Today we have another project profile, this time from Jack Davy. If you wish to have a
project, collection or object you are working on profiled on the MEG
blog then please email web@museumethnographersgroup.org.uk
After visiting Cherokee objects in the British Museum stores;
three-hundred-year-old baskets and more modern pieces collected in the 1970s, the
Warriors of Anikithua, dance troupe of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians
sat down with the
Beyond the Spectacle
team for an interview. Together we discussed the provenance, the history and
the technique of the objects on display, and when asked for their first
reaction to the visit, their response was “We thought there would be more.
Where is it all?”
 |
| Warriors of Anikithua, Piccadilly Circus, 1st January 2018.
Image by Professional Images, courtesy of the Arts and Humanities Research
Council |
This question feeds to a larger one which lies at the heart
of the
Beyond the Spectacle project, which is to question where to find
evidence for the historical relationships between Native North Americans and
the British public in Britain itself. Funded by the AHRC and jointly
administered by the Universities of Kent and East Anglia,
Beyond the Spectacle assembles a team of scholars from literary and
cultural studies, history and anthropology, to uncover the hidden stories of
Native travellers to Britain and through a series of collaborative programmes
to draw direct connections between these histories and contemporary Native
North American visitors to this country.
The Warriors of Anikithua, accompanied by senior members of
the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, did not travel to London in isolation.
Invited to appear in the New Year’s Day parade, they were deliberately and
consciously following in the footsteps of their ancestors, most particularly
the delegation of 1762 to the court of King George III, led by Ostenaco, whose
at times riotous sojourn across London in the summer of that year
laid the foundationsof the Anglo-Cherokee relationship for decades to come. Their visit was photographed for
Beyond
the Spectacle though a grant provided by the Arts and Humanities Research
Council
During their visit to the British Museum, the Warriors
sought to connect with these ancestors by engaging with the objects they had
left behind, but found themselves disappointed with how little remained. The
discussion was not one of repatriation, but of knowledge, questioning why so
little was publicly known, why so little was publicly accessible for the
Cherokee on this seminal moment in the history of the British and the Cherokee.
This is a problem with which
Beyond the Spectacle has grappled throughout its year and a half in
existence. Native North American visitors are not uncommon in the historical
record – initial searches revealed hundreds of encounters in the historical
archives, from diplomats like Ostenaco (and of course Pocahontas a century before);
entertainers such as the Ojibwe showmen of the 1840s who performed at Windsor
Castle, the Mohawk lacrosse teams who toured Britain in the 1870s and 1880s and
Buffalo Bill’s famous
Wild West Sioux ofthe 1880s-1900s; soldiers such as the
Canadian volunteers of the First and Second World Wars ; and modern visitors like the
AIM activists who toured Ireland and Wales inthe 1970s, artists who ran shows at venues like Bristol’s own
Rainmaker Gallery and modern groups who combine a little of all of these categories, such as the
Warriors of Anikithua.
Together these groups have made thousands of public
appearances before hundreds of thousands of British people, and collectively
have generated an understanding, partial and incomplete but largely positive,
of what it means to be Native North American among the British public. This
understanding, this engagement between the colonial and colonised, between the
former Imperial centre and its periphery, has lasting effects in awareness, in
law, and in popular and academic collaboration, all of which Beyond the Spectacle seeks to probe.
To this end, the project is seeking to effect change in a
number of areas:
·
To further public education, both through formal
teaching resources using material from our research to educate school children
on Native American history and contemporary ways of life, as well as
locally-focused walking tours and historical references for non-academic audiences to enable people to better
understand their own personal, local history with Native North Americans.
·
To enable more Native visitors to travel to
Britain, through specific grants, such as the Canada Council grant obtained for
Kwakwaka’wakw artist Sierra Tasi Baker to attend the opening of an exhibit at
the Horniman museum to which she contributed (image below). Or more generally
though improving access, to enable both visiting Native Americans and the
broader British public to better access not only the archives and the sites of
history, but the material evidence left behind.
 |
Sierra Tasi Baker and the Kwakwaka’wakw interactive at the
Horniman Museum, June 2018. Image courtesy of Skyspirit Consulting.
|
Though Beyond the
Spectacle works as a team on all aspects of this project, one of my own
personal ambitions is to promote better knowledge and access to museum
collections; Native North American holdings in museums in the UK are enormous
and, as many were formed at the first point of contact, hold immense
significance for Native American visitors. Though of course the British
Museum’s collections are huge and available online, much of this material is
held in smaller regional collections too-often unknown to Native visitors.
To this end we are slowly building an online guide toprominent Native collections in the UK, starting last year with the South-East and building in time to cover the
whole country. In time, this resource should help all visitors, but in
particular Native American visitors, to better access and engage with historic
collections, and to help answer the question of where everything, where the
material evidence of this long and complex history, has found a home.
To learn more about
the work of Beyond the Spectacle
please visit our website and blog for
regular updates on the progression of our research and our collaborations with
Native North American communities. If you feel that you, your community or your
institution has material of value to our project, or if you wish to collaborate
with is on one or more of our research programmes, please do get in touch at beyondthespectacle@kent.ac.uk
