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"Colwell, Chip"
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Can Repatriation Heal the Wounds of History?
In 1990, the US Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which in part established a legal procedure for Native Americans to reclaim cultural items and ancestral remains from museums and federal agencies. Many advocates have framed NAGPRA as a kind of restorative justice in which “healing” is fundamentally integrated into the repatriation process. This article engages with a growing literature that ensures questions of healing are not just casually asserted but closely examined, by critically analyzing why and how NAGPRA has led to the kinds of conflict resolution and peace-building envisioned by some of its proponents. A survey of tribal repatriation workers reveals that “healing” for Native American communities is not uniform in practice or merely the end point of conflict. Rather, it is expressed in five different themes, illustrating that healing is one component of a complex socio-political process that circles around the law’s implementation.
Journal Article
Plundered skulls and stolen spirits : inside the fight to reclaim native America's culture
A leading anthropologist \"explores the fraught project of repatriating Native American sacred objects in this moving and thoughtful work\" ( Publishers Weekly).
Who own the objects that connect us to history? And who has the right to decide, particularly when the objects are sacred or, in the case of skeletal remains, human? As senior curator of anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Chip Colwell has navigated questions like these firsthand. In Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits, he examines how to weigh the religious freedom of Native Americans against the academic freedom of scientists—and whether the emptying of museum shelves elevates human rights or destroys a common heritage.
Today, hundreds of tribes use the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to recover their looted heritage from museums across the country. Colwell shares a personal account of this process, following the trail of four objects as they were created, collected, and ultimately returned to their sources: a sculpture that is a living god, the scalp of a massacre victim, a ceremonial blanket, and a skeleton from a tribe considered by some to be extinct.
These stories reveal a dramatic process that involves not merely obeying the law, but negotiating the blurry lines between identity and morality, spirituality and politics. Repatriation, Colwell argues, is a difficult but vitally important way for museums and tribes to heal the wounds of the past while creating a respectful approach to caring for these rich artifacts of history.
eBook
Collaborative Archaeologies and Descendant Communities
In the 1970s, public archaeology, a major theme in anthropology, sought to articulate the field's new orientation toward engaging the nonprofessional, general public, particularly in the realm of cultural resource management (CRM). Over the decades that followed, this approach evolved to focus increasingly on ways to connect archaeological heritage to different kinds of publics. Through this work, among the most important publics that emerged were groups who claimed descent from the ancient peoples archaeologists studied. By the end of the 1990s, a significant branch of archaeological practice had shifted toward new theories and methods for directly and meaningfully engaging descendant communities. This article focuses on how in the United States, and beyond, research with Native peoples in particular has created a rich dialogue about such wide-ranging themes as ethics, collaboration, indigeneity, and multivocality. Although critiques have emerged, the increasingly active role of descendant communities has fundamentally shifted the way museums present culture and contributed to community development, tribal heritage management programs, social justice, and the advancement of the CRM industry. Descendant communities have helped to fundamentally transform archaeology into a science that is driven by an ethical engagement with key publics invested in the interpretation and management of the material past.
Journal Article
So much stuff : how humans discovered tools, invented meaning, and made more of everything
\"To be human means to need things. Even more human is to need more and more of them. In this engaging, charming book, archaeologist, curator, and writer Chip Colwell takes us around the world, covering topics as wide-ranging as the dawn of tool making, the earliest cave paintings, the complexities of clothing, the Industrial Revolution, the torrent of gizmos invented to bring us closer and supposedly make our lives easier, and, finally, the mountains of unwanted stuff in dumps. Along the way, he raises questions such as: Why is a treasured keepsake sacred to one person but meaningless to another? What do we go through when we clean out the belongings of the dearly departed? And what is the point of storing things in museums? The book is organized around three historical phases: (1) the invention of tools; (2) the dawn of the belief that things mean something beyond their immediate use (around 50,000 years ago); and (3) the Industrial Revolution and the age of mass consumption. Colwell takes us on a tour across millions of years to explain how humans have arrived at this moment-a world that both requires things and is suffering because of them\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Crossroads of Culture
The hectic front of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science hides an unseen back of the museum that is also bustling. Less than 1 percent of the museum's collections are on display at any given time, and the Department of Anthropology alone cares for more than 50,000 objects from every corner of the globe not normally available to the public. This lavishly illustrated book presents and celebrates the Denver Museum of Nature & Science's exceptional anthropology collections for the first time.
The book presents 123 full-color images to highlight the museum's cultural treasures. Selected for their individual beauty, historic value, and cultural meaning, these objects connect different places, times, and people. From the mammoth hunters of the Plains to the first American pioneer settlers to the flourishing Hispanic and Asian diasporas in downtown Denver, the Rocky Mountain region has been home to a breathtaking array of cultures. Many objects tell this story of the Rocky Mountains' fascinating and complex past, whereas others serve to bring enigmatic corners of the globe to modern-day Denver.
Crossroads of Cultureserves as a behind-the-scenes tour of the museum's anthropology collections. All the royalties from this publication will benefit the collections of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science's Department of Anthropology.
eBook
Stuff : humanity's epic journey from naked ape to nonstop shopper
The fascinating tale of humankind's journey from owning nothing to being owned - by our stuff. Why, when and how did our needs become world-destroying addictions?
Book
Curating Secrets
Museums often keep secret information concerning the acquisition and stewardship of their collections even though retaining such privileged information may contradict the ideal of the museum—serving the public good in the public trust. Over the last three decades, this paradox has been particularly revealed during repatriation debates, which have threatened many museums with the loss of objects while exposing histories of illicit and unethical collecting. In this article, I provide a case study to the theme of secrecy by exploring how, in the United States, the institutional culture of museums creates a process that shelters certain kinds of knowledge. While repatriation law in the United States was intended to increase transparency about Native American collections and thus shift power asymmetries between museums and tribes, the law has ultimately reinforced preexisting power structures. Repatriation reveals the tension between concealing and disclosing secrets.
Journal Article