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Posts from the ‘Oklahoma’ Category

Nov 1

Indigenize #afsam22: Ten Facebook Posts Gathered

While every year should be Native American heritage year, November is Native American Heritage Month and thus a good time to reflect on the ways that the recent American Folklore Society annual meetings in Tulsa centered Native American voices—scholars, teachers, artists, journalists, activists, tradition bearers, political leaders and others. Starting during my travels home, I tried, in a series of Facebook posts, to recall and evoke some of these Native America cultural workers who joined in the convergence of people and conversations that was #AFSAM22. I named this series of posts Indigenize #AFSAM22 because one meaning of that word is to “bring something under the control, dominance, or influence of the people native to an area” (Oxford Languages). I hope that the meeting participants I mention below—and other Native American individuals from Eastern Oklahoma who participated in the annual meeting—have influenced those who heard and engaged with them in Tulsa. Here in a single document are my ten posts with links.

1. Some who attended the meeting got to hear from, and maybe meet, JoKay Dowell (Cherokee/Quapaw/Shawnee/Peoria). Read about some her many environmental and social justice efforts here in the pages of the Cherokee Phoenix. Look up the Indigenous Environmental Network for info on the kind of pressing work that she helps lead.

2. Last night [Saturday 10/15/22] [Tulsa born and raised folklorist] Ross Peterson-Veatch won a pair of stickball sticks made by Cherokee National Treasure and ceremonial ground chief David Comingdeer. David took time away from his many duties to come to Tulsa for the stomp dance at Cain’s. If you do not already know it, the Cherokee Treasures program is like the ICH master programs found in Korea, Japan, and China and, if I can get away with saying it, it’s stronger than those in most US states. Folklorists should be studying it to improve public folklore practice in the US. Read about David and some of his work in Oklahoma Magazine. Wado David.

3. Some of you were in forum 05-06 in which Teresa Runnels (Sac and Fox/Muscogee/Shawnee/Caddo/Delaware) shared her work leading the Native American Resource Center of the Tulsa City-County Library. She does innovative work not only in classic librarianship but she organizes many programs that public folklorists would recognize as innovative and important. These include supporting Indigenous language activists. Here she is profiled as a Mover and Shaker in Library Journal.

4. Residential Schools are a major focus of concern among Native peoples. #AFSAM22 presenter and acclaimed artist Johnnie Diacon (Muscogee) discussed his work as the artist for Chilocco Indian School: A Generational Story, a graphic novel written by Julie Pearson-Little Thunder, based on oral histories with alumni, and published by Oklahoma State University Libraries. Find the novel linked to in the comments [now given here]. Learn about Johnnie’s work in an article in Cowboys and Indians. See it featured in the TV show Reservation Dogs.

5. If you’d ike to follow up on the Presidential Invited Lecture with Daryl Baldwin (Miami Tribe of Oklahoma), a new and accessible next step is his new article just out in The Conversation. [“Effort to recover Indigenous language also revitalizes culture, history and identity”]

6. Many of us were thrilled that the opening ceremony at #afsam22 concluded with the bestowal of the AFS Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award to our friend, colleague, and mentor Charlotte Heth (Cherokee). During “This Land is Whose Land?” on Saturday morning she provided key understandings of the history of the Trails of Tears as well as hopeful glimpses of #LandBack today. Wado Charlotte! You can read Vicki Levine’s 2013 interview with Charlotte in the SEM Newsletter.

7. If you missed the Anvdvnelisgi ᎠᏅᏛᏁᎵᏍᎩ Cherokee Language Concert at Cain’s Ballroom yesterday [Saturday, 10/15/22] afternoon you can read about it and see pictures of it in a fresh Tulsa People article linked here. You can also go online and find the new album including the performers and others. AFS is mentioned as one of the project partners. ht/KDS

8. As the meeting began, Kalyn Fay Barnoski (Cherokee Nation, Muscogee) took time to share their recent curatorial and exhibition work at the Philbrook Museum of Art. Philbrook has very important collections of Native American art, much of it with rich documentation. Later, in a meeting panel on collections research by and for native communities, they spoke of what factors can help Indigenous students, scholars, and practitioners succeed in museum internships, fellowships, etc. Learn about their work and practice on their website.

