“Sensitive Material: A Preliminary Reconnaissance of the Spiritual, Sensorial and Legal Personality of Indigenous Artefacts.”
Principal Investigator:
David Howes.
Co-Investigators:
Sowparnika Balaswaminathan (Religions and Cultures), Mark Watson (Sociology and Anthropology), David Garneau (Visual Arts, University of Regina).
Collaborators:
Maureen Matthews (University of Manitoba), Peter Morin (Ontario College of Art and Design University), Kanako Uzawa (Hokkaido University). $66.000
Project description
The SENSING PERSONHOOD Project is a multi-phase research program. Its overarching aim is to trace the evolution of the notion of the person within the western tradition, with a particular focus on the ‘further elaboration’ (Mauss) of this category in recent decades in response to challenges from without as well as breaking developments within that tradition. For this initial phase of the project, entitled ‘Sensitive Material’, the focus is on a special class of objects – namely, Indigenous artefacts. Our objectives (or ‘research axes’) are:
• Axis 1) To examine a range of cases involving the production, animation and care of artefacts in their communities of origin and follow the transactions they enter into en route to their incorporation into ‘the art/culture system’ of their ‘destination culture’ (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998) – the Euroamerican museum world or private collection;
• Axis 2) To construct a Catalogue of uncommon curatorial practices and artistic interventions keyed to the sensing of Indigenous artefacts as other-than-human persons with their own agency; and,
• Axis 3) To assemble a Catalogue of uncommon legal precedents that have heralded, however hesitantly, the formulation of the new (and also very ancient and widespread) sensitive conception of thinghood.
This initial phase of the SENSING PERSONHOOD Project is aligned with the Canadian Museum Association’s (CMA) response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) Call to Action #67. In Moved to Action (2022), the CMA urged museums to facilitate Indigenous-led partnerships using UNDRIP to dismantle museum practices that perpetuate colonial harm (Cole and Harris 2022). It is also consistent with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s (SSHRC) position that ‘Indigenous research’ – into material culture, in the instant case – signifies a method rather than an area of study, and is otherwise grounded in recent advances in anthropological theory and practice – most notably, the anthropology of things/material culture (Tilley et al 2006; Henare et al 2007; Santos-Granero 2009), sensory museology (Howes 2014, 2022) and cross-cultural jurisprudence (Howes 2005, 2023). While the proposed research is primarily focussed on the Canadian scene, it is also comparative in scope through its links to two other projects. The first such project – directed by Mark Watson, orchestrated by Kanako Uzawa – is entitled ‘Reclaiming an Ainu voice in the Upoapkas [‘Our Exchange’] partnership: realizing an Indigenous Ainu response to the commitment of five North American museums to decolonize their Ainu collections’. The ‘Our Exchange’ project seeks to unite and give voice to a selection of diasporic Ainu artefacts, who currently make their home in diverse North American museums, in a single exhibition at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) and rekindle their relationship with contemporary Ainu Makers and curators. The second project, or pair of projects actually, consists of Sowparnika Balaswaminathan’s ongoing archival research into the ‘cultural biography of things’ in the Asian collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, with a particular emphasis on their affective traces; and, her ethnographic research on the production, animation and uptake in complex (not always licit) circuits of exchange of South Indian bronzes cast by the Vishwakarma community. Our endeavour, employing the methodology of ‘performative action research’ and ‘inter-cultural legal analysis’ will contribute substantially to decolonizing artefacts and their peoples and the advancement of the ‘new sensitive museology’.
This project will run from June 2024 to May 2026. It is generously funded by an Insight Development grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
