Alexandra M Peck | University of British Columbia (original) (raw)

Published Articles by Alexandra M Peck

Pacific Northwest International Society of Arboriculture: Trees, 2024

Historically, dozens of Native nations spanning the Pacific Northwest have altered trees, known a... more Historically, dozens of Native nations spanning the Pacific Northwest have altered trees, known as culturally modified trees (CMTs), for a variety of purposes. Red cedar was a popular tree chosen for modification, specifically for burial and funerary reasons. “Tree burials” proved popular in southern British Columbia and western Washington during the early colonial period, where this mortuary practice served a twofold purpose: to discourage non-Native grave interference and to reflect socio-economic stratification amongst the deceased. However, CMTs are diverse in their form and function, with some altered for use as trail markers, stripped for cedar bark, or utilized for wooden longhouse planks and artistic carvings. Despite the unique and intriguing occurrence of CMTs in western Canada and the United States, local legislation surrounding the protection of CMTs ranges from complex to nearly absent. In addition, real estate development, commercial logging, and numerous other threats exist. How can arborists, archaeologists, and cultural heritage specialists collaborate with tribal nations to locate, identify, and preserve CMTs? How can governmental policies improve to protect CMTs, and how have past and current efforts either failed or succeeded?

Texte Zur Kunst, 2024

In the 1970s, two museums opened on the west coast of the land claimed as Canada, their founding ... more In the 1970s, two museums opened on the west coast of the land claimed as Canada, their founding having been a prerequisite for the restitution of parts of the Kwakwaka’wakw’s Potlatch collection. The complex history of the dispossessions sanctioned as part of Canada’s colonial policy, as well as the significance of repatriation within Kwakwaka’wakw social structure, is laid out in anthropologist Alexandra M. Peck’s contribution, which also highlights a specific conception of individual ownership and collective property. As props and regalia, the objects frequently changed hands via the Potlatch practice. Each exchange brought along with it an increase in value. This inner-societal mobility also had a stabilizing function: the handovers bore testament to important political and private agreements. The absence of the objects, logically, thus led to disequilibrium--and their museumization-linked reintegration remains incomplete, even after half a century.

Open Rivers: Rethinking Water, Place, & Community, 2022

In the Pacific Northwest, where masculinity is often romanticized and associated with the lusciou... more In the Pacific Northwest, where masculinity is often romanticized and associated with the luscious, rugged evergreen landscape, problematic gendered and geographic tropes maintain a tight grip. The region’s mountains and waterways are frequently linked to male exploration, adventure, and conquest. Questioning this emphasis on masculinity, this article employs Native case studies from western Washington and southwestern British Columbia—the traditional homelands of Coast Salish tribes—to examine the historical ways in which Coast Salish women interacted with, navigated, and depended upon water in their daily lives. Despite settler colonial attempts to associate femininity with domesticity or docility, Indigenous women were not confined to private spheres or bound to the land. Rather, Coast Salish women were mobile mariners who regularly accessed waterways for trade routes and crop cultivation, as well as for maintaining crucial family ties and economic independence. Activities conducted by women demanded mastery of canoes and careful study of water. Familiarity and interactions with maritime sites allowed Coast Salish women to adeptly adapt to a rapidly changing society introduced by nineteenth-century European arrival. By relying upon waterways, water knowledge, and maritime skills, Indigenous women preserved their cultural authority and autonomy. Citing Coast Salish examples, this article highlights the ways in which Coast Salish women used water to subvert patriarchal and settler colonial expectations of femininity before, during, and after the early colonial period.

Journal of Northwest Anthropology, 2021

On Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe (JST) is implementing cultural h... more On Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe (JST) is implementing cultural heritage approaches to reclaim tribal histories threatened by nineteenth century settler colonial narratives of ethnic erasure. Exiled from their capital village of Qatáy in Port Townsend during the 1870s as a result of government-mandated arson and displacement, JST homelands also include Olympic National Park, popularly lauded as a pristine wilderness area. Emanating from the Tribe’s previously unrecognized federal status, accusations of assimilation and extinction have simultaneously contributed to the non-Indigenous public’s denial of JST existence. By restoring archaeological sites with modern significance and erecting counter-monuments to commemorate tribal leaders and events, the JST have embarked upon a journey of challenging their veiled history. Perhaps surprisingly, this resistance against historical amnesia has produced reconciliatory outcomes between the Tribe and non-Natives. Through a lens of resiliency and regeneration, this article documents one tribal nation’s opposition to being consigned to the past, and their dedication to continued relevancy for future generations.