9. The “This Land is Whose Land?” panel discussion also included Vicki Monks (Chickasaw), a widely published environmental journalist working in all media. One of the situations that she mentioned in her remarks concerned carbon black pollution on, and near, Ponca Nation lands in North Central Oklahoma. You can find her original Living on Earth radio story on this issue linked here. In the story you will hear from Ponca elders Thurman and Thelma and Buffalohead.

10. During the stomp dance hosted by the Duck Creek Ceremonial Ground last Saturday night [10-15-22], attendees were welcomed by several Native American political leaders, including Muscogee Nation Second Chief Del Beaver (Muscogee) and Cherokee Nation Tribal Councilwoman Dr. Candessa Tehee (Cherokee). Dr. Tehee spoke of the dance taking place at the place where the Cherokee and Muscogee Nations meet and how good it was for these nations to be gathering in fellowship in the heart of the city of Tulsa. Dr. Tehee is also Associate Professor of Cherokee and Indigenous Studies at Northeastern State University and a Cherokee National Treasure recognized for her work in finger weaving. Learn more about her work on one of her websites here.

More could be said and I regret leaving some valued participants out, but ten is a good number to evoke something of what took place when locals and non-locals, settlers, immigrants, and Native folks gathered in downtown Tulsa last month.

A dark interior scene lit by red and yellow neon lights. On a wooden ballroom floor, people dance in a spiral-shaped line in a counter-clockwise direction. Many women wear long skirts and pairs of rattles on their legs while dancing.
The Stomp Dance held at the historic Cain’s Ballroom in downtown Tulsa, Muscogee Nation, October 15, 2022. The dance was hosted and organized by the Duck Creek Ceremonial Ground and included Cherokee, Yuchi, Muscogee and other Native and Non-Native participants.

Nov 6

Wedding Clothes and the Osage Community Recognized with Book Prizes

The annual business meeting of the Council for Museum Anthropology (CMA) was held today and one of its key moments was the bestowal of the annual CMA Book Award. I am very happy to note that Wedding Clothes and the Osage Community: A Giving Heritage by Daniel Swan and Jim Cooley, a title in the Material Vernaculars series that I edit for the Indiana University Press, was recognized with the award. The following text is taken from a CMA Facebook post. It announces the award and also discusses an honorable mention title, Solen Roth’s book Incorporating Culture: How Indigenous People are Reshaping the Northwest Coast Art Industry.

It is our pleasure to award the 2020 CMA book award to Daniel Swan and Jim Cooley for their 2019 book, “Wedding Clothes and the Osage Community” (Indiana University Press), and to give an honorable mention to Solen Roth for her 2018 book “Incorporating Culture” (UBC Press). Both books exemplify the range of work that the Council of Museum Anthropology promotes.

Swan, D. and Cooley, J. 2019. “Wedding Clothes and the Osage Community: A Giving Heritage.” Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

It is with great pleasure that we award the CMA book award to Daniel Swan and Jim Cooley. “Wedding Clothes and the Osage Community” is an exemplar of what museum anthropology can and should be. The book is the result of long-term collaborative work with the Osage Nation, and uses archival, ethnographic and ethnohistorical methods to reanimate museum collections of Osage heritage. Doing so, the book is a highly accessible multi-media examination of change and continuity in Osage wedding traditions and clothing. Through its attention to material culture the book demonstrates not only the rich vibrancy of the Osage wedding traditions but also demonstrates the sort of work that can only be done through what Ray Silverman termed “slow museology”, which is work built on mutual respect, collaboration, and trust. This is a book that transcends its subject matter and helps us all see the possibilities of museum anthropology.

Roth, S. 2018. “Incorporating Culture: How Indigenous People are Reshaping the Northwest Coast Art Industry.” Vancouver: UBC Press.

We are delighted to award honorable mention for the CMA book award to Solen Roth. “Incorporating Culture” is a unique ethnography of the “artware” industry. Solen coins the term artware to describe commodities decorated with Pacific Northwest coast images that circulate inside and outside of Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. The book examines the array of values these objects accumulate as they transition between these sites. It is a sophisticated historical and multi-sited ethnographic look at the intercultural phenomena of the artware industry, which is an example of what she terms ‘culturally modified capitalism.’ The book helps shed light on a compelling and important feature and dynamic of the intercultural object-world and economy in the North West Coast.

