Boxes of possibility--and frustration

[Republished from activehistory.ca, 4 March 2019]

Museum collections are legacies of imperial and colonial histories. The dynamics of those histories mean that much Indigenous material heritage from what is currently called Canada is not held in Canadian museums. Much of this material resides in overseas museums, especially in Britain. This geographic distance complicates the ability of Indigenous peoples to access ancestral items. As many Indigenous mentors have instructed myself and my museum colleagues, ancestral items are not objects; they are imbued with animate spirits or potential. Herman Yellow Old Woman (Siksika) expressed this by saying, "When we come here [to the museum] we pray, we talk to these things you call artefacts. they're live; it's a living thing" (p.104). Such items are witnesses to an narratives of Indigenous histories as experienced by community members. Contact with them facilitates healing by strengthening the transfer of knowledge across generations and by sparking the narration of community and family histories. Work with historic collections constitutes a special form of historical research with deep meanings in the present.

As curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum since 1998, I have explored ways to make collections accessible to Indigenous communities of origin. This has been part of a broader shift in UK curation, one dependent on external research grants: it costs about $5,000 to move one item from the UK to Canada due to specialist crating, insurance, air freight and courier costs. Museums struggle to meet operational expenses--which don't include loans, overseas research visits or repatriation costs--making external funding a necessity for access projects. 

Despite these challenges, UK museums have begun to embrace such work. Online access to photographs and information, 3D digitisation, and partnering in online portals to collections have all been part of this work. So has working with Indigenous delegations to UK museums and enhanced loans which include handling opportunities for community members. Such work has begun to improve access and, perhaps more importantly, to develop relationships between museums and Indigenous communities. 

The Great Box and its child, Pitt Rivers Museum, 2015. Photograph by Robert Rapoport, courtesy Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.

The Great Box Project

Access and repatriation take many forms. The PRM collections include the "Great Box," a nineteenth-century Haida bentwood box by an unknown artist who was one of the great masters of the strict rules of Haida formline. There is no information on how or where it was acquired, but it is known that the Great Box was in General Pitt Rivers' collection in England by 1877. During a Haida research delegation in 2009, artists were captivated by the box. They wanted to learn from this historic artist, but said they would need to have him in the room and to learn by making an exact replica. We found funding to do that in 2015. Carvers Gwaai Edenshaw and Jaalen Edenshaw made a blank box to exactly the same dimensions as the original, and brought it and their tools to Oxford, where the master artist challenged and taught them. They put their learning into the new box, deliberately replicating every carving stroke down to the direction, depth and angle of the original to understand the master artist's vision.

Figure 2 The Great Box's child, Gwaai Edenshaw and Jaalen Edenshaw with high school students, Master, 2015. Photograph by Geoff Horner.

Gwaai and Jaalen then took the Great Box's "child" back to Haida Gwaii. Within a week, it went to the high school in Master to give a lesson on classic Haida art. It inspired local artists when exhibited at Saahlinda Naay (the Haida Gwaii Museum) and has been used at the Bill Reid Gallery and the Museum of Vancouver for audiences to consider issues of reconciliation. Most poignantly, it has been used for its traditional purpose, in a potlatch on Haida Gwaii, as a box of treasures, holding a clan chief's regalia so he could be dressed by his matriarchs as he became chief.

Gwaai and Jaalen's goal for this project was to learn from a master carver ancestor, to take that knowledge home, and to bring a masterpiece back into use in the community. This project also sparked a search for sibling boxes in other museums, in an attempt to put a name to the artist. This has been a process of intense historical research: carvers' trained eyes and hands see things that historians' eyes can't. With further grants, they have located siblings at museums across North America.

Tracking down this material is time-consuming, visiting it is costly, museum records about provenance are frustratingly incomplete, and permission to touch boxes has not always been given. Gwaai and Jaalen are doing this work to restore something that collectors did not think worth noting: the name of the artist, his clan, his village, his history of apprenticeship and commissions. that information, and the artistic knowledge the historic artist is sharing with them, contributes to the mending of systems of knowledge and their transmission damaged by colonial processes.

The search for this artist also led to consideration of Haida-language terms for the elements of Haida art. Northwest Coast artists largely used English terms for the standard elements of this visual language: formline, ovoid, u-form. These were developed by artist and curator Bill Holm. Reclaiming Haida language terms for these elements--even developing new terms where none were recorded historically--is a powerful strategy for cultural sovereignty. Seeing the Great Box's child on display at the Museum of Vancouver's Haida Now! exhibition, with Gwaai's explanation of these new terms in view of the box, reminded me how potent acts of repatriation are--and how they support other elements of Indigenous culture and well-being. Shifting from "formline" to Sgaajuu, "storyline," to describe Haida art makes a world of difference. 

