WHO CARES?: CARING FOR THE SPIRITUAL ELEMENTS OF OBJECTS IN MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

Breaking the Glass Case | Alexandra Forand 

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“Some pieces were stolen out from graves or families, individuals, but when they came to the museum does that mean that in the grand scheme of things, that’s where they were meant to be? You know, that their perceived end is at a museum? Or is that just part of their life?” – Don Bain (Lheit-lit’en--Carrier) 

Museums have amassed diverse and dense collections, and within these collections there are a number of Indigenous artifacts--objects that were once used for ceremonial practises and continue to be sacred to this day. These artifacts are physically conserved and cared for by museum staff, but what about the spiritual needs of these items? These artifacts aren’t simply inanimate objects, but instead they’re living beings and hold power even if they are removed from their original community. Until very recently the need to spiritually look after these objects has been largely ignored.

What I am trying to impress on you, dear reader, is that these spiritual objects are not simply artifacts within a collection, but are still a part of the outside world. The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) was one of the first institutions to recognize this and thus the museum’s Cultural Resource Centre was born. The centre creates a nurturing environment that properly honours the wishes of Indigenous peoples: to care, protect, and allow access to these objects. The Cultural Resource Centre at the NMAI acknowledges the dual life of these objects.

The NMAI (Source). 

The NMAI isn’t the only institution striving to care for more than the physical elements of these objects. During a revitalization project at the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology, the Vancouver Hindu community conducted an abishekam (ritual renewal) for a bronze figure of the Hindu God Vishnu that had been in the collection for 24 years. The abishekam involved anointing the figure with auspicious liquids including water mixed with turmeric, milk, oil, honey, and a type of fruit salad. The figure was dressed with regalia and floral garlands, before being offered a feast of fruits and sweets.

Another way ritual objects can be spiritually cared for is through smudging the collection or a specific object (smudging is the exposure to smoke from plants such as sweetgrass, tobacco, or sage).  In 2017, Kim Wheatley offered traditional blessings with water and tobacco for the Out of Depths: The Blue Whale Story exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum.

Ritual smudging is one of many ways to care for ceremonial objects (Source). 

The way objects are stored in collections can also reflect the intervention of spiritual care. For instance, when displaying or storing a ceremonial pipe, the stem and bowl should be separated when not performing sacred ceremonies (If you are interested in a version the traditional story behind the ceremonial pipe, I’ve included the link here).

Up until this point I have focused on examples where members from the community came into the collection and cared for these object, but there are instances where community members have borrowed objects from museums’ collections. Mariam Clavir recalls:

“ a Kwakwaka’wakw family that was moving their old regalia from the Kwagiulth Museum in Cape Mudge, B.C., to the U’mista Cultural Center in Alert Bay gave a potlatch for this event. The objects were central to the celebration, and normally regalia would be worn and danced at a potlatch. The family, however, chose to show the fragile old pieces but not to dance them. Out of respect for this ancestral regalia, it was, as tradition demanded, witnessed by those at the event, but handled by its First Nations owners according to museum conservation standards.”

This story told by Clavir harkens back to the idea that led to the NMAI’s Cultural Resource Centre: preserved, but available to communities.

In museum collection there is a set protocol and a laundry list of best practises designed to care for the physical elements of museum artifacts. While I am not arguing to throw out these measures, I am urging museum collections (and the staff who work there) to prioritize the spiritual care the objects. At present these objects are being kept in a mausoleum, but these objects aren’t at the end of their life, instead they are still very much connected to the communities from which they originated. The benefits of caring for the spiritual elements of these objects greatly out-weighs the risks to the physical objects.

What do you think? Should spiritual care be applied to all museum objects? Have you seen it in praise or do you care for collections beyond the physical? Let me know! As always, you can leave a comment, send me an email (allyforand@gmail.com), or if Twitter and Instagram are more your speed my handle on both is @Ally_but_online.