In addition to the CMA Book Award, I am also happy to note that Wedding Clothes and the Osage Community: A Giving Heritage was recently recognized during the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society’s Folklore and History section, which bestows the annual Wayland D. Hand Prize given for the best book combining historical and folkloristic methods and materials. The biennial prize honors the eminent folklorist Wayland D. Hand (1907-1986). Wedding Clothes was given the honorable mention in the 2020 Hand Prize competition. The prize itself went to Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster (Oxford University Press, 2018) by Guy Beiner. As reprinted on a Facebook post, the Hand Prize committee said the following about Wedding Clothes.

The beautifully illustrated volume explores through history and folklife research the ways that gift exchange, motivated by the values of generosity and hospitality serves as a critical component in the preservation and perpetuation of Osage society.

Congratulations to all of the Osage Nation citizens who worked on the larger Osage Weddings Project (which included a major traveling exhibition) and to Dan and Jim as authors. Special thanks go to the Indiana University Press for investing tremendous care in the making of an extraordinary book.

Jul 2

Frank G. Speck Visits the Euchee, Stockbridge, and Seneca Students at Haskell in 1939-1940

Among the objects cataloged as Creek in the collections of the National Museum of Natural History is a doll made by Leona Tiger while she was a student at the Haskell Institute (now Haskell Indian Nations University) in Lawrence, Kansas sometime before May 1940. The doll was purchased by Betty J. Meggers in Washington, DC at the “Department of Commerce Indian Store.” Catalogue information identifies Ms. Tiger as Creek (and thus the doll is labeled as Creek. In form it is a doll dressed in the kind kind of beaded two-piece dresses worn by Native American peoples of the Plains region. You can find the doll here and see it pictured below (Figure 1).

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Figure 1. Doll (E424895) by Leona Tiger (Creek and/or Euchee), ca. 1939-1940 from the Betty J. Meggers Collection (374094), Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Photograph by Anthropology Collections Management. Terms of Use are described here: https://www.si.edu/Termsofuse

Tiger is a common last name among not only the Creek and Seminole people in Oklahoma, but also among the Euchee (Yuchi) and Cherokee there. Trying to learn more about the maker, I found her named in several issues of the Indian Leader, the magazine then published by the Haskell Institute. She was a pianist, part of the Concert Orchestra, a member of the Baptist student group, the Arts and Crafts Club, and was among the Home Economics graduates for 1940. The Indian Leader paints an inspiring picture of Ms. Tiger’s Haskell days. You can search a block of issues of The Indian Leader for this period here.

The Indian Leader also indicates that she was among the Euchee students there in the late 1930s in the following way. This story is at the intersection of Euchee history and the history of anthropology. An unsigned news item on page 7 of Volume 43, Number 9, dated January 12, 1940 is as follows (I have added the links for those interested and bolded the names so that they pop out to readers):

“Noted Anthropologist Visits”

“Dr. Loren C. Eiseley, Professor of Anthropology at K.U., brought to our campus last week Dr. Frank Speck, head of the department of anthropology and archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, to meet some of our students and interview them on some of the language and folk ways that are of interest to their departments. Doctor Speck is the author of the outstanding work on the Euchee Indian and he spent some time interviewing Leona Tiger, Cilla Brown, and Ann Rolland [Holder] for additional material. He also had a conference with the seven Stockbridge young people on our campus and with Wesley Tallchief and David Whitetree, Senecas. Dr. Speck was disappointed not to find any Delaware here who spoke their dialect, as his plan was to make a comparative study of the eastern and western members of the original eastern seaboard tribes.”

Eiseley and Speck are both well-known figures in the history of anthropology. The author of this story is referring to Speck’s book The Ethnology of the Yuchi Indians, which is based on visits he made to the Euchee people of Sand Creek town near Bristow, Indian Territory in 1904, 1905, and 1908. This story helps show that Speck remained interested in the Euchee people during the final decade of his life. It also highlights the lives of Euchee women who pursued advanced studies at Haskell, more than 230 miles from home, in the late 1930s.

