Posts from the ‘For the Record’ Category

Thanks, Dad.

Below find the fifth in a series of guest posts offered in celebration on the occasion of our colleague and friend Daniel C. Swan’s retirement from the University of Oklahoma, where he has served with distinction as a Professor of Anthropology, Curator of Ethnology, and Interim Director of the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. Reflecting here on an aspect of Dan’s work and his personal impact is John Lukavic, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Native Arts at the Denver Art Museum. This series of guest posts has been organized in partnership with Michael Paul Jordan. –Jason Baird Jackson

Thanks, Dad.

By John Lukavic

Each year in mid-June I send two Father’s Day messages: one to my own father and one to Dan Swan. Even before Dan and I met professionally, he and I shared a bond through common friends and relations back in New York where we both were raised. While I was a graduate student just a few years into my doctoral program in the mid-2000s, Dan arrived at (or rather, returned to) the University of Oklahoma as curator of ethnology and professor of anthropology and immediately agreed to serve as chair of my graduate committee. It seemed that fate finally brought us together.

Dan loves to tell stories like any father does (ask him about his old friend, a machine gun, and a bar somewhere in Mexico). I cannot count how many times he told Mike Jordan and me about the tasks his own advisor, John Moore, assigned to him while in graduate school: he had to babysit Moore’s kids while Moore was duck hunting; he had to help carry loads of wood so Moore could calculate how much labor was required to do certain tasks—as anthropologists do. But these were just great stories to me—myths and legends of adversity and triumph. My experiences as a graduate student were very different from Dan’s experience because Dan was there to support ME. He babysat MY kids. He read them books and took the time to be part of their lives. He was there through challenging times always to lend support and compassion.

“Doing” is central to Dan’s way of teaching. He understands that experience comes from opportunities and he is always generous with sharing his own opportunities with others. During our time together at OU Dan invited me to co-curate an exhibition of pottery and baskets at the Sam Nobel Museum. He guided me through the entire process from beginning to end. He helped me learn by doing. Way too often new curators are thrown into the fire and asked to navigate such a process without help or mentorship. I cannot express how valuable this was as a young professional. He shared his experiences and opportunities with me which provided a foundation on which I have built my career.

In terms of exhibitions and museum work, I learned from Dan the importance of relationships, responsibility, and respect. He instilled in me a strong belief that my first responsibility is to the artists and communities with whom I work, and the work I do in communities requires building strong relationships and trust. As a non-Indigenous curator who works with Indigenous arts, artists, and communities I embrace this responsibility—the feeling of “walking on egg shells” in everything I do—because I want individuals and communities to hold me responsible. Trust is earned by actions taken and must be renewed and maintained constantly. There is no taking a day off or doing what is easy because no one is looking. Dan instilled in me integrity in both my professional and personal life and, like any good son, I don’t want to let dad down.

All students love a pop quiz, do they not? Well as one of Dan’s students, I can tell you quizzes are frequent and not ever when you expect them. Years ago Dan invited Mike Jordan and me to accompany him to the Ilonska dance in Hominy, OK. We were going to see Osage people he has spent a lifetime getting to know and working with. A lot was on the line for him because he was bringing two students into a part of his life, and his reputation was on the line. Mike and I showed up to Dan’s house, grabbed our chairs out of the car and Dan just smiled. “You two pass,” he said. Bringing your own chair to a dance is like wearing pants and shoes. It is just something you do. Dan was testing us on such a basic thing before he let us get in his car to head up to Hominy. We had to earn his trust by our actions—something that I remind myself of constantly. Once he trusted us we learned so much—important things, such as where to get the best cream pie in Oklahoma and the Okie ritual of standing outside to watch a tornado approach. Typical things a dad teaches his sons.

In 2018 Dan flew to Denver, Colorado to attend an exhibition opening of a show I curated. Hundreds of people came to that opening and dozens of journalists came from all over to cover it. But, it was Dan’s words “I’m so proud of you” that will stay with me always. Professors teach, mentors guide, and fathers care. I mean really care. Fathers also give their kids a hard time every now and then—but it’s done with love. They teach life lessons as much as anything else because, at the end of the day, we are all just humans trying to navigate this path we call life.

Congratulations, Dan, on your retirement, successful career, all the scholarship you have put out into the world, all the lives you have touched, and all the relationships you have developed and maintained. You have given me so much and touched my life in so many ways. My family will always have an extra bed, hot pot of coffee, and cream pie waiting for you when you come to visit.

