Tag Archives: Lynne Altstatt

CUA SLIS 2011 Students Tour

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19 students and their two instructors from the Catholic University’s Art and Museum Libraries Institute were treated to a tour of the Museum Support Center (MSC) and the National Museum of American Indian’s Cultural Resources Center (NMAI/CRC) on Tuesday, July 27. Of course the libraries from both Centers were highlighted in the tours. This is the third consecutive year that the Libraries' two Suitland-based librarians have hosted this group.

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The MSC tour started at the MSC Library for a quick intro by MSC/NMNH librarian Gil Taylor on how the Libraries is meeting the challenges of 21st century library services. The group then was treated to a visit to the Museum Conservation Institute, expertly guided by MCI Tech Info Specialist Ann N’Gadi. At MCI, E. Keats Webb gave a tour of the MCI Imaging Studio, Mehdi Moini showed off some of his sophisticated and expensive analytical equipment. HaeMin Park and Jia-sun Tsang explained about the Paintings Studio with some real-life examples and then Don Williams regaled with the history of various furniture pieces under restoration. The group headed to wet-storage unit Pod 5 and were told many scientific fish tales by Dr. Jeff Williams, and included a look-see with a celebrity fish, the coelacanth. Afterwards, NMNH Collections Support staffer Joel Allen hosted a visit to the huge Pod 4 holdings, and detailed the careful care needed to store a myriad of fascinating objects of all sizes.

Following lunch at the MSC cafe, the group moved on to the NMAI/CRC where they had a general tour of the building led by NMAI Librarian, Lynne Altstatt. This tour included the indoor ceremonial area (which is the only room at the Smithsonian where you can light a fire), the NMAI Conservation Lab (where several Mellon fellows talked about their current projects), and the NMAI Library. At the library, the students were given information packets with materials for both the NMAI Library and the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. Lynne discussed the histories of the NMAI and the NMAI Library and also talked about the role of the Libraries at the Smithsonian. Several of the CUA students are hoping for library careers in a museum environment so there were several lively question and answer periods during the tour.  It is always a pleasure to work with such enthusiastic guests.

Check the Libraries' Flickr site for some more MSC tour photos.

—Lynne Altstatt and Gil Taylor

New and Notable—National Museum of the American Indian Library

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Here are selected new books from the National Museum of the American Indian Library.

SymbolsThe book of symbols: archetypal reflections in word and image.

AZ108 .B66 2010

Imprint: Köln : Taschen, 2010.

Some 350 essays combine with 800 full-color images to evoke the hidden dimension of archetypal symbology. Each of the essays examines a given symbol's psychic processes and dynamics. Etymological roots, the play of opposites, paradox and shadow, the ways in which diverse cultures have engaged a symbolic image – all these factors are taken into consideration.

 

 

 

BarbariansBarbarians and brothers : Anglo-American warfare, 1500-1865. Wayne E. Lee.

DA66 .L44 2011

Imprint: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2011.

"Barbarians and Brothers is a sophisticated, readable, and most important history of 'frightfulness' in Anglo-American war from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. Lee makes clear that the level of violence in war-particularly the treatment of prisoners and civilians-was not just a matter of how soldiers and states perceived their enemies. Englishmen were more restrained in fighting brothers (other Englishmen) than barbarians (Irishmen or Native Americans). But violence also depended on complex and shifting relationships among the size of forces, the development of the state, the influence of international law and social norms, and the extent to which civilians were drawn into the fighting. This is an unusually rich and rewarding history."-Ira D. Gruber, Rice University

 

BrokenBroken circle : the dark legacy of Indian residential schools: a memoir. Theodore Fontaine. 

E96.5 .F66 2010

Imprint: [Surrey, B.C.] : Heritage House, c2010.

Theodore (Ted) Fontaine lost his family and freedom just after his seventh birthday, when his parents were forced to leave him at an Indian residential school by order of the Roman Catholic Church and the Government of Canada. Twelve years later, he left school frozen at the emotional age of seven. He was confused, angry and conflicted, on a path of self-destruction. At age 29, he emerged from this blackness. By age 32, he had graduated from the Civil Engineering Program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and begun a journey of self-exploration and healing. In this powerful and poignant memoir, Ted examines the impact of his psychological, emotional and sexual abuse, the loss of his language and culture, and, most important, the loss of his family and community. He goes beyond details of the abuses of Native children to relate a unique understanding of why most residential school survivors have post-traumatic stress disorders and why succeeding generations of First Nations children suffer from this dark chapter in history. Told as remembrances described with insights that have evolved through his healing, his story resonates with his resolve to help himself and other residential school survivors and to share his enduring belief that one can pick up the shattered pieces and use them for good.

 

SacredSacred games, death, and renewal in the ancient Eastern Woodlands: the Ohio Hopewell system of cult sodality heterarchies. A. Martin Byers.

