Material Histories: Scots and Aboriginal People in the Canadian Fur Trade (2005-2007)
This AHRC funded project was developed by the Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, and included an exhibition at Marischal Museum in 2007.
Kaahsinnooniksi Ao'toksisawooyawa/Our Ancestors Have Come to Visit. Reconnections with historic Blackfoot shirts (2009-2012)
This AHRC funded project is a collaboration between the Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, and the Blackfoot Nations of Siksika, Piikani, Kainai and Blackfeet.
Alison Brown joined the Department of Anthropology as an Academic Fellow in October 2005. She studied history as an undergraduate at Aberdeen University, where she first became interested in museum anthropology. She has a postgraduate diploma in Museum Studies from Leicester University, an M.Phil. in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University and a D.Phil. in Social Anthropology from Oxford University. Since 1998, she has carried out fieldwork on the Canadian Prairies, with Blackfoot, Plains Cree and Plains Ojibwe communities on projects concerning representation, access and the revival of cultural histories using museum collections as a focus. More recently she has worked on fur trade material culture in Scottish museums and family homes as part of the Material Histories project developed by the Department of Anthropology. In addition to creating a project website http://www.abdn.ac.uk/materialhistories, the project team curated an exhibition based on their research which was held at Marischal Museum in 2007.
Brown has held curatorial and research positions in a number of UK museums, including the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University, and Glasgow Museums. Between 2002 and 2008 she was on the Committee of the Museum Ethnographers Group http://www.museumethnographersgroup.org.uk. She was the Commissioning Editor for exhibition reviews for the Journal of Museum Ethnography from 2004-08.
Alison Brown's doctoral research addressed the changing meanings and continued source community significance of artefacts gathered on a collecting expedition to the Canadian prairies in 1929 and now in the United Kingdom. She used this collection to consider how museums that are both geographically and culturally distant from source communites can work with these communities in order to address their needs, as well as those of the museum. Since completing her doctorate she has worked with Laura Peers of the Pitt Rivers Museum and members of the Kainai Nation, southern Alberta, on a visual repatriation project which addresses community uses of archival photographs taken by an anthropologist on the Kainai Reserve in 1925. This on-going project explores cross-cultural readings of historic photographs as well as culturally appropriate ways of researching, curating, archiving, accessing, and otherwise using museum and archival collections.
Material Histories: Social Relationships between Scots and Aboriginal Peoples in the Canadian Fur Trade, c1870-1930
This project, funded by the AHRC, uses collections in Scottish museums to explore the inter-connected family relationships of Scots fur-traders and Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Beadwork bags, painted coats and other colourful items are the focus for archival research and oral history interviews in Scotland and Canada with descendents of fur-trader families. The research aims to show how artefacts from the past can be used to evoke knowledge and social memories of diaspora relationships, and how the stories told around them can create forms of history that extend beyond those in the written record so as to generate powerful resonances in the present.
'These shirts are our curriculum': artifacts, Blackfoot people and the retrieval of cultural knowledge
This project brings together UK-based researchers with Blackfoot people in Alberta, Canada, and Montana, USA, to explore the cultural history and contemporary meanings of 5 Blackfoot men's shirts held in the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Collected in 1841, the hide shirts are decorated with porcupine quillwork and beadwork; three, with human- and horse-hair fringes along the sleeves, are ritual garments. There are just two shirts of this age in Canadian museums, and Blackfoot people have had little access to them. However, some cultural knowledge relating to them has been retained, and elders wish to revive traditional practices associated with them. Blackfoot leaders have spoken of the shirts as important for youth and hope that learning about them will strengthen cultural identity. The project will make the shirts available to Blackfoot people and the wider public for the first time, and explore how historic artefacts can be used by indigenous communities to revive, share and transmit cultural knowledge, and how they serve to anchor social memory and in the construction of identity. Through the exhibition of these shirts at Glenbow and Galt Museums in Alberta, and through handling workshops for Blackfoot people, we hope to show how close examination of the shirts can allow for the retrieval, consolidation, and transmission of cultural knowledge embodied in such artefacts. In turn, we hope that the project will inform future museum practice. Funded by the AHRC, the project is a collaboration between Brown and Laura Peers of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.
Brown, AK. (2010). 'Mokisins, 'Cloaks' and 'a belt of a peculiar fabrik': Recovering the history of the Thomas Whyte collection of North American clothing, formerly in the Grierson Museum, Thornhill'. Transactions of the Dumfries and Galloway Natural History Society, vol 83, pp. 131-149.
Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings
Chapters
Brown, AK. (in press). 'Beyond the end of steel”: Recasting the Franklin Motor Expedition to Canada'. A Brown, J Bell & R Gordon (eds), in: Recreating First Contact: Expeditions, Anthropology and Popular Culture. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC.
