Tony Perez
I picked out two objects from the Pacific Northwest; one was a mask and the other was a basket. Interestingly enough, the mask was recorded with an uncertainty as to who it was created by. These items came from the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian Institution. The NMAI website said that the mask was attributed to the Tsimshian but was collected from the Kwakiutl people. However, it was purchased from the Fred Harvard Company aka the Fred Harvard Indian Department with the collection history being unknown. What is known however, is that the mask was purchased in British Columbia in western Canada and that it was created at around 1880. It was made from carving wood and painting what appear to be red, black and blue coloring with the ears and eyes having a light red color. Black was also used for the eyebrows and blue and red streaks were used around the eye as if to represent a mask on a mask so to speak. This raises a few questions I have that many might share. One question I might is what do we not know about the history of the mask’s purchase. Are there any ways to know which people the mask was purchased from? What was the significance of the mask? Was it meant to be a trade good? I would think that it was meant to be a trade good or a piece of art that was gifted. I also would like to know how many masks there are like it?
Now, let’s discuss the basket. Unlike the mask, the basket has a confirmed people that made it which was the Haida and was made by a woman named Isabel Rorick aka S’it Kwuns. The seller agent was a woman named Lisa Telford. Telford had also purchased several baskets like this before. The basket was brought from Hornby Island in British Columbia and was made in 2003. Hornby Island is part of the Vancouver Island Archipelago which is home to a few other Native American peoples besides the Haida. The basket was made by twining spruce roots and using vegetal dyes for the coloring. A few questions that I’d like to know about the basket is what was it’s original use. What kind of materials was it built to hold, if it was used to collect items? Was it used as an art piece? Just like with the masks, I also would like to know how long it took to build and where Rorick learned the techniques of building the basket.
Tony– Your items tell an incredible story about the many hands through which these sources passed. They also raise ethical concerns surrounding the acquisition of these items and how they could end up in places far away from where they were originally created. The mask is especially interesting because its collection history is suspiciously “unknown” yet listed as “purchased by MAI from the Fred Harvey Company (Indian arts dealers in the Southwest) in 1918.” To me, there are some serious transparency issues in how this item was acquired, and it may have been stolen (as are many of the items in museum collections). I’m also concerned about whether this mask should be publicly displayed on the museum’s site. “False face masks” were often worn in ceremonies and only by certain individuals. Additionally, some Native communities should not view other communities’ masks. I remember one time I was at the Field Museum in Chicago and they had a large display case of masks like this one, and one of the Native students in our group told the curator that they are not supposed to be on display. I think since then (about 2017) the Field Museum has renovated this exhibit and hopefully fixed the issue.
The basket also tells an interesting story and the questions that you posed would certainly guide additional research on the item.