E99.H69 B95 2011

Imprint: Lanham : AltaMira Press, c2011.

The book presents an account of the Ohio Middle Woodland period embankment earthworks, ca 100 B.C. to A.D. 400, that is radically different from the prevailing theory. Byers critically addresses all the arguments and characterizations that make up the current treatment of the embankment earthworks and then presents an alternative interpretation. This unconventional view hinges on two basic social characterizations: the complementary heterarchical community model and the cult sodality heterarchy model. Byers posits that these two models interact to characterize the Ohio Middle Woodland period settlement pattern; the community was constituted by autonomous social formations: clans based on kinship and sodalities based on companionship. The individual communities of the region each have their clan components dispersed within a fairly well-defined zone while the sodality components of the same set of region-wide communities ally with each other and build and operate the embankment earthworks. This dichotomy is possible only because the clans and sodalities respect each other as relatively autonomous; the affairs of the clans, focusing on domestic and family matters, remain outside the concerns of the sodalities and the affairs of the sodalities, focusing on world renewal and sacred games, remain outside the concerns of the clans. Therefore, two models are required to understand the embankment earthworks and no individual earthwork can be identified with any particular community. This radical interpretation grounded in empirical archaeological data, as well as the in-depth overview of the current theory of the Ohio Middle Woodland period, make this book a critically important addition to the perspective of scholars of North American archaeology and scholars grappling with prehistoric social systems.

 

PeruPeru: a chronicle of deception: attempts to transfer the Awajún border territory in the Cordillera del Cóndor to the mining industry. Research Team of the Organization for the Development of the Border Communities of El Cenepa-ODECOFROC; [translation, Sylvia Fisher Carrasco].

F3430.1.A35 P478 2010

Imprint: Distrito de Cenepa, Provincia Condorcanqui, Amazonas, Peru : ODECOFROC ; Lima, Peru : Racimos de Ungurahui Working Group ; Copenhagen, Denmark : International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 2010. 

 This report argues and demonstrates that the Peruvian government acted in bad faith by modifying the original proposal to create the Ichigkat Muja National Park agreed upon with the Awajún and Wampís indigenous communities of the District of El Cenepa, Department of Amaonas, Peru. The proposal to create a protected natural area in the Cordillera del Cóndor, the traditional land of these peoples, was prepared together with the environmental authority of the Peruvian government through a long negotiation process and detailed scientific studies, with the purpose of preserving an extremely vulnerable area at the headwaters of the Cenepa River, and as a result of the contribution made by the Awajún and Wampís communities to the establishment of long-lasting peace along the Peruvian-Ecuadorian border. 

The report also proves that the Peruvian government acted in this manner in order to benefit mining entrepreneurs, some of whom maintain strong political ties with senior government officials. As a result, the territory of these peoples has been threatened, and their rights, not to mention the national and international laws that protect them, have been challenged. 

The Awajún and Wampís communities and their representative organiations have continuously demanded the following: the reestablishment of the original proposal to create the National Park and the cancelation of mining concessions; neither have been granted by authorities. This situation serves as a basis for the claims made by the indigenous movement that led to massive demonstrations in 2008 and 2009, in addition to a prolonged strike, which culminated in the bloody events of Bagua (June 5, 2009), when the government violently intervened to evacuate the Awajún and Wampís contingents that had blocked a highway. 

 

RemovalEncyclopedia of American Indian removal. Daniel F. Littlefield Jr. and James W. Parins, Editors.

E98.R4 E63 2011

Imprint: Santa Barbara, Calif. : Greenwood, c2011.

In 1830, Andrew Jackson became the first U.S. president to implement removal of Native Americans with the passage of the Indian Removal Act. Less than a decade later, tens of thousands of Native Americans—Cherokee, Chickasaw, Muscogee-Creek, Seminole, and others—were forcibly moved from their tribal lands to enable settlement by Caucasians of European origin.

Encyclopedia of American Indian Removal presents a realistic depiction of removal as a complicated process that was deeply affected by political, economic, and tribal factors, rather than the popular romanticized concept of American Indians being herded west by military troops through a trackless wilderness. This work is presented in two volumes. Volume One contains essays on subjects and people that are general in scope and arranged alphabetically by subject; Volume Two is dedicated to primary documents regarding Indian removal and examines specific information about political debates, Indian responses to removal policy, and removals of individual tribes.

—Lynne Altstatt

NMAI Library hosts Grad Students

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On the afternoon of April 8 the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) Librarian, Lynne Altstatt, provided a tour for a group of thirteen recently graduated students from the Emporia State University’s School of Library and Information Management and three faculty members. The students were part of the Emporia Diversity Initiative (EDI) program, a 3-year long (2006-2009), multi-partner project led by Emporia State University’s School of Library and Information Management to recruit and educate local minority library staff in Kansas, Colorado and Oregon.