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A screenshot of the story about Frank Speck’s Haskell visit with Leona Tiger, Cilia Brown, Ann Roland and other Native students.

Jun 20

Celebrating the Bustling All-Black Towns of Oklahoma

Tulsa and eastern Oklahoma are the center of my personal universe. That place is where my heart resides. Normally, I would be there right now contributing to the annual work undertaken by the people of the Duck Creek community. Now, I am at home in Bloomington cycling between anger and despair as new disasters befall there. As part of an effort at counter-programming, my colleague and friend Jessica Walker Blanchard agreed to share some photographs from her scrapbooks in a guest post. The images come from the period of 2005-2010. Collaborating on research with members of some of the members of Oklahoma’s important All-Black towns is among the many worthy things Jessica has done in her life and career.–Jason

Celebrating the Bustling All-Black Towns of Oklahoma

by Jessica Walker Blanchard

On this Juneteenth weekend, let us proudly remember the day that the end of slavery was finally announced in the western most corners of the Confederacy in Texas (some two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation). I only came to know of Juneteenth celebrations after I had moved from Alabama to Oklahoma, and had the great fortune of working and spending years in many of the All-Black Towns throughout eastern Oklahoma. I began working in the All-Black Towns as a graduate researcher, and have been fortunate to maintain friendships in many of these towns almost two decades later. Residents in these towns, many of them descendant from the original founders of the towns from the turn of the 20th century, have been generous beyond words to share so many proud and vibrant stories about a time gone by when these now rural communities were once the center of prosperous growth in the state.

This weekend, Oklahomans are paying homage to the tragedy that occurred in the Greenwood District in Tulsa (aka Black Wall Street) nearly 100 years ago. Juneteenth celebrations cultivate triumphant spaces for us all to remember the tragedies, revitalizations, and reclamations of Black contributions to this country. In that spirit, I would like to also acknowledge and celebrate the resilient and beautiful legacies of so many other Black communities across Oklahoma. My time in the All-Black Towns (especially Boley, Taft, Clearview, Lima, Rentiesville, Grayson, and others) has created some of the best memories I have of living in Oklahoma, and these places are certainly home to some of the best people I have known anywhere. I hope some of these images capture the bountiful spirit that exists across these communities still today.

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A young horse rider at the Annual Boley Memorial Day Rodeo Parade, Boley, Oklahoma.

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A crowd gathers for a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration at Boley High School, Boley, Oklahoma.

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Parade attendees at the Annual Memorial Day Rodeo Parade, Boley, Oklahoma.

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Boley youth lead a march in celebration of Martin Luther Ling, Jr. Day, Boley, Oklahoma.

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Town residents gather for a Memorial Day Celebration, Taft, Oklahoma.

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Marching bands perform during the Annual Boley Memorial Day Rodeo Parade, Boley, Oklahoma.

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Valentine’s Day Dance, Lima, Oklahoma.

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Street scene looking south on Pecan Street during the Annual Memorial Day Rodeo Parade, Boley, Oklahoma.

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A Martin Luther King, Jr. Day March, Boley, Oklahoma.

May 8

Reblog: AFS Rebooks Tulsa Annual Meeting for 2022 but Continues to Plan for a Smaller Fall Meeting

Here I am sharing this important announcement from the American Folklore Society. I will continue to be involved in work towards the 2020 and 2022 AFS Annual Meetings, both with Tulsa ties. Those who have been involved in the running of scholarly societies will know what a financial and governance triumph this news is. Many scholarly organizations face catastrophic loss at the intersection of conference hotel contracts and COVID-19 consequences. I am so happy for AFS and thank its leaders. –Jason

AFS Rebooks Tulsa Annual Meeting for 2022 but Continues to Plan for a Smaller Fall Meeting

Like you, we at AFS are still faced with more questions than answers about how to plan for the coming year, but one thing has become clear: the current pandemic and its economic fallout will have a serious impact on our October meeting.

