kaay Llnagaay, the Haida Heritage Centre, where they were welcomed ashore by Chief Gaahlaay and Haida Nation president Peter Lantin. Their guests were treated to Haida song and dance, a local food feast, and given mantles woven in Naaxiin style and trimmed with sea otter fur. They were also given a copper, a symbol of family honour and wealth, made by Gwaliga Hart. Everywhere that day there was regalia with clan crests, Haida hats, masks, material symbols of Haida heritage and identity.

There were also T-shirts. Many of those button blankets were worn over bright blue T-shirts with the slogan NO LNG, a reference to Haida protests over pipelines and tankers threatening pristine marine environments. Lisa Hageman, who wove the exquisite Naaxiin mantles given to the Duke and Duchess, emphasized the Haida role as guardians of lands, forests and waters in her design of the mantles by adding blue and green to the traditional pattern ‘All Our Ancestors.’ Such quiet but visible and determined articulation of principles and issues has a special power in situations when the Crown is represented in Aboriginal communities. All of these statements were made respectfully in the presence of high-ranking guests within the unceded territory of Haida Gwaii. Perhaps the most powerful challenge made was the gift of the copper, which invites reflection on the honour of the family bearing it.

Museums don’t often collect T-shirts with Indigenous protest slogans. They have collected coppers, masks, button blankets, woven hats, but seldom make the connection between these and the T-shirts. Culture and identity are tied to environment. Environmental degradation through oil spills and LNG leaks and fracking means for peoples like the Haida a loss not only of food but of time spent on the land and then a loss of stories, of knowledge, of language, of how to make and use cultural items: a dramatic erosion of identity and culture. Museums need to acknowledge and support such links between contemporary political protest and heritage items in collections and in communities.

I offer tremendous respect to the matriarchs, hereditary chiefs, leaders, artists and many others who facilitated this extraordinary event. It was wonderful to see so many people in the photographs with whom Pitt Rivers Museum staff have been able to work over the years. We look forward to continuing to work together.

Council of the Haida Nation posts on the visit are at: https://haidanation.wordpress.com