The EDI is funded with $857,754 dollars as a part of the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Laura Bush 21 st Century Librarian Program awards of 2006. The students were attending a week-long seminar "Preserving Cultural Identity: Treasuring America’s Diversity through Librarianship" in Washington, DC. The seminar was planned to introduce the students to the importance of maintaining cultural legacies within their community. By encouraging the creation of oral histories and the preservation of cultural property, diverse ethnic and cultural differences will be saved, thereby encouraging positive community-based action through library service.

Emporia

Altstatt gave the group a tour of the NMAI Cultural Resources Center, with special attention paid the the NMAI Library. In the Conservation Department two Mellon fellows discussed their current projects and answered the student's questions. Altstatt also provided to the group the history of the National Museum of the American Indian and its predecessor, the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation. She also talked about the responsibilities and daily work life of a museum librarian and shared stories about working in the museum library. The tour ended with a short presentation about the NMAI Archives by the Head Archivist, Jennifer O'Neal.

—Lynne Altstatt

New and Notable—National Museum of the American Indian Library

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Here are selected new books from the National Museum of the American Indian Library.

Image001 Visualizing the sacred: cosmic visions, regionalism, and the art of the Mississippian world, edited by George E. Lankford, F. Kent Reilly III, and James F. Garber. E99.M6815 V57 2011 Imprint: Austin : University of Texas Press, 2011.

The prehistoric native peoples of the Mississippi River Valley and other areas of the Eastern Woodlands of the United States shared a complex set of symbols and motifs that constituted one of the greatest artistic traditions of the pre-Columbian Americas. Traditionally known as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, these artifacts of copper, shell, stone, clay, and wood were the subject of the groundbreaking 2007 book Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms: Interpretations of Mississippian Iconography, which presented a major reconstruction of the rituals, cosmology, ideology, and political structures of the Mississippian peoples. Visualizing the Sacred advances the study of Mississippian iconography by delving into the regional variations within what is now known as the Mississippian Iconographic Interaction Sphere (MIIS). Bringing archaeological, ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and iconographic perspectives to the analysis of Mississippian art, contributors from several disciplines discuss variations in symbols and motifs among major sites and regions across a wide span of time and also consider what visual symbols reveal about elite status in diverse political environments. These findings represent the first formal identification of style regions within the Mississippian Iconographic Interaction Sphere and call for a new understanding of the MIIS as a network of localized, yet interrelated religious systems that experienced both continuity and change over time.

Image002 The myth of indigenous Caribbean extinction: continuity and reclamation in Boriken (Puerto Rico). Tony Castanha. F1619.2.T3 C37 2011 Imprint: New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

One of the greatest myths ever told in Caribbean historiography is that the indigenous peoples who encountered a very lost Christopher Columbus are “extinct.” This book debunks that myth through the uncovering of historical, ethnographical, and census data. The author reveals extensive narratives of Jíbaro Indian resistance and cultural continuity on the island of Borikén. Since the epistemological boundaries of the early history and literature had been written through colonial eyes, key fallacies have been passed down for centuries. Many stories have been kept within family histories having gone “underground” as the result of an abusive past. Whole communities of Jíbaro people survive today.

 

Image003 Native American art. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. E98.A7 M952 2010 Imprint: Boston, Mass.: Museum of Fine Arts Boston; New York, N.Y. : Distributed Art Publishers, 2010.

The collection of Native American artworks is one of the hidden treasures of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with some of its finest objects seldom displayed to ensure their preservation. This volume presents 100 of these little-known works, many reproduced for the first time. Although some objects were made for Native use, many reflect the interaction of Native Americans with other cultures, and demonstrate a mastery of new materials and techniques in weaving, silversmithing, beadwork and other crafts. An introductory essay traces the history of Native American art at the MFA since the late nineteenth century, which mirrors cultural shifts in attitude toward these objects in the United States as a whole. Covering a diversity of objects from across the North American continent-from the eastern and southern Woodlands to the Northwest Pacific Coast, with a particular emphasis on the Southwest-this latest volume in the MFA Highlights series demonstrates the vast richness of American Indian art.

Image004 Across a great divide: continuity and change in native North American societies, 1400-1900, edited by Laura L. Scheiber and Mark D. Mitchell. E98.S67 A26 2010 Imprint: Tucson: University of Arizona Press, c2010.