Thanks, Dad.

John Lukavic (left) and Dan C. Swan (right) at the opening of the exhibition “Jeffrey Gibson: Like A Hammer” at the Denver Art Museum in May 2018.

My Apprenticeship with Dan

Below find the fourth of a series of guest posts offered in celebration on the occasion of our colleague and friend Daniel C. Swan’s retirement from the University of Oklahoma, where he has served with distinction as a Professor of Anthropology, Curator of Ethnology, and Interim Director of the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. Reflecting here on an aspect of Dan’s work and his personal impact is Michael Paul Jordan, Associate Professor of Ethnology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at Texas Tech University. With me, he has co-organizied this series of guest posts. –Jason Baird Jackson

My Apprenticeship with Dan

by Michael Paul Jordan

I must admit that I approached the writing of this blog post with a great deal of trepidation. How does one distill a relationship into a piece of prose? You see, as an anthropologist, I have accrued debts, which I will never be able to fully repay. I owe a debt to the individuals, especially the many elders, who have shared their knowledge with me. I owe a debt to the communities that have welcomed me into their midst. And, I owe a tremendous debt to Daniel C. Swan. Understanding that whatever I wrote would fall short of capturing not only the profound influence Dan has had on my life, but also how much his mentorship and friendship mean to me, I decided to press on.

As a scholar who has devoted my career to studying expressive culture, I have an affinity for the master-apprentice model. I marvel at the Traditional Arts Indiana Apprenticeship Program, which pairs accomplished folk artists with eager students, facilitating the transmission of knowledge and skills to the next generation. If you look at the biographies of the artists, including the many Native American artists, who have been recognized as Heritage Fellows by the National Endowment for the Arts, you will see that many have been honored not only for their mastery of the mediums and genres in which they work but also for their efforts in perpetuating these artistic traditions. I count myself incredibly fortunate to have learned my craft from Dan Swan. At its best, graduate education resembles the master-apprentice model and I believe this is especially true when it comes to learning how to conduct ethnographic fieldwork.

I want to describe my own apprenticeship as a doctoral student at the University of Oklahoma and the lessons Dan taught me. Dan served as the chair of my dissertation committee. However, that official title cannot fully convey the influence and impact that he has had on my life. Over the past thirteen years, Dan has served as an incredible mentor and has become a dear friend.

Looking back, we can sometimes pinpoint the precise moment when a new chapter in our lives unfolded. A conversation with Dan in his office at the Sam Noble Museum marks such a moment in my own life. It was 2007 and Dan had just arrived at the University of Oklahoma. He had offered me a position as graduate research assistant, working with the museum’s ethnology department. He had also agreed to oversee an independent study course focusing on material culture studies. We were meeting to discuss the position and to hammer out a reading list. Much to my surprise, Dan didn’t usher me out of his office after thirty minutes. Hours passed and we kept talking. Dan’s enthusiasm was contagious. Here was someone who shared my interests. It was long after 5pm when we finally wrapped up. I left excited about the projects that I would be assisting with at the museum and eager to dive into the literature that we had discussed. This was exactly how I had hoped graduate school would be. I could hardly contain myself.

When I arrived home, hours later than my wife had expected, she could immediately see the change in my demeanor. My conversation with Dan had left me energized. This would not be the last time that Dan and I got carried away talking and lost track of time. In fact, that has become something of a running joke between my wife and I. It also would not be the last time that I emerged from a conversation with Dan feeling more optimistic, more confident, and more enthused than beforehand. There would be many such conversations. They occurred over lunch at places like Jump’s in Fairfax, Oklahoma or in the car driving to events in southwest Oklahoma. Such conversations have shaped who I am.

Shortly after Dan had agreed to chair my dissertation committee, we embarked on a series of projects that would have a profound effect on my understanding of what it means to be an ethnographer. The Brooklyn Museum had asked Dan to write a chapter on tipis and the warrior tradition for the catalog that would accompany the exhibit Tipis: Heritage of the Great Plains. He was kind enough to offer me a chance to coauthor the essay. We decided that we wanted to discuss the Kiowa Black Leggings Society’s (KBLWS) tipi, which had been painted by Dixon Palmer, a Kiowa WWII veteran. The tipi was inspired by the nineteenth century Kiowa chief Dohasan’s distinctive Tipi with Battle Pictures, which featured depictions of Kiowa warriors’ martial accomplishments. When Dixon painted the society’s tipi in 1974, he included battle scenes inspired by Kiowa veterans’ service in WWII, including paratroopers, Sherman tanks, and bombers.