Journal of Northwest Anthropology, 2020

Consistently, Coast Salish mortuary practices demonstrate one element in common, even as burial c... more Consistently, Coast Salish mortuary practices demonstrate one element in common, even as burial customs have developed over the course of the Marpole Period to the present day: resistance to authority and societal pressures. Building upon the seminal work of Suttles (1958), Thom (1995, 1998), and Mathews (2006, 2014), this study offers a comprehensive examination of pre- and post-contact Coast Salish burial practices, as well as their corresponding emphasis on social rank, status, or loss of social stratification as identified in the mortuary record. Beginning with an examination of the evolution of ranked social classes in Marpole and Late Period midden, cairn, and mound burials, I conclude with a detailed discussion of enclosed “grave house” burials (originating with Euro-American contact) and the late nineteenth century development of the Indian Shaker Church to demonstrate how recent burial practices are a reaction to and reflection of settler colonial encroachment upon Coast Salish territories. In doing so, I provide evidence that Coast Salish societies grew increasingly unified against non-Native presence at the turn of the century, exchanging previous individual and class-based social rank systems for community-oriented identification that aided in retaining Coast Salish spirituality, access to land, and kinship networks during times of intense cultural turmoil. Compared to Marpole and Late Periods, which witnessed fluctuations in status and resistance to elite authority figures, ethnographic Coast Salish burial phases reveal that certain aspects of pre-colonial Coast Salish social structure were sacrificed to foster tribal solidarity against foreign imposition during the Early Colonial era. Using an inter-disciplinary approach advocated by Morris (1992) that combines multiple strands of evidence including grave goods, demography, spatiality, ritual, history, ethnography, and comparative studies, I employ an anthropological lens to analyze the subversive nature of past and present Coast Salish social organization.

Journal of American History, 2018

Plimoth Plantation is a living history museum located in Plymouth, Massachusetts, that portrays t... more Plimoth Plantation is a living history museum located in Plymouth, Massachusetts, that portrays the early seventeenth-century lifeways of English Puritans and their Wampanoag counterparts through interactive encounters. The museum’s Wampanoag Homesite offers a glimpse into Wampanoag life prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims and touches on fraught Native interactions with the colonists, along with commentary on contemporary Native issues. Immediately upon entering the homesite grounds, visitors are immersed within a small re-created Wampanoag village and introduced to local Indigenous architecture, culinary traditions, and material culture. In addition, Native employees are onsite to educate visitors about Wampanoag history and to engage them in conversations about current events concerning Indigenous populations. This one-of-a-kind experience challenges preconceived cultural notions by drawing visitors into productive discussions that extend across equal cultural planes. Faced with modern declarations of Native self-representation and sovereignty, visitors might reconsider their own ideas about Native Americans as archaic, imaginary, or extinct.

Manual: A Journal About Art and Its Making, 2017

Native American material culture rests uneasily within art museums. Removed from their original c... more Native American material culture rests uneasily within art museums. Removed from their original contexts of use, these culturally significant objects have been historically resignified as "primitive,” “exotic,” or representative of the mythic Other. Unfortunately exhibited as material evidence of progress, advancement, and civilization, they are largely silent about their makers’ desires and intentions. Today, Native American objects are reclaiming new voice. Many art museums are adopting more inclusive approaches to representational practice and are engaging with Native American peoples and objects in new ways. These approaches are fostering exciting conversations about the intersections of European and Native American ontologies and aesthetics.
In the spring of 2016, we were invited by the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum to survey their small but distinguished Native American collection. We identified the objects and made exhibition (as well as digital and archival) recommendations. Many of the items were donations from alumni and often did not include detailed provenience. A group of 87 objects, however, were acquired in 1944 as part of an exchange with the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation. The Heye Foundation was founded in 1916 as a prominent research institution focusing on Native American artifacts and cultures, and its collections now comprise the core of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, D.C. We contacted Ann McMullen, curator at the NMAI and head of collections research, who provided us with a complete set of documentation for the RISD Museum's Heye Foundation objects. Perhaps most spectacularly, these items included a Tlingit headdress frontlet, whose provenance, impressive craftsmanship, and cultural meanings are the focus of this article.