Figure 3 The Great Box's child emerging. Photograph by Robert Rapoport. Courtesy Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.

Numerous questions raised by this historical research need more attention. Why are so few academic historians using material evidence? Old Master produced large quantities of bentwood boxes across the late nineteenth century, supplying huge international demand: how does that align with broad narratives about Indigenous cultural loss or the strategies Indigenous people used to cope with assimilation pressures? What other narratives might it suggest? Nuanced histories of the Haida have been emerging from the exhibitions and detailed catalogues of the Haida Gwaii Museum and its curator Nika Collison: how can academic historians support such work? And why are Indigenous goals such as restoring the names of historic artists seldom shared by academic historians?

Repatriation Challenges

There were huge difficulties with this project, beyond the significant grantsmanship required to make it happen. Gwaai and Jaalen could only be in Oxford for 30 days, due to UK visa restrictions. They needed the historic box in the room with them, which violated museum protocols given the presence of sharp tools. As curator, I had to be in the room with them when the historic box was present. That was a privilege for me, and I hope they didn't see me as jailer. I had trouble shipping the new box both ways, because western red cedar is a restricted import to the UK; technically it should have been heat-treated. Describing it as furniture on the customs forms got around that, but we had to pay duties to get the new box back into Canada because it wasn't going to a museum. And while museum colleagues supported the artists' goals, they also had their own, and extracted knowledge, quotes and photographs from the artists to use in museum education programs, labels, and marketing. Museums gain a great deal of ethical capital from participation in such projects.

James Clifford notes that repatriation "establishes Indigenous control over cultural artefacts and thus the possibility of engaging with scientific research on something like equal terms" (Clifford 2004:18). Likewise, UNDRIP and the TRC include strong recommendations about access to Indigenous material heritage as an issue of Indigenous sovereignty. However, there is little sovereignty or equality in sight when you're dealing with customs regulations, visa restrictions, or museum protocols about opening cases so artists can touch. There is as yet no federal funding to support wider-scale communication about where collections are held, community research visits, or repatriation (although Bill C-391 may change that). Indigenous researchers fundraise to visit ancestors in museums. Repatriation costs are paid by the community, not the museum--a galling fact given how so many Indigenous items ended up in museums. 

Having academic historians ignore key sources for understanding the past isn't helping, either. By focusing so much on archival sources and excluding material ones, we are limiting the questions we even ask about the past. There is so much that Indigenous heritage collections can help us to understand--about the present as well as the past, and the ways these are entwined. Like the Great Box's child, there are many creative forms of access and repatriation emerging. All of them have incredible transformative power, for Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers alike.

I would like to acknowledge the scholarly and creative contributions of Gwaai Edenshaw and Jaalen Edenshaw to the Great Box project. 

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/ 

The Great Box Project wins a prize!

So excited to say that the Great Box Project has won an inaugural University of Oxford Vice Chancellor's Award for Public Engagement with Research! We won in the 'collaboration' category, as the project linked Haida people in designing the project and its outcomes.

Part of the work that museum anthropology does is linking collections and the communities that the collections came from—and showing to the public, and to one’s own institution, why such reconnections matter, how they benefit us all. It’s really nice to have some recognition from the University of Oxford that this kind of work does matter in a university context.

And it’s a jolly great project!

Professor Laura Peers wins Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Public Engagement with Research 2016

The Pitt Rivers Museum is delighted to announce that Professor Laura Peers has won a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Public Engagement with Research. These awards, inaugurated in early 2016 and announced on 1 July 2016, recognise and reward those who undertake high-quality public engagement with research and have contributed to building capacity in this area. Professor Peers won an award in the Project category with the outstanding Great Box project, a partnership project with the Haida Gwaii Museum and artists Jaalen Edenshaw and Gwaii Edenshaw. Further information about the award 

Visiting the Great Box at home

Haida Gwaii, July 2016. Photograph by Laura Peers.

When there are long-term, established relationships between museums and communities, grant-funded projects enable both partners to fulfil key goals, take things in new directions, and spend time together to renew and strengthen ties. The Great Box project is a wonderful example of this.

