Happy Nice Mall

Made from wood, iron, plant fiber and animal nerves, the 10 models of men rowing a canoe are a beautiful object that will catch the attention of most viewers. But for the Haa’yuups, head of the Huupa’chesat-h First Nation’s Takiishtakamlthat-h House on Vancouver Island, Canada, it also has mystical power. A spirit canoe represents the undulation of invisible oars in the water—a sound that people in his community report hearing after purifying themselves by fasting and bathing.

When the Northwest Beach Hall at the American Museum of Natural History reopens May 13 after a five-year $19 million renovation, the previously undisclosed spirit canoe will be one of more than 1,000 works on display. . Organized by Haa’yuups and Peter Whiteley, Curator of North American ethnology at the museum, the redesigned exhibit expresses the perspectives of 10 nations whose cultures are on display: emphasizing the spiritual and functional purposes of objects for the people who made them, and incorporating testimonies from community representatives about the government’s suppression of their own cultures.

The Northwest Beach Hall was the first gallery to open at the museum. It was inaugurated in 1899 by Franz Boas, an anthropology giant conducting extensive fieldwork in the Pacific Northwest, and embodied the cutting-edge idea at the time. In other museums, especially at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, Indigenous people, “savages” who was supposed to be “civilized”.

In radical contrast, Boas presented non-Western works as the fruits of various advanced civilizations. There was no single culture in which all people progressed. He popularized the idea of ​​”cultural relativity” in which societies exist as parallel universes with the beliefs and behaviors that are the product of their environment. “It had a revolutionary quality,” said Whiteley. “Until then, ‘culture’ could not be pluralized. Boas wanted to put people and things in context.”

But yesterday’s revolution may seem retroactive. In the renovated hall, contextual labeling for cultural artifacts has been strengthened to depict the perspectives of the communities that created and used them in the voices of Indigenous people. For example, in a presentation of the Haida carvings there is a discussion about the End of Mourning Ceremony held to release the soul of the deceased a year or more after death. A sharp comment is added to this description: “When the missionaries came to our shores, they forced our Ancestors to adopt Western burial practices. Despite this, many of our traditions of death, mourning, and remembrance have survived and are still practiced.”

Despite these curatorial interventions, some critics argue that the idea of ​​keeping the masterpieces of colonial societies in an anthropological museum is outdated. Haa’yuups is one of them. “I still believe that material belongs to us and that its true value will not be given in any setting other than in our own Homes,” he said.

Since 1998, the museum has returned 1,850 objects of singular significance to Native Americans. It is guided by the Native American Graves Conservation and Repatriation Act of 1990. But communities are looking for more. The museum said this week that it is holding talks with representatives of Indigenous nations and is “following a limited return process as we explore various ways to maintain our relationship.”

Haa’yuups said he knew a large-scale restoration was unlikely to happen anytime soon, so he accepted the museum’s invitation to participate in the renovation project. Counselors from nine Indigenous nationalities were recruited.

“I wanted treasures to be richly contextualized and seen as the stolen wealth of our people,” Haa’yuups said. “I wanted to see every bit of the past in the shop windows filled with the words of the people who lived there. The most important thing we can do is to somehow highlight the various belief systems that exist on the Northwest Coast and highlight the uniqueness and similarity between them.”

Public institutions are increasingly responding to accusations of post-colonialism and racism. In January, the museum removed a bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt riding a horse from its front steps and was flanked by a bare-chested Indian and an African, both. As another gesture, it is in the planning stages to install a land acquisition plaque on the rotunda acknowledging that the building stood on land that once belonged to Lenape. (The Metropolitan Museum installed such a sign after adding its first sign a year ago. full-time curator of Native American art, Patricia Marroquin Norby.)

The physical changes made at the Northwest Coast Hall in collaboration with wHY architect Kulapat Yantrasast are more subtle. The transitions between eight bay windows and four corner galleries representing 10 nations were opened. “This is not a radical departure,” said Lauri Halderman, vice president of the exhibition. “It’s in the details.” The cavities, which were previously delimited on three sides, have been reconstructed with walkways that facilitate visitor circulation and reflect the porosity between these communities at the conceptual level.

