Objects of Distant Exchange: The Northwest Coast, Early America, and the Global Imagination

Zilberstein, Anya

doi:10.2307/25096732

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This is an exceptional, exaggerated and powerful icon of the power of a certain chief, a synecdoche, or index in miniature, of the chieftain who presumably presented it to Malaspina, a man engaged in extended trade negotiations with his visitors. The stakes were high; those groups with ready access to trading ports made a fortune acting as middlemen between European traders and the more distant tribes who could supply otter furs from their hunting territories (Zilberstein 2007).…”

Section: Figure Twomentioning

confidence: 99%

Miniature dissonance and the museum space: reconsidering communication through miniaturisation

Davy

2018

International Journal of Heritage Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

There are millions of decontextualized objects from diverse societies in classically designed museums, spaces largely developed and structured along Enlightenment academic principles. These institutions, as a core function, seriate the material culture of the peoples of the world and represent it in consumable packages to a broad audience. As institutions, they were often deliberately conceived as venues of "scientific" propaganda by which European dominion over other peoples of the world could be justified and promulgated (e.g. Errington, 1998; Davies 2000; Brown 2009). Efforts to decolonise museums, to recognise their harmful histories and develop a more ethical approach to curation are ongoing; they operate in conjunction with social movements which recognise that imposed legal and political systems are often weighted against colonised peoples and seek to redress this balance by acknowledging that the systems in place are fundamentally flawed, based on historical mutual misapprehensions of custom, law, economy and tradition (e.g. Pearce 1992; Sola 1997; Clerici 2002; Geismar 2013). One of the most significant theoretical constructs to have contributed to this movement is the concept of the contact zone. First posited by Mary Louise Pratt, a contact zone occurs when there is a clash or collaboration between distinct cultures struggling with 'asymmetrical relations of power' (1991, 34). The term was adapted explicitly for the museum space by James Clifford, and has led to a paradigmatic shift in the ways in which museums collaborate with indigenous viewpoints (Boast 2011). Clifford's examples were with Native American communities from the Northwest Coast, and he found that for community members visiting the museum space 'the collected objects are not primarily "art"', but rather 'aide-mémoires, occasions for the telling of stories and the singing of songs' (Clifford, 1999 [1997], 435-437). This has at times been considered a 'site of conflict' (Brown 2009, 145), in which indigenous priorities confront curatorial preoccupations in which 'collections. .. are for research or they are surely for nothing' (Keene 2005, 45), conditions in which noncurators can often feel overwhelmed; Haida artist Robert Davidson once recalled that 'When I first came to Vancouver, I met an incredible barrage of anthropologists. I regarded them as people who held the knowledge, and so I was afraid to say anything in front of them for fear of saying the wrong thing. I was intimidated' (Harris, 1992 [1966],

show abstract

Section: Figure Twomentioning

confidence: 99%

Miniature dissonance and the museum space: reconsidering communication through miniaturisation

Davy

2018

International Journal of Heritage Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Captive-Taking and Conventions of Encounters on the Northwest Coast, 1789-1810

Igler¹

2009

Southern California Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Captivity in a variety of forms frequently punctuated culture encounters in the early modern Pacific world. In few places was captivity more common than on the Northwest Coast, where a lively fur trade brought indigenous communities together with European and American traders. Between 1789 and 1792, the taking of captives and exchange of hostages was a strategy used to advantage by both native peoples and foreign ship crews. The captivity account of John Jewitt, 1803-1805, illustrates both the changing dynamics of the trade and of growing language vehicles of communication. The captivity accounts by both native and Russian chroniclers of the 1808-1810 Sv. Nikolai survivors demonstrate the complex motives and internal divisions among both elements. All of these cases draw attention to how many of the actors in the cultural contacts in the East Pacific Basin were "unfree," challenged in their status, and driven by competition in a short-lived market.

show abstract

Objects of Distant Exchange: The Northwest Coast, Early America, and the Global Imagination

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Miniature dissonance and the museum space: reconsidering communication through miniaturisation

Miniature dissonance and the museum space: reconsidering communication through miniaturisation

Captive-Taking and Conventions of Encounters on the Northwest Coast, 1789-1810

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About