Book Chapters by Alexandra M Peck

Decolonizing Place-Based Arts Research, Mary Modeen, ed., 2021

Book Reviews by Alexandra M Peck

Edited Journal Issues by Alexandra M Peck

Archaeology in Washington, Dec 2023

Editors' Note While we are not truly out of the throes of the global pandemic and the full ramifi... more Editors' Note While we are not truly out of the throes of the global pandemic and the full ramifications of the past few years will take quite some time to consider, we are pleased that not all of the submitted materials to Archaeology in Washington were waxing polemic about archaeological apocalypses, past and present. In this issue we have an article by Sonya Sobel and Jordan Thompson which came out of Professor Shannon Tushingham's Cultural Resource Management course at Washington State University. Tushingham's encouragement for student publication in Washington will be sorely missed as she moves onto a new role with the California Academy of Sciences. Sobel and Thompson profile Parker and King and examine an underrepresented part of Washington in applying Bulletin 38. Additionally, we have four book reviews: Gary Wessen reviews "Fishes of the Columbia Basin," "Probably More than You Wanted to Know About the Fishes of the Pacific Coast," and "Certainly More than You Wanted to Know About the Fishes of the Pacific Coast." Bob Kopperl reviewed "The Gifted Earth: The Ethnobotany of the Quinault and Neighboring Tribes." We also thank Rhiannon Held for her guidance on copy editing the journal. We hope to see more contributions submitted to the journal, including forum discussions on pressing issues. How tribes, resources managers, and archaeological practitioners are rising to the challenges of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and potential impacts of renewable energy projects on heritage are all issues we are hoping to be discussed in future issues. Additionally, we welcome more student papers and discussions such as the Sobel and Thompson article. How we engage in equitable, culturally appropriate archaeologies in Washington is crucial and discussing these issues is the aim of this journal, so please send in those articles and discussions! Best regards,

Dissertation by Alexandra M Peck

Dissertation, Apr 1, 2021

On Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe (JST) is enacting contested appr... more On Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe (JST) is enacting contested approaches of reclaiming tribal histories threatened by persistent 19th century settler colonial narratives of ethnic erasure. Legally exiled from their capital village in 1871 as a result of government-mandated arson and legal ordinances banning Indigenous individuals from city limits, ancestral JST homelands also include Olympic National Park, popularly lauded as a pristine wilderness area devoid of Native inhabitation. Emanating from the Tribe’s previously unrecognized federal status and history of intermarriage with Scandinavian loggers, tropes of assimilation and extinction contribute to the contemporary non-Indigenous public’s denial of JST existence. By raising totem poles—monuments not historically rooted within JST artistic repertoire—to commemorate tribal leaders and events, the JST are challenging their veiled history in a region known for outdoor recreation and tourism. Reclaiming territory, communicating Indigenous presence, and resisting historical amnesia via totem poles have generated reconciliatory outcomes between the Tribe and non-Natives. However, adopting totem poles as a cultural iconography has also produced division within the tribal community itself, with critics raising questions about the authenticity of such monuments, as well as concerns about artistic appropriation and “performing” pan-Indigeneity for tourists. Through a lens of resiliency and regeneration, I analyze the JST’s opposition to being consigned to the past, and the challenges encountered while representing and redefining their own cultural identity.
My dissertation is organized into nine chapters, including the Introduction and Conclusion. Chapter 2 provides a brief timeline of pre-colonial JST history, and highlights how the Tribe engaged in cultural interaction and exchange prior to settler colonialism. Chapter 3 examines early JST relationships with non-Native individuals, and charts the region’s complicated trajectory from initial coexistence to conflict and Indigenous exile. Chapter 4 discusses how the Olympic Peninsula was transformed into a literal and metaphorical wilderness, the ways in which settler colonists adopted an Indigenous identity for themselves while denying JST presence, and contemporary consequences of erasure. Chapter 5 traces the historical and modern status of S’Klallam material culture, with emphasis on the gradual shift to a pan-Northwest Native genre (inclusive of totem poles) as a result of early 20th century tourist, academic, and museum attitudes that disparaged S’Klallam art and culture. Chapter 6 proposes various hypotheses for why the JST adopted totem poles beginning in the 1960s-1990s, and analyzes these recent monuments through a lens of identity performance and heritage maintenance. Chapter 7 highlights the discontent associated with JST poles by exploring issues of cultural property rights, cultural appropriation, and power imbalance within the Tribe, whereas Chapter 8 analyzes how totem poles have increased JST visibility and enhanced the Tribe’s cultural preservation attempts.

