This morning I finished labeling all the photos in my black album with their catalog numbers. After I finished, I was ready to continue writing my catalog record in Microsoft Word.
A page from my black album
A picture of Fishing Cone from my black album
At 10 AM I took a break from cataloging my album to give my first public tour of the HRC. I was responsible for the museum portion of the tour, which also covers the library and archives. The museum section of the tour starts out with an overview of the collection, what we are working on (cataloging and rehousing) and a quick talk about the dangers to museum collections (light, temperature, humidity)and how the HRC works to prevent them (temperature and humidity controls, and motion sensor lights in storage turn off if no one is in storage).
After that, I showed the group a few interesting objects and gave them a brief background about them. Because some people on the tour were NPS employees from the GIS lab, I pulled an interesting map to show them. The map showed the park from a non traditional perspective: from north looking south at an angle so as to show terrain. Then, I showed them a drum that I just recently cataloged that was used by Native Americans in 1996 in a ceremony for the reintroduction of the wolves into the park.
From there, I showed the group the museum's collection of wolf skulls, which are collected by the wolf project. These skulls belong to the first generation of wolves that were introduced to the park, as well as some of their offspring. The museum keeps the wolf skulls in storage and makes them available to researchers from the wolf project whenever asked to do so.
The final part of the tour, I showed the tour group our collection of 22 original Thomas Moran field sketches made when Moran accompanied the Hayden expedition into Yellowstone territory in 1871. These field sketches were brought to Congress later that year, and helped convince Congress to set Yellowstone aside as the world's first national park.
The tour went really well - everyone seemed really interested. I am sure my tour experience in the Art and Art History department at UF prepared me for the task.
After the tour, I went up to the library to discuss a certain movie with the librarians. In the process of researching the blessing wand, I discovered that two documentaries were made about the 1999 Buffalo Walk. Although the tribal participants requested that all cameras be turned off during the flesh offering ceremony, one film crew secretly filmed the event for a major cable documentary (I will not name the movie or channel because I do not want to publicize their video). The Native Americans involved have every right to be upset about this surreptitious filming of their sacred ceremony. Another documentary, called The Buffalo War, was produced by Matthew Testa, who got permission from the participants to recreate the ceremony for the movie.
I went to talk to the librarians, Jessie and Jackie, to see if there was any way they could remove the offensive movie from the shelves, to make it special request only, to include a disclaimer on the box, or recommend The Buffalo War instead to interested patrons. Jessie and Jackie agreed that something should be done, but hadn't encountered a similar situation. They are now in the process of contacting the University of Montana library to see if they have a precedent that could be followed here. Both movies are currently in VHS in the library, and they thought maybe they should purchase the Testa documentary of DVD so that people would more likely borrow that one.
After speaking with the librarians, I worked on cataloging my album for the remainder of the day. I got to page 73 out of 131, and I hope to finish that portion of the project tomorrow.
Nice catch on that offending movie. I wonder if the decision to film surreptitiously would be actionable, especially if the crew had explicitly agreed not to do so.
ReplyDeleteI can't imagine why Native Americans don't trust white people.