Stephanie Craig, citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, runs her own business, Kalapuya Weaving & Consulting. Besides teaching traditional basket weaving, she consults museums and galleries on basket designs and materials. That includes helping with exhibits and identifying woven pieces. She wants to see the British Museum. Not so much to explore its exhibit halls or visit its shops, but to set a few things straight with its Indigenous collection.
“I would love to go to the British Museum and look at everything that they have from Oregon and Northern California and Southern Washington because a lot of things are misidentified,” said Craig. “It’s not until you look at the actual belonging itself and doing research where you can really determine where the belonging comes from.”
Living items
Historically, museums and galleries have taken a detached, outdated, and Eurocentric view of Indigenous peoples. Many Indigenous communities have been wary of outside scholars, due to a history of anthropologists and historians’ portrayal of them as primitive, defeated and extinct people. Over the past decade there has been a push by Native advocates and their supporters to decolonize or Indigenize museums and galleries.