Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the histories of two ethnographic collections, contending that failure to recognize the specific interpersonal relations that led to their formation allows them to continue to exist as untroubled and unanalyzed “facts” of “precontact” Arctic Indigeneity – fabricated origins.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I will explore the histories of two ethnographic collections. I will contend that a failure to recognize the specific interpersonal relations that led to the formation of both allows them to continue to exist as untroubled and unanalyzed “facts” of “pre-contact” Arctic Indigeneity – fabricated origins. One, the Barrow Arctic Collection at the British Museum, was made for John Barrow Junior by Royal Navy personnel participating in the search for John Franklin in the mid-19th century. The other was made by Robert Peary for the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in the North of Greenland in the 1890s. Both collections, created roughly 40 years apart, are products of influential imaginaries of the Arctic region constructed around Franklin and Peary, key figures in the history of Arctic “exploration.” Further the Barrow Collection, amassed at the instruction of an Arctic enthusiast who never ventured there himself, and the Peary Collection, made at the behest of important personalities in early American anthropology, illustrate the roles influential figures and their networks played in the formation of early Arctic collections. I will share preliminary findings of work in archives held at AMNH, the British Museum, the British Library, and the Royal Geographical Society. Considering historical correspondence among collectors, collections records, and exhibition notes alongside present-day display documents, I will illustrate how the exhibition of these collections has obscured and continues to obscure the multiple meanings and values they hold as they are used to convey overly simplistic narratives of Arctic life.