Because we want the opportunity to deliver fully on the plans and promises that we have already developed for our Tulsa meeting, we have taken one definite step at this time: we have renegotiated our contract with the Tulsa Hyatt to minimize our financial obligations to the hotel for this year, while rebooking to return to Tulsa October 12-15, 2022. This gives us the opportunity to continue planning several options for our Fall 2020 meeting while also planning to return to Tulsa in full in 2022.

This contract rebooking buys us more time to explore what we CAN do to convene in 2020, so our message remains the same: we are proceeding with our plans for a 2020 meeting in some form, as we investigate our options to best serve our members and attendees, perhaps including a smaller regional meeting, some virtual offerings, or a combination of both. We will continue our current work with partner organizations in Oklahoma to produce meaningful collaborative programming this year, and we hope to deepen those relationships through our return in 2022.

The AFS 2020 Local Arrangements Committee supports these difficult decisions and are thankful to the executive office and the Hyatt’s exceptional staff for finding a compromise with a larger vision for engaging folklore in Oklahoma. LAC co-chairs, Terri Jordan and Sarah Milligan see the benefit of returning to Tulsa in 2022, “This outcome allows us to continue to build flexible and innovative partnerships with both AFS members and our regional collaborators in light of the uncertainties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. By extending our Tulsa meeting commitment to 2022 the LAC has an unprecedented opportunity for a deeper, more prolonged period of relationship building between our Oklahoma partners and the AFS community. Not only are we beyond grateful for the time and commitment from our LAC members in preparing for the 2020 meeting, we are excited to continue developing and nurturing these exchanges in 2020 and leading up to 2022.”

AFS Executive Director Jessica A. Turner says the Hyatt’s willingness to amend the meeting contract gives AFS the flexibility it needs to serve its members. “Moving our contract to 2022 removes a financial hurdle and allows us to have the successful full meeting in Tulsa we have been planning with extraordinary Oklahoma partners. It also allows us to be creative in adapting our plans to keep us connected as a field.”

Catherine McKemie, our partner with ConferenceDirect, emphasized that “Collaboration is key during a crisis and I was honored to help all parties involved reach a successful outcome. It is during tough times that true partners rise up to help each other and we were fortunate to work with Hyatt Hotels and American Folklore Society to deliver a favorable outcome.”

AFS thanks the Hyatt Regency Tulsa for its partnership in creating a plan that works flexibly with financial and travel uncertainties during the COVID-19 pandemic.  “We are proud to work with the American Folklore Society in rebooking its meeting to 2022 so that their plans for a Tulsa meeting see their full potential,” said Denise Davis, Director of Events for Hyatt Corporation.

In the meantime, the Review Committee is currently at work reading proposals, keeping calm and carrying on with the annual business of reviewing the research and concerns that are shaping our field right now and for the future. Many thanks to them for laying this foundation as we look for both customary and new ways of connecting our members and supporting their important work as circumstances evolve.

We have not changed our standards for proposal review: each submission will be considered on its own merits as a contribution to the full convening of the American Folklore Society. If you submitted a proposal, you’ll hear from us in the coming weeks about the Review Committee’s decisions. Though we can’t yet commit to what kind of platform we will provide if your proposal is accepted, you can rest assured that if it isn’t acceptable to you or you can’t present for other reasons, you may defer your presentation until 2021 or withdraw with a full refund. In the meantime, if your own plans to participate significantly change, please let us know as soon as possible, so we can respond and scale our plans accordingly. We will be reaching out for your input in the coming weeks as we work out a plan that serves most members.

On behalf of the AFS Executive Board, AFS President Norma E. Cantú said, “We thank everyone who has grappled with the changing situation and found solutions to our predicament so we can honor our bylaws and hold our annual meeting as scheduled in some form or another.  We send our deepest sympathy to any members who have been touched by the tragic events of the pandemic and send best wishes to everyone as we go forward.”

In summary:
• We are reducing our meeting with Tulsa and will plan for a smaller in-person meeting; all are welcome should your feel safe and able to travel
• We are exploring virtual meeting options and will make some decisions about scale and format in the coming weeks
• We will return to Tulsa for our 2022 Annual Meeting
• Wait a few weeks more before making or changing your travel plans for October until our program and your own ability to participate become clearer

Count on us to communicate directly with you as soon as we have more information to share; we will email all members and registered attendees, post updates to the 2020 Annual Meeting page, the AFS Review and our social media channels as our plans take shape. As always, we are here to respond to questions or concerns.

