Museum Worlds
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Repatriation as Inspiration
Multigenerational Perspectives on American Archaeology-Museum Relationships
in Museum Worlds
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April M. Beisaw
April M. Beisaw
Vassar College apbeisaw@vassar.edu
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Penelope H. Duus
Penelope H. Duus
Vassar College peduus@vassar.edu
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ABSTRACT
At the turn of the twentieth century, American museums helped to legitimize archaeology as a scientific discipline. By the next century, repatriation legislation had forced archaeologists to confront the dehumanization that can take place when bodies and sacred objects are treated as scientific specimens. Charting the future(s) of archaeology-museum relationships requires us to (1) recognize where, when, and how harm has been done, (2) confront those harmful precedents, and (3) restructure collections and exhibits in ways that heal wounds and advance research. Current research on the 1916 Susquehanna River Expedition, an archaeology-museum project funded by George Gustav Heye, provides insight into how our predecessors viewed their work. Using the expedition project as backdrop, an archaeology professor and an undergraduate student engage in a dialogue that explores the changing roles of American museums as the public faces of archaeology, training grounds for young professionals, and cultural centers for us all.
Contributor Notes
APRIL M. BEISAW is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Vassar College, where she also teaches courses in Native American Studies and Environmental Studies. Her article “Memory, Identity, and NAGPRA in the Northeastern United States” was published in American Anthropologist and awarded the Gordon Willey Prize by the Archaeology Division of the American Anthropological Association. April’s research on the Susquehanna River Expedition has taken her into the archives of museums in California, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C., and there is more work to be done. She is also researching the contemporary archaeology of the New York City water system.
PENELOPE H. DUUS is an undergraduate student at Vassar College, where she majors in anthropology and minors in Native American studies. At Vassar, she has worked closely with Dr. Lucy Johnson on the archaeology of the Alaskan Aleutian Islands. Outside of Vassar, she has interned at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and will be interning at the Penn Museum in the summer of 2016, where she will work in the American Section Repatriation Office.