During our interview with Dixon Palmer and his nephew Lyndreth Palmer, Commander of the KBLWS, we learned that the society had commissioned the painting of a new tipi to mark the 50th anniversary of the society’s revival. Subsequently, we received permission to film and document the painting of the new tipi.

At that time, the Sam Noble Museum was developing the exhibit One Hundred Summers: A Kiowa Calendar Record, which focused on a recently restored set of drawings created by the Kiowa artist Silver Horn to record 100 years of Kiowa history. Dan envisioned incorporating a series of short videos into the exhibit to highlight contemporary tribal members efforts to preserve their history. Footage of the painting of the new KBLWS tipi, which would depict Kiowa veterans’ service from the nineteenth century to the present, would enable us to discuss the ongoing relationship between art and historical memory in the Kiowa community.

Over the course of the project, we made multiple visits to Anadarko to document the progress of the painting. Dan and I interviewed the artists, Sherman Chaddlesone and Jeff Yellowhair, as well as Commander Lyndreth Palmer. On one of our visits, Commander Palmer asked Dan if the museum would be willing to film the society’s upcoming ceremonial. The Society does not allow filming of its ceremonies, so this request reflected the trust that had been established as we worked on the tipi documentary. Commander Palmer made it clear that the KBLWS would retain control of the footage and hold the copyright of the finished film.

Dan agreed and, in the process, he taught me an important lesson about relinquishing control and sharing ethnographic authority. At its core, Dan’s decision was about reciprocity and about honoring relationships. Commander Palmer and the KBLWS had supported our efforts, permitting us to document the painting of the Battle Tipi. Now, they were asking for Dan’s help. Would the museum support a community led initiative? Would it allocate resources for a project that was not tied directly to its own programming and exhibition goals? Dan, Mike McCarty, and I spent October 10 and 11, 2008 filming the society’s ceremonial. The museum would go on to produce a six-DVD box set for the KBLWS, featuring nine hours of footage.

Working on the exhibit, I also learned an important lesson about integrity and honoring one’s commitments to community members. As I noted, when we started working on the One Hundred Summers exhibit, we intended to create a series of videos highlighting community members’ grassroot efforts to preserve Kiowa history. Early on, Kiowa elder Florene Whitehorse-Taylor expressed her interest in documenting information regarding her ancestor, Chief Dohasan, who had led the tribe from 1833-1866. This seemed like the perfect fit, as Dohasan featured prominently in several events documented in the Silver Horn calendar.

As the opening of the exhibit grew closer, the curatorial team decided to focus exclusively on the painting of the Battle Tipi. While the museum’s plans had changed, Dan was adamant that we would make good on our commitment to Florene Whitehorse-Taylor and her family. Consequently, the museum produced Dohasan’s Legacy, a two DVD compilation of oral history interviews created exclusively for the descendants.

During these projects, Dan imparted lessons that continue to inform and guide my own work with Native American communities. These include lessons about the importance of relationships and of reciprocity. The project also taught me much about collaboration. In the years since the exhibit, Dan and I have spent time reflecting on the project and the lessons that we learned. We have even written about those lessons in the hopes that they might inform broader debates regarding museum-community collaborations.

Dan has done more than anyone else to shape my view of anthropology and my understanding of my role and ethical responsibilities as an ethnographer. By his example, he has challenged me to look for ways in which I can address the needs of the Indigenous communities in my own work. While Dan is retiring, I am confident that he is note done teaching. He still has lessons to impart and many of us, myself included, still have much to learn from him.

Dan and I standing outside the Forbidden City in Beijing, China. In 2019, Dan and I participated in the Seventh Forum on China-U.S. Folklore and Intangible Cultural Heritage, co-sponsored by the American Folklore Society and China Folklore Society. The conference theme was “Collaborative Work in Museum Folklore and Heritage Studies” and Dan’s presentation focused, in part, on the museum-community collaborations discussed in this post. Photograph by Dr. Kristin Otto

You Got Kitty Bombed!