Brown, AK. & Peers, L. (in press). 'The Blackfoot Shirts Project: ‘Our Ancestors Have Come to Visit’'. A Coombes & R Phillips (eds), in: Museum Transformations: Art, Culture, History. International Handbooks of Museum Studies, Wiley-Blackwell.
Brown, AK., Bell, J. & Gordon, R. (in press). 'Expeditions, their Their Films and Histories: An Introduction'. in: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press. Washinton DC.
Brown, AK., Massan, C. & Grant, A. (2011). 'Christina Massan's Beadwork and the Recovery of a Family History'. S Carter & P MacCormack (eds), in: Recollecting: Lives of Aboriginal Women of the Canadian Northwest and the U.S. Borderlands. The West Unbound: Social and Cultural Studies, Athabasca University Press, Edmonton, AB, Canada, pp. 89-111.
Brown, AK. & Peers, L. (2009). 'Just by bringing these photographs...: On the other meanings of anthropological images'. C Morton & E Edwards (eds), in: Photography, Anthropology and History: Expanding the Frame. Ashgate, Farnham, United Kingdom, pp. 265-280.
Brown, AK. & Peers, L. (2009). 'Colonial Photographs and Post-Colonial Relationships: The Kainai-Oxford Photographic Histories Project'. A May Timpson (ed.), in: First Nations First Thoughts: The Impact of Indigenous Thought in Canada. University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver, BC, Canada, pp. 123-144.
Brown, AK. (2004). 'A social history of four beadwork bands'. in: D.G. Malaher (ed) Papers of the Rupert’s Land Colloquium 2004, 'A social history of four beadwork bands', Winnipeg : The Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies. D.G. Malaher (ed) Papers of the Rupert’s Land Colloquium 2004, 'A social history of four beadwork bands', Winnipeg : The Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies, pp. 229-240.
Brown, AK. (2001). 'Revealing histories: a cross-cultural reading of the Franklin Motor Expedition to Canada'. in: A. Shelton (ed), Collectors: Expressions of Self and Other (London : Horniman Museum in association with the Museu Antropologia Coimbra. A. Shelton (ed), Collectors: Expressions of Self and Other (London : Horniman Museum in association with the Museu Antropologia Coimbra, pp. 23-40.
Contributions to Conferences
Papers
Brown, AK. (2009). 'These shirts are our curriculum”: artefacts, Blackfoot people, and the retrieval of cultural knowledge'. Paper presented at Heritage and Material Culture workshop, London, United Kingdom, 18/09/09 - 19/09/09,.
Brown, AK. (2007). 'Mokisins”, “cloaks” and “a belt of a peculiar fabrick”: recovering the history of the Thomas Whyte collection of northeastern North American clothing'. Paper presented at 28TH AMERICAN INDIAN WORKSHOP: Premières Nations, Collections Royales, Paris, France, 10/05/07 - 13/05/07,.
Brown, AK. (2007). 'Beyond the end of steel”: Recasting the Franklin Motor Expedition to Canada'. Paper presented at 106th American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Washinton DC, United States, 28/11/07 - 2/12/07,.
Books and Reports
Books
Brown, AK. (in press). 'Encounters: First Nations and British Museums'. University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver.
Brown, AK., Bell, J. & Gordon, R. (eds) (in press). 'Recreating First Contact: Expeditions, Anthropology and Popular Culture'. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, USA.
Brown, AK. (2008). 'Material Histories: Proceedings of a Workshop held at Marischal Museum, University of Aberdeen. April 26-27 2007'. University of Aberdeen Marischal Museum, Aberdeen.
Brown, AK. & Peers, L. (2006). 'Pictures Bring Us Messages’ / Sinaakssiiksi aohtsimaahpihkookiyaawa: Photographs and Histories from the Kainai Nation'. Unknown Publisher, University of Toronto Press.
Brown, AK. & Peers, L. (2003). 'Museums and Source Communities: A Routledge Reader'. Unknown Publisher, Routlege.
Contributions to Specialist Publications
Letters
Brown, AK. (2005). 'The Plains redisplay at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology'. p. 232-240, Journal of Museum Ethnography.
Brown, AK. (2001). 'Artefacts as “Alliances”: Perspectives on First Nations Collections in Museums'. p. 79-89, Journal of Museum Ethnography.
Other Contributions
Brown, AK., Peers, L. & Richardson, H. (2010). 'Kaahsinnooniksi Ao'tolsisawooyawa: Our Ancestors Have Come to Visit: Reconnections with historic Blackfoot shirts'.
Non-textual Forms
Exhibitions
Brown, AK. & Peers, L., (2010). 'Kaahsinnooniksi Ao'toksisawooyawa: Our Ancestors Have Come to Visit: Reconnections with historic Blackfoot shirts'. , 2010, Exhibition.