Museum Exhibits by Alexandra M Peck

Exhibit Catalogue, 2019

The číčməhán (Chetzemoka): Then & Now exhibit showcases historical and contemporary art and craft... more The číčməhán (Chetzemoka): Then & Now exhibit showcases historical and contemporary art and craft of Coast Salish tribes, particularly the Jamestown S'Klallam, and will complement the opening of the číčməhán (Chetzemoka) Interpretive Trail.

Exhibit Catalogue, 2017

Makers Unknown: Material Objects and the Enslaved examines material culture to understand the way... more Makers Unknown: Material Objects and the Enslaved examines material culture to understand the ways in which the institution of racial slavery shaped the daily lives of all Rhode Islanders. Typically, historic archives preserve the objects and documents of prominent merchant families. When we reread these objects and archives to better understand the lives of the individuals whom they enslaved, we find within the gaps of the formal archives, new narratives. Makers Unknown represents the work of artisans of color whose contributions to their craft remain unrecognized. This is our starting point. The material culture produced by enslaved and free people of color for themselves or in their capacity as an unending source of coerced labor gives us a lens into their agency, humanity, and the many ways they negotiated freedom.

Exhibit Catalogue, 2016

When Rudolf Haffenreffer's family donated the King Philip Museum to Brown University in 1955, the... more When Rudolf Haffenreffer's family donated the King Philip Museum to Brown University in 1955, there was neither an anthropology department nor faculty qualified to steer it. In accepting the gift, President Barnaby Keeney remarked that it would "provide a sound basis for the development of research and teaching in anthropology." He subsequently hired James Louis Giddings—a pioneering Arctic archaeologist, anthropologist, and natural scientist—to run it and to establish a program in anthropology within Brown's department of sociology.
Over the course of eight years, Giddings transformed this small private museum with a Native American focus into a university teaching museum with worldwide scope and a dynamic, global vision. He engaged students in all aspects of its operation—from collections management to exhibitions and object acquisition.
At the same time, Giddings expanded the foundations of western Arctic archaeology. He conducted archaeological excavations, performed ethnographic research, and established protocols for collaborative work with Indigenous communities far ahead of his time. His work, and that of his students, represents a 75 year commitment to a region and its Native communities, perhaps the longest collaboration of its kind in the Americas.
For the Museum's 60th Anniversary, we look back not only at J. Louis Giddings' life, but also at the work of his students and the Museum itself, using objects from the collections to explore the vision he had, and the horizons he crossed, to transform the King Philip Museum into Brown's Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology.

Land Acknowledgments & Educational Materials by Alexandra M Peck

Public Testimony for Port Townsend City Council & Planning and Community Development Department, 2025

Land Acknowledgment Statement, 2022

Land Acknowledgment Statement, 2021

is an umbrella term used by anthropologists and archaeologists to categorize the multitude of tri... more is an umbrella term used by anthropologists and archaeologists to categorize the multitude of tribes from this region. However, to avoid generalizations and to honor individual tribal histories, it is appropriate to use the names of specific tribal entities.

Land Acknowledgment Statement, 2021

The land occupied by the Kul Kah Han Native Plant Garden is the ancestral tribal territory of the... more The land occupied by the Kul Kah Han Native Plant Garden is the ancestral tribal territory of the S'Klallam and Chemakum Indigenous peoples. S'Klallam (Nəxʷsƛ̕ áy̕ əm̕) presence on the northern Olympic Peninsula goes back 14,000+ years, spanning from the Hoko River to Indian Island, with most villages located along the shores and rivers of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The Chemakum, known as Aqokúlo in the Chemakum language, were more recent arrivals to the region now known as Port Townsend and Chimacum. Over 3,000 years ago, a branch of the Quileute Tribe was displaced from Washington's Pacific Coast during a large tsunami. This impressive flood carried survivors over 100 miles to the land that you now stand upon. Stranded here, Chemakum society emerged as a distinct group that-although rooted in Quileute heritageremained within S'Klallam homelands throughout the 1800s. For

