Lectures & Meetings

MEETINGS

Great_Lakes_RA_14.png

Wampum Symposium
The McCord Stewart Museum in Montréal held an international symposium — Around Wampum: Histories and Perspectives  — on February 22 and 23, 2024. Hidden Stories collaborator and Munsee-Delaware language keeper Kristin Jacobs (Eelunaapeewi Lahkeewiit / Delaware Nation at Moraviantown) attended. The interdisciplinary gathering brought together Indigenous knowledge keepers, elders, craftspeople, and artists, as well as settler-colonial and Indigenous scholars from across North America and Europe, to discuss the history of wampum, the traditional creation and use of belts /  sashes, their role in diplomacy, wampum ‘literacies’ and materiality, and the challenges of accessing, re-connecting with, and repatriating / rematriating wampum items that live in collections outside of their source communities. The symposium was held in conjunction with the museum’s exhibition Wampum: Beads of Diplomacy, which included forty wampum belts from the McCord Museum and the Musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac in Paris, as well as community and private collections. It brought together an astounding 40 wampum belts and other related objects. The wampum exhibition and symposium provided a long-overdue opportunity for Indigenous community members to reconnect with cultural belongings.

The discussions around wampum offered an important view into the central role wampum played in diplomacy between Indigenous communities of Turtle Island and European colonizers and institutions. About the gathering, Jacobs observed:

"Listening to all of the speakers and presenters, I really felt a sense of pride for our peoples living during such a hostile period, but still trying to find peace and understanding for the better good of all nations involved. Their intelligence speaks to these beautiful works of art in these wampum belts and pipes, using all natural materials around them. They were constructed with gifts from Kukuna Ahkuy (mother earth) to make these important discussions about her, and giving the belts themselves their own spirits, hence being living objects."

Jacobs shared more on her symposium experience and how the gathering connected her to community and informed her work with wampum here.

Presentations from the wampum symposium are available for viewing on the McCord Stewart Museum YouTube channel.



LECTURES

Suzanne Conklin Akbari on Byzantine Purple, Purple Wampum, and Indigenous Belongings

Project co-PI Suzanne Conklin Akbari delivered a series of lectures discussing how to approach the study of the global Middle Ages on Indigenous lands in the Americas and with Indigenous belongings in European collections:

"The Book as Living Relation: Collaborative Study of Lenape (Delaware) Belongings with Indigenous Communities of Origin." Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, Universität Hamburg, Germany. 30 May 2024.

“The Optics of Land Acknowledgement: Lenape (Delaware) Belongings in German Collections.” Medieval Studies program and De/Coloniality Now initiative, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany. 21 June 2024.

 

“Byzantine Purple, Purple Wampum: Mediterranean Studies on Turtle Island.” Annual Riggsby Lecture on Medieval Mediterranean History and Culture. Marco Institute, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN. 30 November 2023.

 

“Byzantine Purple, Purple Wampum: The Global Middle Ages on Lunaapahkiing.” Medieval Colloquium, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL. 9 November 2023.

 

“The Optics of Land Acknowledgement in Berlin: Indigenous Belongings at the Humboldt Forum.” Weekly Colloquium, Center for Visual Culture, Bryn Mawr College. Bryn Mawr, PA. 4 October 2023.

Munsee Wampum
Ian McCallum (Munsee-Delaware Nation/OISE, University of Toronto), “Munsee-Delaware Wampum Belts,” Munsee Language & History Symposium, Princeton, NJ. 5 November 2023. https://youtu.be/0amLNwWWDwc?si=fijQrZl9AMgV0Sg4

Lunaape Books
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Melissa Moreton (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton), “Lunaapeewak at Princeton and Lunaape Book History,” Munsee Language & History Symposium, Princeton, NJ. 5 November 2023. https://youtu.be/561XM8GgJkE?si=NRMjjyPqrmpz3EZS



Great_Lakes_RA_12.png

Participants at the 2023 GRASAC Gathering, Ojibwe Cultural Foundation M’Chigeeng First Nation, Manitoulin Island, Ontario

GRASAC Gathering

Hidden Stories team member Melissa Moreton travelled north in early June, 2023, to beautiful Manitoulin Island on Georgian Bay, Ontario, to learn from attendees of the GRASAC gathering (The Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts & Cultures). The event, hosted at the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation, was attended by Indigenous community members (many Anishinabek from Manitoba, Toronto, and communities around Georgian Bay, Ontario) and settler-allies and included presentations on Indigenous material culture, treaty research, land stewardship, and governance. Moreton discussed two Indigenous books––one Munsee-related, and one Anishinaabe (Ojibwe)––currently housed in the Princeton University Library. Both are part of the Hidden Stories project, research guided by and furthered through collaboration with Indigenous community members.

The GRASAC event included presentations and lectures by visiting knowledge keepers and scholars as well as by speakers from the host community of M’Chigeeng First Nation, including Alan Ojiig Corbiere who discussed his collaborative work with Ted and Myna Toulouse (Sagamok First Nation), preserving the knowledge of their traditional birchbark harvesting and quillwork basketry. For more on GRASAC’s past and future events and news, visit their digital Newsletters and their Knowledge Sharing Platform here.

Read more about this and other research areas in the Hidden Stories Newsletters.

Lectures & Meetings