Milton Public Library

Ceremony men, making ethnography and the return of the Strehlowcollection, Jason M. Gibson

eng

no index present

non fiction

Ceremony men

electronic resource

dictionaries

Jason M. Gibson

Suny series, tribal worlds: critical studies in American Indiannation building

making ethnography and the return of the Strehlowcollection

Rethinks the role of Indigenous and non-Indigenous interactions in the production of ethnographic museum collections. By analyzing one of the world's greatest collections of Indigenous song, myth, and ceremony-the collections of linguist/anthropologist T. G. H. Strehlow-Ceremony Men demonstrates how inextricably intertwined ethnographic collections can become in complex historical and social relations. In revealing his process to return an anthropological collection to Aboriginal communities in remote central Australia, Jason M. Gibson highlights the importance of personal rapport and collaborations in ethnographic exchange, both past and present, and demonstrates the ongoing importance of sociality, relationship, and orality when Indigenous peoples encounter museum collections today. Combining forensic historical analysis with contemporary ethnographic research, this book challenges the notion that anthropological archives will necessarily become authoritative or dominant statements on a people's cultural identity. Instead, Indigenous peoples will often interrogate and recontextualize this material with great dexterity as they work to reintegrate the documented into their present-day social lives. By theorizing the nature of the documenter-documented relationships this book makes an important contribution to the simplistic postcolonial generalizations that dominate analyses of colonial interaction. A story of local agency is uncovered that enriches our understanding of the human engagements that took, and continue to take, place within varying colonial relations of Australia

adult