Land Acknowledgment Statement, 2020

Pacific Northwest International Society of Arboriculture: Trees, 2024

Historically, dozens of Native nations spanning the Pacific Northwest have altered trees, known a... more Historically, dozens of Native nations spanning the Pacific Northwest have altered trees, known as culturally modified trees (CMTs), for a variety of purposes. Red cedar was a popular tree chosen for modification, specifically for burial and funerary reasons. “Tree burials” proved popular in southern British Columbia and western Washington during the early colonial period, where this mortuary practice served a twofold purpose: to discourage non-Native grave interference and to reflect socio-economic stratification amongst the deceased. However, CMTs are diverse in their form and function, with some altered for use as trail markers, stripped for cedar bark, or utilized for wooden longhouse planks and artistic carvings. Despite the unique and intriguing occurrence of CMTs in western Canada and the United States, local legislation surrounding the protection of CMTs ranges from complex to nearly absent. In addition, real estate development, commercial logging, and numerous other threats exist. How can arborists, archaeologists, and cultural heritage specialists collaborate with tribal nations to locate, identify, and preserve CMTs? How can governmental policies improve to protect CMTs, and how have past and current efforts either failed or succeeded?

Texte Zur Kunst, 2024

In the 1970s, two museums opened on the west coast of the land claimed as Canada, their founding ... more In the 1970s, two museums opened on the west coast of the land claimed as Canada, their founding having been a prerequisite for the restitution of parts of the Kwakwaka’wakw’s Potlatch collection. The complex history of the dispossessions sanctioned as part of Canada’s colonial policy, as well as the significance of repatriation within Kwakwaka’wakw social structure, is laid out in anthropologist Alexandra M. Peck’s contribution, which also highlights a specific conception of individual ownership and collective property. As props and regalia, the objects frequently changed hands via the Potlatch practice. Each exchange brought along with it an increase in value. This inner-societal mobility also had a stabilizing function: the handovers bore testament to important political and private agreements. The absence of the objects, logically, thus led to disequilibrium--and their museumization-linked reintegration remains incomplete, even after half a century.

Open Rivers: Rethinking Water, Place, & Community, 2022

In the Pacific Northwest, where masculinity is often romanticized and associated with the lusciou... more In the Pacific Northwest, where masculinity is often romanticized and associated with the luscious, rugged evergreen landscape, problematic gendered and geographic tropes maintain a tight grip. The region’s mountains and waterways are frequently linked to male exploration, adventure, and conquest. Questioning this emphasis on masculinity, this article employs Native case studies from western Washington and southwestern British Columbia—the traditional homelands of Coast Salish tribes—to examine the historical ways in which Coast Salish women interacted with, navigated, and depended upon water in their daily lives. Despite settler colonial attempts to associate femininity with domesticity or docility, Indigenous women were not confined to private spheres or bound to the land. Rather, Coast Salish women were mobile mariners who regularly accessed waterways for trade routes and crop cultivation, as well as for maintaining crucial family ties and economic independence. Activities conducted by women demanded mastery of canoes and careful study of water. Familiarity and interactions with maritime sites allowed Coast Salish women to adeptly adapt to a rapidly changing society introduced by nineteenth-century European arrival. By relying upon waterways, water knowledge, and maritime skills, Indigenous women preserved their cultural authority and autonomy. Citing Coast Salish examples, this article highlights the ways in which Coast Salish women used water to subvert patriarchal and settler colonial expectations of femininity before, during, and after the early colonial period.

Journal of Northwest Anthropology, 2021

On Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe (JST) is implementing cultural h... more On Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe (JST) is implementing cultural heritage approaches to reclaim tribal histories threatened by nineteenth century settler colonial narratives of ethnic erasure. Exiled from their capital village of Qatáy in Port Townsend during the 1870s as a result of government-mandated arson and displacement, JST homelands also include Olympic National Park, popularly lauded as a pristine wilderness area. Emanating from the Tribe’s previously unrecognized federal status, accusations of assimilation and extinction have simultaneously contributed to the non-Indigenous public’s denial of JST existence. By restoring archaeological sites with modern significance and erecting counter-monuments to commemorate tribal leaders and events, the JST have embarked upon a journey of challenging their veiled history. Perhaps surprisingly, this resistance against historical amnesia has produced reconciliatory outcomes between the Tribe and non-Natives. Through a lens of resiliency and regeneration, this article documents one tribal nation’s opposition to being consigned to the past, and their dedication to continued relevancy for future generations.

