What Was Before
Early practitioners of anthropology and ethnography include Haudenosaunee intellectuals Arthur C. Parker, J. N. B. Hewitt, Bertha "Birdie" Parker (Parker's daughter), and Dr. Oronhyatekha (Peter Martin). These individuals held intimate knowledge of Indigenous life and during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries they collected and documented ethnographic materials from their communities, including Six Nations of the Grand River and Akwesasne in Canada, and Cattaraugus and Tonawanda in the United States.[1] Much of this material and its related knowledge was collected for non-Indigenous institutions, including major repositories at the Victoria Museum (now the Canadian Museum of History), American Philosophical Society, Penn Museum, Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation (now the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian), and the New York State Museum, as a part of the “salvage anthropology” initiatives of these institutions. At the time, Western researchers were guided by the assumption that Indigenous peoples and their cultures would vanish and that it was the role of the museum to collect the remnants of these supposedly disappearing lives – through material culture, physical evidence (i.e., ancestral remains), photography, and other forms of linguistic and cultural information.
The participation of Haudenosaunee researchers in this endeavour, leads to questions of why were Indigenous peoples engaging in salvage anthropology at all? Did they see museums as a way to preserve culture or as a means of communicating their ongoing beliefs, cultures, and political systems to non-Indigenous audiences in a way that they would pay attention?
Although his career pre-dates the time period I will focus on, Arthur C. Parker was instrumental in collecting Seneca material culture and stories in the late nineteenth century. His work has been recently reviewed by Marge Bruchac in Savage Kin: Indigenous Informants and American Anthropologists and by Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh in Inheriting the Past: The Making of Arthur C. Parker and Indigenous Archeology. Parker, like many Indigenous peoples at the turn of the century, was very much living between two worlds, he collected material and ethnographic records from his community for the New York State Museum. However, Parker was also instrumental in directing funds to the Seneca Nation through the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, which employed local artisans to produce material for the Rochester Museum of Science.[2]
While both Bruchac and Colwell-Chanthaphonh examine the role played by Indigenous informants and practitioners of early anthropology Bruchac grounds her work in cultural morays providing a more complex and cautionary view of Parker and the complicated mediations between anthropology and Indigenous peoples. Parker’s actions and motivations were heavily influenced by assimilationist government policies and societal pressures and beliefs and it would take a new era of Haudenosaunee cultural practitioners influenced by ongoing political struggles and assertions of rights to self-determination to redirect Indigenous museology.[3]
This initial era of Indigenous-directed interpretation was influenced by assimilationist government policy that sought to disconnect Indigenous peoples from their cultures and lands. Laws such as the Gradual Civilization Act (1857), the Gradual Enfranchisement Act (1869) and the Indian Act (1876) in Canada; and the Indian Removal Act (1830), the General Allotment Act (Dawes Act) and the Indian Relocation Act in the United States imposed colonial systems of land allocation, education, identity and tribal recognition on Indigenous Nations across North America, including the Haudenosaunee. Despite the efforts of leaders like Chief Levi General (Deskaheh), who travelled to the League of Nations in Geneva in 1923 to assert Haudenosaunee sovereignty, and of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, who continued to assert connections to land, culture, and traditional forms of governance, many objects of cultural and political significance left Haudenosaunee communities through sale, gift and theft and were dispersed through museums and collections around the world.[4]
Continued changes in government policy in the post war era that would impact Indigenous approaches to museums include in the US, the Historic Sites Act (1935), American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978), National Historic Preservation Act (1966), American Indian Self Determination Act (1975), Archaeological Resource Protection Act (1979), Indian Arts and Crafts Act (1990) and the Native American Graves Protection Act (1990); and in Canada, the repeal of the so-called potlatch ban in the Indian Act (1951), The Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences (1951), Quebec Cultural Property Act (1972), and the Ontario Heritage Act (1975).
As a form of self-determination the history of Haudenosaunee museology mirrors the important transformations that occurred in the context of the 1960s and 70s as Indigenous leaders and activists asserted their rights through the Red Power movement, and joined the larger dialogue of the Civil Rights movement. Indigenous leaders called on Canada and the US to honour and uphold the inalienable rights of Indigenous peoples to culture and nationhood through various position papers and political actions.[5]
This connection between politics and culture, or between political activism and Indigenous cultural revitalization was highlighted by the Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo 1967. The pavilion was viewed by the Department of Indian Affairs as a way to highlight the success of their assimilationist policies, however thanks to the control and forcefulness of Indigenous participants it became a discussion of contemporary and historic lives of Indigenous peoples, a celebration of resourcefulness, and a commentary on the failed relationship of Canada and Indigenous nations. [6] The Pavilion, under the direction of Commissioner General Andrew Tanahokate Delisle (Mohawk, Kahnawake), and Deputy Commissioner Russ Moses (Delaware, Six Nations of the Grand River), challenged the narratives and methods that had been the standard for museums since the days of Arthur Parker. These approaches including Indigenous interpretative staff, community consultation in development of exhibitions, the importance of highlighting the success and resilience of Indigenous peoples as well as their struggles, critical discussions of the impact of Canadian policy and law on Indigenous peoples and the incorporation of contemporary artworks by Indigenous artists were a challenge to the status quo in the 1960s and have only become standard in many Canadian museums in the last ten years .[7] As the first major exhibition curated and interpreted by Indigenous peoples in Canada the Indians of Canada Pavilion has received a lot of scholarly attention. It served as a training grounds for some well known Indigenous artists and curators, including Norval Morrisseau and Tom Hill (who would later serve as the director of Woodland Cultural Center) and provided a model and for the growth of Indigenous curation and Haudenosaunee cultural centers.[8]
[1] Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Inheriting the Past: The Making of Arthur C. Parker and Indigenous Archeology (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2009); Michelle Hamilton, Collections and Objections: Aboriginal Material Culture in Southern Ontario (Kingston: McGill Queens University Press, 2010); Keith Jamieson and Michelle Hamilton, Dr. Oronhyateka: Security, Justice and Equality (Toronto: Dundurn, 2016); Theresa McCarthy, In Divided Unity:; and Susan M. Hill, The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2018).
[2] Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Inheriting the Past
Laurence M. Hauptman, “The Iroquois School of Art: Arthur C. Parker and the Seneca Arts Project 1935-1941,” New York History 60, no. July (1979): 253–312.
[3] Marge Bruchach, Savage Kin: Indigenous Informants and American Anthropologists (Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 2018). 55-71
[4] Ruth Phillips, Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native North American Art from the Northeast, 1700- 1900 (Kingston: McGill Queens University Press, 1999).
Susan M. Hill, The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee Land Tenure on the Grand River (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2018).
[5] Arthur Manuel, Unsettling Canada: A National Wake-Up Call (Toronto, ON: Between the Lines Press, 2016).
[6] Myra Rutherdale and Jim Miller, “It’s Our Country First Nations Participation in The Indians of Canada Pavilion at Expo ‘67,” Journal of Canadian Historical Association 17, no. 2 (2006), https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/jcha/2006-v17-n2-jcha1833/016594ar.pdf. 153-156
[7]Phillips, Museum Pieces, 32-31; Rutherdale and Miller, “It’s Our Country”); and
“Indians of Canada Pavilion Expo 67,” May 13, 1966, RG10, vol. 10678, file 43/15-2 PTA, Library and Archives Canada.
[8] Phillips, Museum Pieces, 36-39.
