Hazelton, British Columbia, 28 May 1927
© Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale, fonds Brunhes Delamarre http://las.ehess.fr/document.php?id=66
My name is Guy Stuart, I am an Anthropological curator from the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver BC.
A leading curator in my field, I am aged 45 and studied at BC University and did my doctorate in the Haida People of the Pacific Northwest. My role at the museum is to curate the Haida collection and I need to keep current with issues in museum anthropology and other professional practice.
I travel to Europe regularly to attend conferences and to present papers and also for meetings with like-minded anthropology curators. When in the UK I always go to museums to see for myself how anthropological collections are presented and curated in UK museums. Of course, I’m also keen on looking at museum exhibitions to see if I can find touring exhibitions to take back to Canada.
Prior to a trip to the UK I decided to use the MICHAEL website to see what UK museums are involved with, in regards to anthropology (particularly information about the Haida people – the indigenous people of North West America) and what UK collections have that relates to them.
I arrived at the Michael EU homepage (http://www.michael-culture/org) and looked at the left hand navigation bar. This offers a range of options to browse including a map search – just what I was after.
Clicking on North America, I immediately find a Museum Open learning Initiative at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter. The museum has commissioned a totem pole, carved live in the museum by Tim Paul, a master craftsman from the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation from Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.
This doll from Canada has been dressed in a very detailed, exact copy of an adult female’s clothing. It was collected among the Inuit in the early twentieth century. (PRM 1918.25.13)
Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/
I am fascinated by this and decided to contact the museum to explore the responses of local people to this indigenous tradition and to see if we can co-operate on further projects and swap ideas about workshops and interactions with the public.
I also found Brighton and Hove Museum has a renowned World Arts collection - The collections from Africa, Asia, the Pacific and Americas can be searched by theme - masks, musical instruments, paintings, photographs, puppets, textiles, weapons. Items are described with related information, still and moving images.
As an anthropologist, one of the museums that has always fascinated me is the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, and through Michael I discover there is an excellent Virtual Tour of the museum collection.
I am particularly interested in the collection of costumes from North America including Inuit fur parkas, Plains skin shirts decorated with porcupine quills, painted coats from the north eastern woodlands and a range of decorated moccasins; magic objects including amulets and charms; jewellery and body decoration; locks and keys; tools and weapons; musical instruments.
As I will be visiting France for a conference next spring, I was interested to discover from MICHAEL the details of a website dedicated to the French presence in Canada . A search of the database revealed more than 1500 memoirs, letters and other documents about contacts between the early French settlers and native Canadian peoples.
I decided to follow this up and to see if there were any more archives relating to French settlers in Canada. Going back to MICHAEL, I found details of the ‘France in America’ website and of the collection of black and white images taken by Jean Brunhes during his expedition to British Columbia in 1927.
MICHAEL is a great site – I’ll definitely be back to use it again!
![Native Canadians going to settle the Prairie de la Magdeleine with the French, taken from the annual account of the mission of Sault [Saint-Louis]…, father Claude Chauchetière, 1667-1686.](/files/u1/us-stuart-02-prairie.jpg "Native Canadians going to settle the Prairie de la Magdeleine with the French, taken from the annual account of the mission of Sault [Saint-Louis]…, father Claude Chauchetière, 1667-1686.")