Journal of Northwest Anthropology, 2020

Consistently, Coast Salish mortuary practices demonstrate one element in common, even as burial c... more Consistently, Coast Salish mortuary practices demonstrate one element in common, even as burial customs have developed over the course of the Marpole Period to the present day: resistance to authority and societal pressures. Building upon the seminal work of Suttles (1958), Thom (1995, 1998), and Mathews (2006, 2014), this study offers a comprehensive examination of pre- and post-contact Coast Salish burial practices, as well as their corresponding emphasis on social rank, status, or loss of social stratification as identified in the mortuary record. Beginning with an examination of the evolution of ranked social classes in Marpole and Late Period midden, cairn, and mound burials, I conclude with a detailed discussion of enclosed “grave house” burials (originating with Euro-American contact) and the late nineteenth century development of the Indian Shaker Church to demonstrate how recent burial practices are a reaction to and reflection of settler colonial encroachment upon Coast Salish territories. In doing so, I provide evidence that Coast Salish societies grew increasingly unified against non-Native presence at the turn of the century, exchanging previous individual and class-based social rank systems for community-oriented identification that aided in retaining Coast Salish spirituality, access to land, and kinship networks during times of intense cultural turmoil. Compared to Marpole and Late Periods, which witnessed fluctuations in status and resistance to elite authority figures, ethnographic Coast Salish burial phases reveal that certain aspects of pre-colonial Coast Salish social structure were sacrificed to foster tribal solidarity against foreign imposition during the Early Colonial era. Using an inter-disciplinary approach advocated by Morris (1992) that combines multiple strands of evidence including grave goods, demography, spatiality, ritual, history, ethnography, and comparative studies, I employ an anthropological lens to analyze the subversive nature of past and present Coast Salish social organization.

Journal of American History, 2018

Plimoth Plantation is a living history museum located in Plymouth, Massachusetts, that portrays t... more Plimoth Plantation is a living history museum located in Plymouth, Massachusetts, that portrays the early seventeenth-century lifeways of English Puritans and their Wampanoag counterparts through interactive encounters. The museum’s Wampanoag Homesite offers a glimpse into Wampanoag life prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims and touches on fraught Native interactions with the colonists, along with commentary on contemporary Native issues. Immediately upon entering the homesite grounds, visitors are immersed within a small re-created Wampanoag village and introduced to local Indigenous architecture, culinary traditions, and material culture. In addition, Native employees are onsite to educate visitors about Wampanoag history and to engage them in conversations about current events concerning Indigenous populations. This one-of-a-kind experience challenges preconceived cultural notions by drawing visitors into productive discussions that extend across equal cultural planes. Faced with modern declarations of Native self-representation and sovereignty, visitors might reconsider their own ideas about Native Americans as archaic, imaginary, or extinct.

Manual: A Journal About Art and Its Making, 2017

Native American material culture rests uneasily within art museums. Removed from their original c... more Native American material culture rests uneasily within art museums. Removed from their original contexts of use, these culturally significant objects have been historically resignified as "primitive,” “exotic,” or representative of the mythic Other. Unfortunately exhibited as material evidence of progress, advancement, and civilization, they are largely silent about their makers’ desires and intentions. Today, Native American objects are reclaiming new voice. Many art museums are adopting more inclusive approaches to representational practice and are engaging with Native American peoples and objects in new ways. These approaches are fostering exciting conversations about the intersections of European and Native American ontologies and aesthetics.
In the spring of 2016, we were invited by the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum to survey their small but distinguished Native American collection. We identified the objects and made exhibition (as well as digital and archival) recommendations. Many of the items were donations from alumni and often did not include detailed provenience. A group of 87 objects, however, were acquired in 1944 as part of an exchange with the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation. The Heye Foundation was founded in 1916 as a prominent research institution focusing on Native American artifacts and cultures, and its collections now comprise the core of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, D.C. We contacted Ann McMullen, curator at the NMAI and head of collections research, who provided us with a complete set of documentation for the RISD Museum's Heye Foundation objects. Perhaps most spectacularly, these items included a Tlingit headdress frontlet, whose provenance, impressive craftsmanship, and cultural meanings are the focus of this article.

