On Wednesday 1 May a new special exhibition called Tikiġaq / Point Hope: Life on Alaska’s North Slope will open, free, at the Polar Museum. The exhibition has been a long time in the making; but, when a recent acquisition arrived that dramatically altered its direction, we got a valuable reminder about the power of engaging with different communities.

In late 2017 the Polar Museum was approached by somebody with an old leather suitcase full to bursting with intriguing bone, fur, ivory and stone items that, according to their hundred-year-old labels, came from ‘Tigara, Alaska’. Known by many today as Point Hope, the small Alaskan village of Tikiġaq on the Western-most extremity of Alaska’s North Slope has a rich and varied history stretching back over millennia. The items in the suitcase, which represent several periods of Tikiġaq’s past from stone arrowheads to more recent fur items made for sale by the indigenous Iñupiaq, were collected by a missionary called Reginald Hoare who sent them back to his family in Britain. However, the information contained in some of the old labels gave us pause to think especially carefully about how to approach them. Some of the implements in the collection were labelled by Hoare as having been found in graves or ‘among bones’.

An assortment of objects unpacked from the suitcase.
(c) Scott Polar Research Institute

The presence of grave goods in museums is highly contentious. Criticisms have been levelled at museums that have continued to acquire or display culturally sensitive materials with seemingly little regard for the wishes of the indigenous people who created them. Yet, the International Council of Museums code of ethics states that when it comes to such items, where possible museums should respect the wishes of originator communities. So, after some research and seeking advice from contacts in Alaska, we reached out to community representatives in Tikiġaq to alert them to the existence of the Hoare collection.

We eventually got a reply from Tikiġaq-born artist Othniel Art Oomittuk Junior who was very keen to hear about our plans for the Alaska exhibition. From this point things moved quickly and we welcomed Art’s kind offer to visit Cambridge and give his perspective on the new collection. Now, it was in the course of these discussions that we got our next big surprise.

Othniel Art Oomittuk Junior examining a pipe
(c) Scott Polar Research Institute. Picture credit: Charlotte Connelly

Art put us in touch with London-based historian Tom Lowenstein, who has written extensively about Point Hope. Tom described how, whilst visiting a friend some years ago, he was introduced to someone who had made a curious find in their attic. By an amazing coincidence this attic happened to be in the house that once belonged to a relative of our Tikiġaq missionary, Hoare. To his astonishment, Tom was shown a wooden chest containing more items of ivory and fur labelled in the same hand as those in the suitcase and also accompanied with a huge box of letters from Alaska!

Ivory needle case
(c) Scott Polar Research Institute

With Tom’s help, we were able to reunite these various dispersed parts of the Hoare collection at the Polar Museum in time for Art’s visit. Art expressed his happiness that the items had found a good home, even saying that the grave goods had an important story that should be told through the display. In turn, we learned so much more from Art about the items and life in Tikiġaq than we ever would have had we not reached out first.

5,243 views | This entry was posted on Monday, April 29th, 2019 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Museum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.