The Haida Nation and the Pitt Rivers Museum have worked together since 1998, and formalized their relationship in 2009 with the visit of a very large Haida delegation to PRM to work with all 301 Haida objects and establish permanent relationships around the collection for mutual benefit. In 2010, PRM returned an ancestral remain to Haida Gwaii. Artists have come to PRM each year to learn from the collections and to teach Museum staff. Educational programmes at PRM have benefited tremendously from input by Haida curators and artists over the years.

Gwaai and Jaalen asked to do the Great Box project to learn from the historic artist and take that knowledge home with the new version of the box. The new box was shipped home for completion in October 2014 and immediately sparked many conversations amongst artists. It was also used to teach box design to high school students, and a formal unveiling event was held for it at the Haida Gwaii Museum in March. It has been on display there since.

With support from the ESRC Knowledge Exchange Dialogues fund and Linacre College, I was able to visit the box at home in Haida Gwaii last month, and catch up with Jaalen, Gwaai and other Haida friends and colleagues. Jaalen and I did a presentation to community members in the inspiring Performance Space of the Kay Llnagaay HeritageCentre adjacent to the Haida Gwaii Museum. Many people made the hour-long drive from Masset to see the box again and to discuss what we had learned from the project.

Laura Peers (R) and Jaalen Edenshaw (at R by box) in discussion with community members about the
Great Box project, July 2015. Photograph by Geoff Horner.

I also worked with Nika Collison, curator of the Haida Gwaii Museum, to begin planning another series of projects that comes out of the Great Box: an exhibition and book about Haida traditions of box-making. Nika kindly asked many community members if they would talk to me about this and I spent much of my time on island having great discussions with extremely knowledgeable people, from senior artists to a man who makes bentwood box coffins for community members to a woman who brought box-making into a program for youth. Everyone was extremely supportive of taking the project into these directions, and we also talked about how to make the process most useful for Haida artists. We hope to find funding also to hold workshops associated with this next step in which people can view historic boxes, talk about what makes great box design, and actually make boxes. The project needs to fulfil community needs and goals to take the relationship forward. There are many ways such activities would also benefit both museums involved.

We also talked about the major implication to come ‘out of the box’ from the Great Box project: the need for more artists to have direct access to more historic treasures so that this scale and depth of knowledge repatriation can happen. That’s what I’ll talk about next.

The (new) Great Box, home on Haida Gwaii!

We have just uploaded a wonderful video showing the new Great Box teaching, with Gwaai and Jaalen, in the high school at Masset on Haida Gwaii. It is wonderful to see that we have managed to bridge the historical, geographical and political distance between Masset and the Pitt Rivers Museum,  and that the box is once more active within Haida life. You can watch the video here:

Great Box - Masset Workshops from Pitt Rivers Museum on Vimeo.

And there will be an unveiling of the Great Box on 7 March at the Haida Gwaii Museum: poster below.

I wish I could be at the unveiling! This is such an exciting project and I am just so proud to be part of it. Looking forward to catching up with the box later this spring, though.

We are all researchers

Research on the box. Photograph by Laura Peers

Academics often think of themselves as professional researchers. We have research skills and experience gained over decades of trawling archives, museum collections and other repositories for bits of information that are then carefully assessed and pieced together to understand the past, or the nature of things.

Indigenous community researchers do all of these things, with an additional impetus and care that comes of needing to know. Community members doing research on treaties, historical material culture, art, language and history are driven by the same passion to know as all the academic researchers I have met, but also don’t usually have the luxury of not knowing that academics have. Indigenous researchers are driven not just by artistic or historical curiosity, but by the need to strengthen identity and culture, to heal from colonialism, and to fight for sovereignty. Ignorance of the details of history and culture don’t get you anywhere in such struggles.

I’ve seen this over the years working with many Indigenous researchers, so it has made sense to me that after carving all day every days for the past three weeks, Gwaai and Jaalen go back to their rented apartment in Oxford in the evenings and search for information in books and online to explain the figures on the Great Box, the stories referred to, the authoritative sources for these stories, the provenance of this box, its relationship to other boxes. They have borrowed books, persuaded me to trawl the internet, emailed other people who might know, and raided online museum databases. In the process, they have identified several ‘sibling’ boxes, one of which was collected by Edmund Verney in the 1870s and is now in the British Museum. It seems to have come from the same artist because the front of the box shares several characteristic features with the PRM box.

On the last day of their trip to England, Gwaai and Jaalen are not taking a day off: they are going to London to see the Verney box, which British Museum staff are kindly removing from display for them. After their careful appraisal, informed by carvers’ eyes, we will be a bit closer to understanding the origins of the box they have worked with so closely for the past month.