Below find the third of a series of guest posts offered in celebration on the occasion of our colleague and friend Daniel C. Swan’s retirement from the University of Oklahoma, where he has served with distinction as a Professor of Anthropology, Curator of Ethnology, and Interim Director of the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. Reflecting here on an aspect of Dan’s work and his personal impact is Mary S. Linn, Curator of Cultural and Linguistic Revitalization at the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. She served previously as Curator of Native American Languages at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. This series of guest posts has been organized in partnership with Michael Paul Jordan. –Jason Baird Jackson

 Dan Swan showing exhibited Hello Kitty beadwork to Julie Droke, Sam Noble Museum, November 24, 2019. Photo by Mary Linn.

You Got Kitty Bombed!

by Mary Linn

What does one write about when considering Daniel C. Swan’s eminent career and imminent retirement?  Why, Hello Kitty, of course.

Dan hadn’t been at the Sam Noble Museum as Curator of Ethnology very long when a group of us women in the anthropology ‘pod’ went out to lunch. A normal day. Next door to the chosen restaurant was a comic book store, and as we passed the window after eating, I exclaimed, “Oh, they have Hello Kitty – I love Hello Kitty! Did you know that most consumers of Hello Kitty are professional women over 30?”[1] We piled in and came out with matching Hello Kitty pinky rings and with Grrrl Power.

Back at work, we enthusiastically showed off our rings and assorted Hello Kitty office supplies to Dan, who rolled his eyes. He would quickly retreat to his office when we greeted each other with ‘Hello, Kitty!’ in the mornings or showed off new Hello Kitty additions (such as Hello Kitty walkie-talkies, our analog version of messaging across offices). That could have been the end of it, or at least Dan’s part in the story, had Olivia Sammons (my graduate research assistant at the time) not gotten a Hello Kitty coloring book and stickers, had I not a penchant for practical jokes, and if Julie Droke (the registrar) had not had the keys to his office. So, we Kitty-Bombed his office, putting  Hello Kitty sticky notes and stickers on his computer and book cases, and adding Hello Kitty pictures in books and files.  Apparently, he was still finding Hello Kitty when he moved his office years later. I am sure some grad student in the future will be amazed at his fortune of inheriting an antique anthropology book with the name Daniel C. Swan inside, and then wonder why there is a picture of Hello Kitty in a tutu stuck in the pages.

How did Dan react? He took it in stride and laughingly admitted defeat for the current round of jokes, and there were many times he would laugh at himself with us over the years.

Real Men Read Real Books, part of a humorous series on Dan and his tribulations with born digital content, created by Olivia Sammons ca. 2010.

And – and this is important here – he embraced Hello Kitty and the Grrrl Power around him. He became an honorary ‘Kitty’ and was/is totally comfortable with his membership in this group.  No, he wouldn’t wear the pinky ring, but he started noticing what we were saying with Hello Kitty and noticing Hello Kitty in the world, especially in the beadwork adorning Powwow regalia.  A few years later, I found myself the recipient of a beaded Hello Kitty lanyard with my museum badge given to me from Dan. This lanyard now proudly holds my Smithsonian id, and Hello Kitty regularly rides the metro, attends meetings with the European presidents and multi-millionaire donors, and dances at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. It is art, it is Grrrl Power, and it represents my history and friendships in Oklahoma. A funny thing: no man has ever asked me about it. Only women.

That Dan was able to embrace Hello Kitty in our pod is telling of his openness to seeing the world in new ways.  He enthusiastically devours new artistic expressions in Indian Country, and delights in discovering the new in the old and the old in the new. His additions of airbrushed Peyote boxes, youth skateboard art, and beadwork of angry bird, athletic teams, and portraits of popular culture icons, to name only a few of his focused collecting at all the museums he has worked at, have significantly changed the anthropological record and conversations. He listens to the artists, the artisans, the practitioners, the youth, the elders, the cooks, the dancers, the vets… I can go on, but you get the point. He listens and lets them talk through their record.

More importantly, his support of our Grrrl Power shows how Dan has never shied away from what makes him uncomfortable. He examines himself and simply tries to do better the next day. And that, my Kitty Friends, is something that we all need more of today.

Hello Retirement – you got Kitty-Bombed, from Mary, Julie, and Olivia.  https://www.pinterest.com/pin/363665738634814337/

Endnote

1. Please don’t ask me to cite this.  I had probably heard it on NPR, but that was a long time ago. Wherever I heard or read it, it impressed me enough to stick in my mind.