Archaeology in Washington, Dec 2023

Editors' Note While we are not truly out of the throes of the global pandemic and the full ramifi... more Editors' Note While we are not truly out of the throes of the global pandemic and the full ramifications of the past few years will take quite some time to consider, we are pleased that not all of the submitted materials to Archaeology in Washington were waxing polemic about archaeological apocalypses, past and present. In this issue we have an article by Sonya Sobel and Jordan Thompson which came out of Professor Shannon Tushingham's Cultural Resource Management course at Washington State University. Tushingham's encouragement for student publication in Washington will be sorely missed as she moves onto a new role with the California Academy of Sciences. Sobel and Thompson profile Parker and King and examine an underrepresented part of Washington in applying Bulletin 38. Additionally, we have four book reviews: Gary Wessen reviews "Fishes of the Columbia Basin," "Probably More than You Wanted to Know About the Fishes of the Pacific Coast," and "Certainly More than You Wanted to Know About the Fishes of the Pacific Coast." Bob Kopperl reviewed "The Gifted Earth: The Ethnobotany of the Quinault and Neighboring Tribes." We also thank Rhiannon Held for her guidance on copy editing the journal. We hope to see more contributions submitted to the journal, including forum discussions on pressing issues. How tribes, resources managers, and archaeological practitioners are rising to the challenges of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and potential impacts of renewable energy projects on heritage are all issues we are hoping to be discussed in future issues. Additionally, we welcome more student papers and discussions such as the Sobel and Thompson article. How we engage in equitable, culturally appropriate archaeologies in Washington is crucial and discussing these issues is the aim of this journal, so please send in those articles and discussions! Best regards,

Dissertation, Apr 1, 2021

On Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe (JST) is enacting contested appr... more On Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe (JST) is enacting contested approaches of reclaiming tribal histories threatened by persistent 19th century settler colonial narratives of ethnic erasure. Legally exiled from their capital village in 1871 as a result of government-mandated arson and legal ordinances banning Indigenous individuals from city limits, ancestral JST homelands also include Olympic National Park, popularly lauded as a pristine wilderness area devoid of Native inhabitation. Emanating from the Tribe’s previously unrecognized federal status and history of intermarriage with Scandinavian loggers, tropes of assimilation and extinction contribute to the contemporary non-Indigenous public’s denial of JST existence. By raising totem poles—monuments not historically rooted within JST artistic repertoire—to commemorate tribal leaders and events, the JST are challenging their veiled history in a region known for outdoor recreation and tourism. Reclaiming territory, communicating Indigenous presence, and resisting historical amnesia via totem poles have generated reconciliatory outcomes between the Tribe and non-Natives. However, adopting totem poles as a cultural iconography has also produced division within the tribal community itself, with critics raising questions about the authenticity of such monuments, as well as concerns about artistic appropriation and “performing” pan-Indigeneity for tourists. Through a lens of resiliency and regeneration, I analyze the JST’s opposition to being consigned to the past, and the challenges encountered while representing and redefining their own cultural identity.
My dissertation is organized into nine chapters, including the Introduction and Conclusion. Chapter 2 provides a brief timeline of pre-colonial JST history, and highlights how the Tribe engaged in cultural interaction and exchange prior to settler colonialism. Chapter 3 examines early JST relationships with non-Native individuals, and charts the region’s complicated trajectory from initial coexistence to conflict and Indigenous exile. Chapter 4 discusses how the Olympic Peninsula was transformed into a literal and metaphorical wilderness, the ways in which settler colonists adopted an Indigenous identity for themselves while denying JST presence, and contemporary consequences of erasure. Chapter 5 traces the historical and modern status of S’Klallam material culture, with emphasis on the gradual shift to a pan-Northwest Native genre (inclusive of totem poles) as a result of early 20th century tourist, academic, and museum attitudes that disparaged S’Klallam art and culture. Chapter 6 proposes various hypotheses for why the JST adopted totem poles beginning in the 1960s-1990s, and analyzes these recent monuments through a lens of identity performance and heritage maintenance. Chapter 7 highlights the discontent associated with JST poles by exploring issues of cultural property rights, cultural appropriation, and power imbalance within the Tribe, whereas Chapter 8 analyzes how totem poles have increased JST visibility and enhanced the Tribe’s cultural preservation attempts.