We remain hopeful that our efforts to meet in Tulsa will be realized, perhaps through an even stronger and more intentional meeting. Woody Guthrie wrote, “The note of hope is the only note that can keep us from falling to the bottom of the heap of evolution. Because, largely, about all a human being is anyway is just a hoping machine.” To that end, we reached out to a few of our members to ask them to share what they are hopeful for, creating some video in the new Zoom aesthetic.

Jessica A. Turner
AFS Executive Director

 

Feb 12

The Free-to-Readers Version of Wedding Clothes and the Osage Community: A Giving Heritage

Many readers of this blog already know about the fifth title in Indiana University Press‘ Material Vernaculars book series–Wedding Clothes and the Osage Community: A Giving Heritage by Daniel C. Swan and Jim Cooley. It was released last fall and it is a beautiful, engaging, monumental work. The scholarship is great and the press produced the printed volume lavishly and with great care. The book is richly illustrated with wonderful community photographs and images of extraordinary objects of Osage artistry and craftspersonship. The book itself is a remarkable object. For all of these reasons, I hope that you will purchase a copy and thereby also support the work of Indiana University Press

But… fans of the Material Vernaculars series also know that making series titles free to readers who would otherwise lack access to them is also a key goal of the series. In this connection, I am very happy to note that the free-to-readers edition is now accessible from the IUScholarWorks Repository. To find it, use the following link:

https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/22292

Warm thanks to the Indiana University Press and to the Indiana University Libraries for helping make this title, and the other MV series titles*, much more accessible to interested readers, particularly to readers in the communities about which series authors are writing. In this connection, thanks also go to series authors for forsaking any author royalties so that all proceeds from book sales can go to supporting the free-to-readers editions.

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*Material Vernaculars

Forthcoming

The Michiana Potters: Art, Community, and Collaboration in the Midwest by Meredith A. E. McGriff (fall 2020)

Published

Wedding Clothes and the Osage Community: A Giving Heritage by Daniel C. Swan and Jim Cooley (2019)
The Expressive Lives of Elders: Folklore, Art, and Aging edited by Jon Kay (2018)
Framing Sukkot: Tradition and Transformation in Jewish Vernacular Architecture by Gabrielle Anna Berlinger (2017)
Material Vernaculars: Objects, Images, and Their Social Worlds edited by Jason Baird Jackson (2016)
Folk Art and Aging: Life-Story Objects and Their Makers by Jon Kay (2016)

Aug 17

Summer 2015 Roundup

Sherds and Patches has been neglected. My summers are always busy, but this year has been really busy. As the fall semester is about to begin, I feel like I should at least take stock of where I have been. A surprising number of folks visit this site and seemingly find something that they are looking for. In hopes of leading online visitors to some of the exhibitions, projects, etc. that I have been involved in this summer, I offer this roundup with relevant links. Packing a summer into one post, please excuse the length (about 1600 words). Skimmers welcome.

When the spring semester ended, my Mathers Museum of World Cultures colleagues and I, together with MMWC Policy Committee Chair Eric Sandweiss, poured our energies into hosting Museums at the Crossroads: Local Encounters, Global Knowledge. Held at the museum between May 14 and 21, the workshop was supported by the IU School of Global and International Studies and the College of Arts and Sciences. It gathered museum professionals and other scholars from numerous institutions and various countries for generative discussions and activities aimed at considering the state of museums in changing social contexts around the world. I am thankful for all who journeyed to Bloomington to join the discussion. Thanks too go to the MMWC staff members who helped organize the gathering and to the School and College for their generous support. Learn a bit more about Museums at the Crossroads from this IU press release. SGIS published a wrap-up story about Crossroads.

Before and after Museums at the Crossroads, I worked as a lead investigator on a Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded research/planning project considering the viability of alternative, sustainable financial models for university press monograph publishing in the humanities and interpretive social sciences. This is a project being pursued concurrently on the University of Michigan and Indiana University campuses. I am the researcher for the IU component of the project. A glimpse of the project is available in this IU press release (where our project is the second of two being discussed). A story last summer in the Chronicle of Higher Education provides additional context for the models that I have been discussing with IU faculty and administrators as well as with our UM/IU, research team.