“It’s fisher cultures that all depend on the same economy,” said Whiteley. “It’s unlike any other culture. It’s an established culture because of its abundance of fish.” (Typically, an established culture is agricultural, and communities that depend on hunting and fishing will migrate to pursue their prey.)

Different nations were interconnected in complex trade patterns. The performer in the Northwest Beach Hall is a 63-foot-long canoe hanging from the ceiling, which has been returned to this gallery after being displayed elsewhere in the museum for over 70 years. Carved from a single log of red cedar around 1878, it is the largest Pacific Northwest bunker kayak in existence. The hybrid origins are still controversial. Haida, whose lands included cedar forests, probably shaped it and decorated its bow and stern with patterns of eagles and killer whales. Later, the craft was bought by the Heiltsuk people, perhaps as a dowry, and decorated there with depictions of sea wolf and carved benches. In 1883 the canoe, one of the earliest pieces to come into the collection, was decorated for display with figures representing the Tlingits on their way to a potlatch ceremony in 1910. Colorful, yes, but wrong native people. They were removed in 2007.

Stunningly visible in the hall are the carved and sometimes painted wooden pylons, many of which were brought to the gallery during the previous renovation in 1910. 3 to 17 meters. The gallery also features headboards, woven baskets, feast dishes, and ceremonial curtains and panels.

A changing exhibition will showcase contemporary creations that expand artistic traditions; In the first comment, sneakers, skateboards and basketballs are among the prominent objects. “There are so many different ways to be an artist in the modern world, and we thought we needed to show some applied art,” Halderman said.

In the ongoing exploration process, representatives of Indigenous cultures reviewed items from the museum’s warehouses and found extraordinary treasures that were never open to the public. The display cases were redesigned to display these because the old ones were so shallow that they functioned to hold the best fishing rods. (Boas was fond of fishing hooks.) Along with the “spirited canoe,” a formerly disguised beauty is a finely woven conical hat from the late 18th or early 19th century, representing men in a semi-abstract style on a whaling boat.

One piece on display in the Northwest Beach Hall is a beaver canoe bow that is a replica of the original, and was repatriated in 1999 after a delegation of tribal elders recognized it among a group of objects held in the museum’s warehouse. Garfield George, head of the Deishú Hít or End of the Beaver Trail House, Raven part of the Deisheetaan clan of Angoon in Alaska was one of the Tlingit visitors at the time of the discovery.

In October 1882, the US Navy bombarded Angoon in a punitive act of punishment. “They gathered, chopped and burned all the canoes,” said George. However, one canoe, which was probably exposed at the time, survived. It was called ‘The Canoe That Saved Us,'” he continued. Just before the onset of winter, sailors using this canoe were able to gather timber to build housing and build new boats. “Then the hull of the canoe cracked and they burned it as if it were a human being.” “But they never mentioned what happened to the bow.”

No one knew if it still existed. But it was documented by centuries-old photographs.

Noticing his distinctive profile, the elders fell silent in revered awe. Since returning to Alaska, the bow has been displayed at dedication ceremonies of a new or renovated home. “We get it out in every potlatch,” said George. “It is on a piece of paper and appears before our guests. It’s one of the first things people see when they walk in. We say, ‘Our beaver bow will stabilize your canoe as you experience what you’re going through right now.’

With the ceremony held on May 4, representatives of different nationalities in their traditional clothes celebrated the Northwest Beach Hall. For some it is a bittersweet task. In the eyes of people whose animist religious beliefs impart strength and spirituality to rocks and trees as well as to people and animals, confining cultural artifacts in a museum is akin to incarceration.

Haa’yuups likens it to an orca exhibit at a marine theme park. “We don’t need killer whales in captivity, and we don’t need to display dance dresses and rattles in museums,” he said.

But he acknowledges that the legacy of Boas and his successors is complex. “He is without a doubt one of the greatest thinkers who brought people to where they are today.” “Boas was identifying people when he opened the exhibition and he was absolutely anti-racist. He argued that different cultural groups can feel the same emotions and experience what other cultures experience. Still, he thought it appropriate to steal something from the Northwest Coast and bring it for display. He was a great man and I have great respect for him. But he did the wrong things. He was human. I want to look at it aggressively.”