How do cultural items return to Indigenous communities from overseas repositories where they have been stored for over a century? What are the logistics, politics, and cross-cultural expectations of such events? In 1860, Michi Saagiig women at Rice Lake, Ontario, met the young Prince of Wales, and gave him birchbark mokuks exquisitely decorated with porcupine quillwork—and signed with their names. Preserved in the Royal Collection Trust, the mokuks will come home for an extended loan in 2023. In this talk I will explore the politics, logistics and hopes embedded in the mokuks, their visit home, and their eventual return to England.
This seminar was originally scheduled for Michaelmas 2022.
Pitt Rivers Museum Research Seminar in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology, Hilary 2023
Fridays, 12pm-1.30pm (Weeks 1-8)
ONLINE via MS Teams
Convened by Charlotte Linton and Christopher Morton