Exhibit Catalogue, 2019

The číčməhán (Chetzemoka): Then & Now exhibit showcases historical and contemporary art and craft... more The číčməhán (Chetzemoka): Then & Now exhibit showcases historical and contemporary art and craft of Coast Salish tribes, particularly the Jamestown S'Klallam, and will complement the opening of the číčməhán (Chetzemoka) Interpretive Trail.

Exhibit Catalogue, 2017

Makers Unknown: Material Objects and the Enslaved examines material culture to understand the way... more Makers Unknown: Material Objects and the Enslaved examines material culture to understand the ways in which the institution of racial slavery shaped the daily lives of all Rhode Islanders. Typically, historic archives preserve the objects and documents of prominent merchant families. When we reread these objects and archives to better understand the lives of the individuals whom they enslaved, we find within the gaps of the formal archives, new narratives. Makers Unknown represents the work of artisans of color whose contributions to their craft remain unrecognized. This is our starting point. The material culture produced by enslaved and free people of color for themselves or in their capacity as an unending source of coerced labor gives us a lens into their agency, humanity, and the many ways they negotiated freedom.

Exhibit Catalogue, 2016

When Rudolf Haffenreffer's family donated the King Philip Museum to Brown University in 1955, the... more When Rudolf Haffenreffer's family donated the King Philip Museum to Brown University in 1955, there was neither an anthropology department nor faculty qualified to steer it. In accepting the gift, President Barnaby Keeney remarked that it would "provide a sound basis for the development of research and teaching in anthropology." He subsequently hired James Louis Giddings—a pioneering Arctic archaeologist, anthropologist, and natural scientist—to run it and to establish a program in anthropology within Brown's department of sociology.
Over the course of eight years, Giddings transformed this small private museum with a Native American focus into a university teaching museum with worldwide scope and a dynamic, global vision. He engaged students in all aspects of its operation—from collections management to exhibitions and object acquisition.
At the same time, Giddings expanded the foundations of western Arctic archaeology. He conducted archaeological excavations, performed ethnographic research, and established protocols for collaborative work with Indigenous communities far ahead of his time. His work, and that of his students, represents a 75 year commitment to a region and its Native communities, perhaps the longest collaboration of its kind in the Americas.
For the Museum's 60th Anniversary, we look back not only at J. Louis Giddings' life, but also at the work of his students and the Museum itself, using objects from the collections to explore the vision he had, and the horizons he crossed, to transform the King Philip Museum into Brown's Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology.

Public Testimony for Port Townsend City Council & Planning and Community Development Department, 2025

Land Acknowledgment Statement, 2022

Land Acknowledgment Statement, 2021

is an umbrella term used by anthropologists and archaeologists to categorize the multitude of tri... more is an umbrella term used by anthropologists and archaeologists to categorize the multitude of tribes from this region. However, to avoid generalizations and to honor individual tribal histories, it is appropriate to use the names of specific tribal entities.

Land Acknowledgment Statement, 2021

The land occupied by the Kul Kah Han Native Plant Garden is the ancestral tribal territory of the... more The land occupied by the Kul Kah Han Native Plant Garden is the ancestral tribal territory of the S'Klallam and Chemakum Indigenous peoples. S'Klallam (Nəxʷsƛ̕ áy̕ əm̕) presence on the northern Olympic Peninsula goes back 14,000+ years, spanning from the Hoko River to Indian Island, with most villages located along the shores and rivers of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The Chemakum, known as Aqokúlo in the Chemakum language, were more recent arrivals to the region now known as Port Townsend and Chimacum. Over 3,000 years ago, a branch of the Quileute Tribe was displaced from Washington's Pacific Coast during a large tsunami. This impressive flood carried survivors over 100 miles to the land that you now stand upon. Stranded here, Chemakum society emerged as a distinct group that-although rooted in Quileute heritageremained within S'Klallam homelands throughout the 1800s. For

Land Acknowledgment Statement, 2020