Another big project that came to fruition in the days after Museums at the Crossroads is the Mathers Museum of World Cultures exhibition Cherokee Craft, 1973. This is an exhibition that I have looked forward to doing since the early 1990s. As I student, I first studied the museum’s collections made among the Eastern Cherokee. I knew then that they would make a great exhibition. That moment came this summer. Originally, I was going to curate the exhibition with help from graduate students Emily Buhrow Rogers and Kelley Totten but by the time we finished, it was Kelly and I helping Emily with her exhibition. What Kelly and Emily came up with is infinitely better than the simple exhibition that I had originally imagined. Cherokee Craft, 1973 opened June 16. Here is how we have described the exhibition in promotional materials.

Cherokee Craft, 1973 offers a snapshot of craft production among the Eastern Band Cherokee at a key moment in both an ongoing Appalachian craft revival and the specific cultural and economic life of the Cherokee people in western North Carolina. The exhibition showcases woodcarvings, masks, ceramics, finger woven textiles, basketry, and dolls. The works presented are all rooted in Cherokee cultural tradition but all also bear the imprint of the specific individuals who crafted them and the particular circumstances in which these craftspeople made and circulated their handwork.

What that description does not explain is that the presentation for the exhibition creatively evokes the Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, Inc. gallery (ca. 1973), from which the museum obtained its collection. Come by and see the exhibition at MMWC and find the real co-op as it is today on its website.

After a quick but wonderful visit to Oklahoma for Green Corn, I headed off to the Smithsonian Institution to again serve as a visiting faculty member at the Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology, which is led by Candace Greene and funded by the National Science Foundation. I have discussed SIMA previously. It is a great program and this was a another great year. If you are new to SIMA, check out the SIMA information page. On top of the great SIMA stuff, I even had a bit of time to see the Chinese basketry in the NMNH collections!

A basket cataloged as Chinese in the collections of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. ET08510

A basket cataloged as Chinese in the collections of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. ET08510

SIMA was followed by a quick family trip to Santa Fe, where I got to attend the International Folk Art Market (which was great as always) and see the exhibition “The Red that Colored the World” at the Museum of International Folk Art. The “Red” exhibition is a tour de force. Simply amazing. I hope that many many more people get to see it in Santa Fe or on the tour to come. You can read about the Red exhibition in many places, including this NEH story by Peter BG Shoemaker in Humanities magazine.

While in Santa Fe, I purchased (at the market) two willow baskets by Blaise Cayol, a remarkable French basket maker. Learn about his basketry on his website Celui qui Tresse.

I collected Blaise Cayol’s baskets for a lot of reasons, including wanting them to help expand on the story that the Mathers Museum of World Cultures is telling in the exhibition Willow Work: Viki Graber, Basketmaker, which opens tomorrow. It is a great exhibition focused on the work of a great basket maker. Quoting from our exhibition announcement:

Willow Work: Viki Graber, Basketmaker presents a weaver of willow baskets from the Mennonite community of Goshen, Indiana, where she has lived for 25 years. Graber learned willow basket weaving at the age of twelve from her father, who was recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts as a 2009 National Heritage Fellow. Where once her family plied their talents to make utilitarian workbaskets, today she works full-time weaving baskets for collectors and to sell at art shows and galleries. While using the same tools and methods as her great-grandfather, Graber’s keen sense of color and innovative designs have elevated her family’s craft to a new aesthetic level.

Jon Kay curated Willow Work, drawing upon work done for Traditional Arts Indiana. Get details on the exhibition on the MMWC website. Learn more about Viki’s basketry on her website, Confluence of Willows.

Willow Work: Viki Graber, Basketmaker is one of three exhibitions that we (MMWC) are organizing for Themester. I will post (I hope) about the two that are still to come, but I note here that a second one has been curated by Jon Kay. Here is the description. Working Wood opens on September 8.