Archaeological research is uniquely positioned to show how native history and native culture affected the course of colonial interaction, but to do so it must transcend colonialist ideas about Native American technological and social change. This book applies that insight to five hundred years of native history. Using data from a wide variety of geographical, temporal, and cultural settings, the contributors examine economic, social, and political stability and transformation in indigenous societies before and after the advent of Europeans and document the diversity of native colonial experiences. The book’s case studies range widely, from sixteenth-century Florida, to the Great Plains, to nineteenth-century coastal Alaska. The contributors address a series of interlocking themes. Several consider the role of indigenous agency in the processes of colonial interaction, paying particular attention to gender and status. Others examine the ways long-standing native political economies affected, and were in turn affected by, colonial interaction. A third group explores colonial-period ethnogenesis, emphasizing the emergence of new native social identities and relations after 1500. The book also highlights tensions between the detailed study of local cases and the search for global processes, a recurrent theme in postcolonial research. If archaeologists are to bridge the artificial divide separating history from prehistory, they must overturn a whole range of colonial ideas about American Indians and their history. This book shows that empirical archaeological research can help replace long-standing models of indigenous culture change rooted in colonialist narratives with more nuanced, multilinear models of change—and play a major role in decolonizing knowledge about native peoples.

Image005 Potent mana: lessons in healing and power. Wende Elizabeth Marshall. DU627.8 .M37 2011 Imprint: Albany: State University of New York Press, c2011.

Brilliantly elucidating and weaving together the forces of indigenous sovereignty, colonialism, and personal health, Potent Mana offers a uniquely holistic and intimate portrait of the long-term effects of colonialism on an indigenous people, the kânaka maoli (Native Hawaiians). An ethnographic exploration based on fifteen months of research, the book moves the conversation on the dangerous effects of colonialism forward by exploring the theories and practices of Native Hawaiians engaged in decolonization. Decades of substance abuse, mental illness, depression, language loss, and the concomitant dispossession from sacred lands have accompanied colonialism. Consequently, healing, both mental and physical, is essential to decolonization and indigenous sovereignty in twenty-first century Hawaii. Native Hawaiian-run treatment centers and clinics, more than political rallies, are centers for healing and decolonization on Oahu today. The effects of colonialism and the measures taken to counter and move beyond it, as Wende Elizabeth Marshall convincingly argues, do not take place solely on a supralocal level but shatteringly involve the physical and emotional well-being of real individuals. Becoming decolonized is about overcoming the shame of colonialism, and requires a process of remembering the traditions of ancestors and reinterpreting and rewriting histories that have only been told from a colonial point of view. Decolonization is an indigenous perspective, and an understanding that health is impossible without political power and cultural integrity.

—Lynne Altstatt

“Topping off” in Suitland

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CUA Museum Libraries Institute visit to MSC, July 2010 CUA Museum Libraries Institute visit to MSC, July 2010

Twenty students and two instructors from the Catholic University of America‘s (CUA) School of Library and Information Museum Libraries Institute were hosted by the Smithsonian's two libraries in Suitland, Md. on July 27th. The tour lasted from 10:00am to 4:00pm. A similar tour has been hosted in past years, to rave reviews.

The tour began at the Museum Support Center (MSC) and its library. MSC librarian Gil Taylor outlined where the tour was to take place in the vast building, and explained how the library serves its users from varied disciplines. Then, Lisa Palmer, museum specialist from the Fishes Division, guided the group through a fascinating visit through the newish Pod 5 and its huge “wet” collections. Of special interest to the class was how numerous specimen jars are routinely “topped off” and the revealing of a prehistoric-looking coelacanth specimen.

Next, the class was escorted through the Museum Conservation Institute (MCI) by MCI technical information specialist, Ann N’Gadi. A number of MCI labs and their complex instrumentation were shown, and senior paintings conservator Jia-sun Tsang took time to explain and demonstrate the intricacies of some specific paintings conservation problems and analyses. 

After the tour group finished their tour at the MSC, the group walked over to the National Museum Of the American Indian Cultural Resource Center (NMAI/CRC) where everyone ate their box lunch in the James Bond Room. NMAI Librarian Lynne Altstatt (who had also attended the MSC tour) then proceeded to give the group a tour of the NMAI/CRC and the Vine Deloria, Jr. Library at the National Museum of the American Indian. Lynne talked about the native influences on the architecture and landscape for the NMAI/CRC and explained that the building is a state of the art collections depository and research facility. During the tour of the NMAI Library, Lynne explained how the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation through federal legislation became the National Museum of the American Indian. She also talked about how the NMAI Library fits into the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. Everyone on the tour received a packet of handouts which included the NMAI Collection Development policy, the NMAI Library handout, and other Libraries informational sheets/brochures. The day ended with a presentation from Michael Pahn, Media Archivist, who explained the structure of the NMAI Archives and the services it provides.

Instructor Sally Stokes informed us that it was a the trip to the facilities " . . . was an experience of a lifetime for the entire group.”

—Gil Taylor and Lynne Altstatt

Images (Photographs by Gil Taylor):

Top: CUA Museum Libraries Institute visit to MSC, July 2010 

Bottom: NMAI Librarian Lynne Altstatt gets into research

More photos of the MSC tour.