Paper short abstract:

This paper presents a theoretically informed case study of a mistaken repatriation of Anishinaabe ceremonial objects using recent theoretical work on the nature of personhood and the social agency of objects to develop a combined Anishinaabe and anthropological perspective on repatriation.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores recent theoretical work which treats museum objects as having a degree of personhood and social agency and may contribute to a theoretically informed analysis of the restitution/repatriation of Native American artefacts. Based on a detailed analysis of a mistaken repatriation of Ojibwe ceremonial materials, this paper interrogates a repatriation event in which, despite excellent provenance and considerable source community involvement, artefacts from a small Canadian museum collection were secretly given to an entirely unrelated Ojibwe cultural revitalization group. The unconventional trajectory of this repatriation event reveals the weaknesses of existing anthropological literature on repatriation but also provides the detailed evidence for a nuanced theoretical analysis which acknowledges and explains harshly conflicting perspectives. Throughout this paper, a dual Ojibwe and anthropological perspective is sustained, interrogating and comparing Ojibwe and anthropological conceptions of animacy (the attribution of life), personhood (the attribution of social relationships), and agency (the claim that objects make things happen), as they relate to this repatriation case study. Working directly with the work of A Irving Hallowell, this paper examines the possibility of treating apparent agency as an emergent and provisional explanation of social events and concludes that the social agency of artefacts is unstable and varies with relative personhood and the strength of social relationships. I suggest that in politically charged repatriation claims, a focus on attributions of agency and personhood helps to anthropologize and depoliticise analysis and enables researchers in these charged situations to keep key multiple and conflicting social relationships in analytic view.