Working Wood: Oak-Rod Baskets in Indiana presents the work of the Hovis and Bohall families of Brown County, Indiana, who made distinctive white-oak baskets for their neighbors to carry everyday items and to gather corn. However, by the 1930s, the interest of urban tourists transformed these sturdy workbaskets into desirable souvenirs and art objects. In recent years, these baskets have come to be called “Brown County” and “Bohall” baskets, perhaps because of the great number of baskets made by the Bohall family in Brown county during the 1920s and 1930s. Nevertheless, the history of this craft is more complex these names reveal. Using artifacts and historic photographs, this exhibit explores the shifts in the uses and meanings of these baskets as they changed from obsolete, agricultural implements, into a tourist commodity. Using the lens of work, this exhibition tells the story of these oak-rod baskets and the people who made and used them, and how local makers strived to find a new audience for their old craft, and how ultimately the lure of steady work in the city contributed to the end of this tradition.

Between now and then, we will be working to finalize an third basketry exhibition that I have co-curated with Lijun Zhang of the Guangxi Museum of Nationalities. Opening September 1, It focuses on work baskets in Southwestern China. We describe it in this way.

Putting Baskets to Work in Southwestern China explores the contemporary the use of basketry in urban and rural labor in contemporary China drawing upon a newly acquired representative collection of bamboo baskets documented as active tools of labor in the region around Dali, in Yunnan province, and in Guizhou and Guangxi provinces. The collection was acquired and documented by Jason Baird Jackson, Director of the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, who will co-curate the exhibit with Lijun Zhang, Research Curator at the Guangxi Museum of Nationalities in Guangxi, China.

All three of these work-related basketry exhibitions have been organized for the Fall 2015 Themester, which is themed “@Work: The Nature of Labor on a Changing Planet.” Our museum programs are organized under the rubric “@Work with Basketry on a Changing Planet.” The College of Arts and Sciences at IU has contributed to these projects and the public programs that will accompany them. Learn more about Themester 2015 on the Themester website. Learn more about the exhibitions and programs on the MMWC website.

In the background, Emily Buhrow Rogers and I have been finalizing a double issue of Museum Anthropology Review. We look forward to sharing it in the next couple of weeks. See some of its content online in preview mode at the journal website.

In the midst of all of this, I have—with the support of numerous friends and colleagues—been preparing my faculty promotion case. Time will tell how that turns out.

This is just some of the high points. Its been a busy summer. Whether relaxing or busy, I hope that your summer was excellent.

Apr 28

Chief’s Coats, Brides, and Drumkeepers: The Development of Osage Bridal Attire

NAL15_OsageWeddingFlier_Color[1]Another community gathering for the Osage Weddings project is scheduled for this Sunday. This is a really exciting project with lots of opportunities for community involvement.

Feb 8

The Woody Guthrie Center Seeks Executive Director, Educator

The emergent Woodie Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma (one of my favorite places) is seeking to fill two key positions: (1) Executive Director/Chief Curator and (2) Educator and Public Programs Manager. These are great opportunities in an exciting new venture to be built around the Woody Guthrie Archives . Find out about both the Director and Educator jobs on the Oklahoma Museum Association website.

May 27

Coconut Rattles in Florida and Oklahoma

The diversity of materials used by Native peoples in the Americas to make hand rattles is pretty staggering. Among the farming peoples of the Southwest, Plains, Northeast and Southeast, gourds are one important material used for this purpose. Having the same basic form as gourd rattles, but unique to some Southeastern Indian peoples, are rattles, such as this Florida Seminole example, made from coconuts. William C. Sturtevant provided the coconut used here to Jack Motlow, from whom he commissioned it for $2.00 in 1951. This Florida Seminole example is made exactly like those used among the Southeastern peoples in Oklahoma, including among the Yuchi. (I commissioned Yuchi examples for the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa during the later 1990s.) Such rattles are called “gourds” in English in Oklahoma and are particularly suited to the outdoor dances of the region. Such rattles are loud and thus sound great when used, as they most often are, outside, in open spaces. (The holes drilled in the coconut amplify the rattle’s sound.)

This example is #301 in the William C. Sturtevant Collection, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.

(The Seminole Tribune has published biographical profiles of two of Jack and Lena Motlow’s daughters. These profiles are of Louise Motlow and Mary Motlow Sanchez and are online.)

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