AIC 53rd Annual Meeting

Solely focusing on Western Care for an Ethnographic Collection can be detrimental for the Relatives’ Belongings housed therein. 

The oldest belongings in Native American ethnographic collections are meant to be in use. These belongings, collected during a time when Native people were transitioning to a sedentary and oppressive life on reservations, were often traded for Western supplies required for survival in a new settler-colonial world.  

Much thought and intention went into the making of these Relatives’ Belongings. Designs and color choices unique to the tribal nation were chosen specifically for the wearer. 

With intention and thought embedded in the materials, the connection between the maker, the wearer, and the land is made. As most Native people believe that they are part of the land and the Earth is their mother/grandmother, this connection is representative of that relationship, that kinship.

Traditional care most often includes smudging (using medicinal plants important to Native people and gathered directly from the land) and feeding (sharing food and nourishment at community gatherings with relatives and with the Relatives’ Belongings, symbolically). 

In an active collection, community member visits add to the spiritual and physical care of a collection. Community members, relatives, will often sit with, talk with, and cry with their Relatives’ Belongings in a collection. They are allowed to hold their Relatives’ Belongings without gloves as a barrier. This contact with the Belonging creates connection. 

We have a partnership between the anthropology, facilities, safety, and collections stewardship departments to practice traditional care, including smudging in collections storage and reviewing historical pesticide treatments of Relatives’ Belongings.

Community members assist the Science Museum of Minnesota with the care of their Relatives’ Belongings. By including community members in the museum’s stewardship efforts, this museum and their collections staff are putting in work towards reparative actions. The museum does not own these Relatives’ Belongings. By acknowledging this fact, and speaking it aloud, the museum, more specifically the staff, can find common ground with community members. Most Native people are governed by values that they strive to meet in their everyday lives. With humility being a commonly held virtue, staff members practicing this belief does a tiny amount of bridging and acknowledges the very colonial nature of collecting institutions like museums. Traditional care of an Ethnographic collection challenges Western ideas of ownership and can minutely encourage shifts in perspective within museum culture. 

Traditional care is about access and honoring kinship.