Welcome to the weekly roundup! We do our best to collect the latest job openings and welcome submissions from the community. For more opportunities, we recommend the following databases: HireCulture – Jobs in the Humanities in Massachusetts Job HQ – American Association of Museums American …
Welcome to the weekly roundup! We do our best to collect the latest job openings and welcome submissions from the community. For more opportunities, we recommend the following databases: HireCulture – Jobs in the Humanities in Massachusetts Job HQ – American Association of Museums American …
Recently several major museums have taken the significant step of removing Native American cultural items from display. The American Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum, and Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology are a few of the big names acting [1]. It may seem sudden, but the situation has been years in the making. Museums are covering certain exhibits of Indigenous belongings in response to the new regulations for the Native American Graves Protection & Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The new regulations, which were published in December, are not without their controversies and complexities but they do address major loopholes in the previous regulations.
I have previously written about NAGPRA and some of the challenges that accompany it. The Native American Graves Protection & Repatriation Act was passed into law in 1990 and provided a legal path for federally recognized tribes to reclaim ancestors, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. For thirty-three years the regulations, or rules, that institutions must follow to be in compliance, remained substantially unchanged. During those more than three decades, relatively little progress toward repatriation was made by most institutions. The new regulations, if nothing else, light a fire under certain institutions to work towards compliance.
The previously proposed timeline for compliance was two years, which has been increased to five after public feedback from both institutions and tribes. Being realistic, it’s unlikely that all or even most, institutions will be compliant by 2029. As of 2023, less than 40% of institutions have repatriated the ancestors in their care as appropriate. The sheer size of museum collections along with the time and labor required for provenance research and consultation makes NAGPRA compliance a massive undertaking. Yet, it is significant that major players are taking the new regulations seriously. So why, if the path to repatriation is so long, are we seeing Native American cultural exhibits disappearing from public view?
It has to do with one of the major changes in the new NAGPRA regulations that introduced no small amount of frenzied activity behind the scenes in museums. The new regulations include a provision for “duty of care,” which requires that museums and institutions “Obtain free, prior, and informed consent from lineal descendants, Indian Tribes, or Native Hawaiian organizations prior to allowing any exhibition of, access to, or research on human remains or cultural items.”[1] Essentially, museums can no longer display items which fall under NAGPRA without prior consent of tribes who have a claim.
The issue arises that many museums do not know which items may be subject to NAGPRA. They may have patchy provenance or even questionable identification of items currently on display. Many institutions are choosing to operate cautiously on the assumption that all or most items on display could be subject to NAGPRA. This assumption means that the continued display of these items would be a violation. As both museums in tribes embark on the consultation process, we will see revised versions of these exhibits return. I would hazard a guess of a timeline of about three to five years. Hopefully museums will take this opportunity to collaborate with tribes on more thoughtful and accurate representations of Native cultures.
[1] “A Famed NYC Museum Is Closing 2 Native American Halls, and Others Have Taken Similar Steps,” CBS News, January 27, 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/museum-of-natural-history-closes-native-american-halls-harvard/.
[2] 43 CFR § 10.1 (d)(3), https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-43/subtitle-A/part-10.
With 60 degree days in February in Boston, trees budding early, and a general sense of impending climate disaster making itself more felt with every passing day, I have started to enter the climate anxiety or eco-anxiety zone. Sarah Lowe, a clinical psychologist and Associate …
Welcome to the weekly roundup! We do our best to collect the latest job openings and welcome submissions from the community. For more opportunities, we recommend the following databases: HireCulture – Jobs in the Humanities in Massachusetts Job HQ – American Association of Museums American …
Sometime in early 2020, I came across a video that changed how I approach history. In this video, costumer Bernadette Banner was constructing an Edwardian walking skirt to wear around her native NYC. While at the time I had no idea what a bias was, center seams, or really any idea how to sew beyond simple embroidery, I found myself drawn to this world of history as she narrated. Not only was she showing her reference patterns, she explained how women would wear these long garments, as well as how to read clothing for the history and culture of the time. There was so much to learn about the textiles that went into extant garments and how the quality of the textile was so important. Clothing had more Easter eggs than a Taylor Swift music video, and honestly the approach to dressing made more sense than our modern ways. The more I watched Banner, the more I was exposed to other historians such as Abby Cox. She truly opened the door to understanding how people in history were actually exceptionally smart, even if there were no iPads or internet.
We often think about people in history as being stupid, purely because they didn’t know the same things we know today. George Washington died just before the first dinosaur bones were discovered, germ theory didn’t exist when the plague hit, and people didn’t bathe in tubs for a long time. But this doesn’t mean that people were dumb and dirty. For example, the outer layers of a woman’s clothing was often re-worn several times before it was washed. And it was not because the fabric was like your jeans and you were concerned about the fabric stretching or the dye coming out. There was strategy.
Instead of having your nice expensive garments touching your body and getting sweat and oils on it, multiple underlayers would be worn. Depending on the period in history, there would be a lightweight linen shift or chemise and some form of support garment for the bust. In the middle ages it was a kirtle, in the 1700s it was a pair of stays, and in the 1800s it was a corset. These garments were designed to provide support, take pressure off the back, and give clothing smoother lines. There was no need to suck in your stomach or do extra ab workouts!
These underlayers not only protected you from the outside, they also protected your clothing from you. Linen and cotton (natural fibers) are exceptionally breathable and dry quickly when the wearer is sweating or exposed to more heat. Underlayers like the shift would be rotated out daily and washed consistently. Things like the stays or corset would be washed less frequently, but still more often than the outer layers. If you think about it, women at this time washed their undergarments more frequently than most women today do. (seriously, ask a friend how often she washes her bras.)
In the 1700s, women didn’t wash their hair as often (maybe once a week or two), but they used the equivalent of a hair mask and dry shampoo to protect the hair from the world and handle oils. Cox went as far as to spend a year doing this method, and documented how her hair felt mostly the same as it did with her modern hair routine. She also did an in depth exploration into shapewear and how if women in history didn’t match the shape of the day, they could modify their clothing to look like they had a tiny waist or a flat chest or whatever was en vogue for the time. Women weren’t pressured to change their bodies like they are now. If you were pregnant or bloated, you could let out your corset. Trying to attract a man at a ball? Add more hip padding so your waist looks snatched. Fashions would stay on trend for years at a time, garments were made to last, and if you are following along and counting, this means that women only needed a few items of clothing to last through their whole adulthood.
I would not call myself a stylish person by any means, but I love watching historical sewing videos. Not only have they given me perspective on how slow fashion has worked throughout history, they’ve changed how I think of people in history. They may not have known about germs or dinosaurs, but they were smart and strategic – down to their undergarments.