In “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” authors Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang emphasize decolonization as the unsettling act of repatriating Indigenous land and life, not as a metaphor that can be absorbed to advance general social justice efforts, recenter whiteness, or relieve the settler of feelings of guilt (2012, 3; 21). Tuck and Yang problematize several “settler moves to innocence” that are used as “excuses, distractions, and diversions from decolonization” and are employed as strategies to “relieve the settler of feelings of guilt or responsibility” without requiring the settler to return land, give up power or privilege, or “change much at all” (10). Central to this argument is the relationship between land ownership and wealth. In this blog post, I argue that these themes of wealth, ownership, and power can be applied to museum provenance data.
It is necessary to recognize that Tuck and Yang concentrate their argument on decolonization around the specific act of repatriating land to Indigenous peoples. However, there are compelling overlaps between land ownership and the ownership of art and cultural heritage objects. My experience with museum provenance data largely derives from my work with the Getty Research Institute’s “America and the Recentering of the International Art Market: From Dealers to Collectors to Museums, 1880 – 1930” project, which seeks to understand the economic role of the United States art market during the Gilded Age, a time known for rapid economic growth that also witnessed the U.S. annexation of Hawaii, the Wounded Knee Massacre, and the establishment of Native American boarding schools.
The Gilded Age art market is unsurprisingly and overwhelmingly white, male, and wealthy. The favored art for collectors also tended to match this demographic description, with the most valued art produced by European ‘Old Masters,’ such as Sandro Botticelli and Johannes Vermeer. However, Native American art appears sporadically in art dealer stock books, such as those in the Getty Provenance Index’s collections. American art historian Elizabeth Hutchinson has written about the “Indian craze” of the late nineteenth century, in which it became stylish for white households to have an “Indian corner” consisting of Native American handicrafts. Hutchinson’s analysis of the “Indian corner” reflects several themes present in Tuck and Yang’s writings, including the idea of “playing Indian” (Hutchinson 2009, 103; Tuck and Yang 2012, 8) and the indigenized consciousness of the settler (Hutchinson, 2009, chapter 1; Tuck and Yang 2012, 17), which Tuck and Yang use as an example of a settler adoption narrative that “spins a fantasy that an individual settler can become innocent, indeed heroic and indigenized, against a backdrop of national guilt” (2012, 14).
These Native American works of art were often produced by students at government-sponsored boarding schools (Hutchinson, 2009, chapter 1), in which students were simultaneously forced to relinquish their Indigenous identity and conform to white settler ideas of Indigenous culture through the production of baskets and other wares that could be sold to supply market demands (Slivka 2011, 237). This setting can make provenance research difficult, but not impossible. This provenance research could benefit from Dr. Eve Tuck’s Collaborative Indigenous Research (CIR) Digital Garden, which showcases instances of participatory Indigenous research in academic and community scholarship. An example of participatory Indigenous research at the Getty includes the recent Codice Maya de Mexico exhibit, in which the curator collaborated with Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo (CIELO) to translate the exhibition text in written and audio form in three Mayan languages: K’iche, Mam, and Peninsular Maya. A second example includes a recent exhibit titled “Reinventing the Americas: Construct. Erase. Repeat,” which showcased the artwork of Indigenous artist Denilson Baniwa to counter the mythologies and utopian visions of early European depictions of the Americas.
This collaborative research could be employed to confront wealth, ownership, and power in museum provenance data. Provenance research and data focus on the social aspects of how art exchanges hands and fluctuates in value as the art is bought, sold, gifted, or donated. In response to Tuck and Yang’s call for “decolonization as material, not metaphor” (2012, 28), provenance data can assist repatriation efforts by identifying the original creator for the return of museum holdings. The artist may be anonymous, as in the artwork produced by Indigenous students at boarding schools. In these instances, provenance data primarily focuses on subsequent exchanges, likely from white hand to white hand, until the works find their way to museums. When determining how to recognize an artist who may remain permanently nameless, Collaborative Indigenous Research may help determine how to describe the artist and if/how/where to repatriate artwork. For example, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition offers consultations for community allies. The Carlisle Indian School Project plans to open a museum and heritage center and may be interested in returned student works. However, it is important to note that this can be traumatic work, particularly for Indigenous individuals, and collaborations/repatriations should only occur if desired by the originating communities.
In the conclusion of their article, Tuck and Yang highlight the incompatibility of incommensurability and reconciliation. Incommensurability unsettles settler moves to innocence, while reconciliation attempts to rescue settler normalcy (2012, 35). Museum provenance research must prioritize the work and self-sovereignty of the original Indigenous creator and community over the subsequent property exchange. Efforts to repatriate artwork and artifacts must result in a tangible return of property, if desired by the originating community, when what are considered “legal” museum acquisitions and provenance fail to consider the history of systematic cultural looting. Because this provenance research can potentially retraumatize, considerations must include who will be tasked with performing this work, and what therapeutic support will be offered.
References
Carlisle Indian School Project. “Future.” Accessed February 6, 2023. https://carlisleindianschoolproject.com/future/.
Collaborative Indigenous Research. “Collaborative Indigenous Research Digital Garden.” Accessed February 6, 2023. https://www.collaborativeindigenousresearch.com.
Getty Research Institute. “America and the Recentering of the International Art Market: From Dealers to Collectors to Museums, 1880–1930.” Projects & Initiatives, n.d. https://www.getty.edu/projects/america-recentering-international-art-market/.
Hutchinson, Elizabeth. The Indian Craze: Primitivism, Modernism, and Transculturation in American Art, 1890–1915. Duke University Press, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822392095.
Slivka, Kevin. "Art, Craft, and Assimilation: Curriculum for Native Students during the Boarding School Era." Studies in Art Education 52, no. 3 (2011): 225-242.
The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. “Get Involved.” Accessed February 6, 2023. https://boardingschoolhealing.org/get-involved/.
Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 1–40.
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