Pictures Bring Us Messages/ Sinaakssiiksi Aohtsimaahpihkookiyaawa

by Brown, Alison K.; Peers, Laura L.

• ISBN13: 9780802048912
• ISBN10: 0802048919
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-01-30
• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr

Summary

In 1925, Beatrice Blackwood of the University of Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum took thirty-three photographs of Kainai people on the Blood Indian Reserve in Alberta as part of an anthropological project. In 2001, staff from the museum took copies of these photographs back to the Kainai and worked with community members to try to gain a better understanding of Kainai perspectives on the images. 'Pictures Bring Us Messages' is about that process, about why museum professionals and archivists must work with such communities, and about some of the considerations that need to be addressed when doing so. Exploring the meanings that historic photographs have for source communities, Alison K. Brown, Laura Peers, and members of the Kainai Nation develop and demonstrates culturally appropriate ways of researching, curating, archiving, accessing, and otherwise using museum and archival collections. They describe the process of relationship building that has been crucial to the research and the current and future benefits of this new relationship. While based in Canada, the dynamics of the 'Pictures Bring Us Messages' project is relevant to indigenous peoples and heritage institutions around the world.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Foreword	ix
Narcisse Blood
Acknowledgments	xi
Project Participants	xv
Introduction	3	(10)
The Photographs and Their Contexts: Kainai History	13	(33)
Anthropological Contexts	46	(32)
Working Together	78	(30)
Reading the Photographs	108	(32)
The Past in the Present: Community Conclusions	140	(35)
Moving Forward: Institutional Implications	175	(20)
Conclusions	195	(8)
Statement of Consent	203	(2)
Appendix 1: Itinerary of Beatrice Blackwood's North American Fieldwork, 1924--7	205	(6)
Appendix 2: Beatrice Blackwood's Notations on Her Photographs with Kainai Identifications	211	(5)
Appendix 3: Protocol Agreement	216	(3)
Appendix 4: Kainai Reflections on Beatrice Blackwood's Diary	219	(26)
Notes	245	(12)
Bibliography	257	(16)
Index	273