Introduction to the Huron Missionary Museum Project
A model sleigh found in the Huron Missionary Museum collection. Photograph taken by Rémi Alie.
Prior to the City of London, the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, and Lūnaapéewak peoples occupied these lands. It is important to acknowledge their continuous history and importance in this region.
Hello and welcome to this study on the history of the Huron Missionary Museum and the importance of repatriation. My name is Kevin den Dunnen and I am going in my fourth year at Huron University in the History program. I am looking forward to this project where I will explore the Huron Missionary Museum collection and the repatriation of colonial collections.
It is important to note that this project is a student work meant to open dialogue on the Huron Missionary Museum and the importance of repatriation. While funded by a fellowship from Huron’s Centre for Undergraduate Research Learning, this project does not represent the view of Huron University College. However, I hope that it might encourage my university to consider the implications of this collection.
The Huron Missionary Museum operated from 1911 to 1941 as a small collection of artifacts donated by alumni and students of Huron University College who performed missionary work in Africa, Asia, and South America in the early twentieth century. [1] The school placed some of the collection on display in the Huron Missionary Museum to showcase the missionary influence of Huron University College. While no longer part of a museum, some of the collection remains in long-term protective storage within the depths of Huron University College.
This series of blog posts will illustrate the legacy of missionary collections as sites of justification for imperial influence through racist depictions of Indigenous communities as inferior peoples. It will place a particular focus on the Huron Missionary Museum and discuss its legacy of collecting Indigenous objects. The Huron Missionary Museum collection remains a part of the colonial legacy of universities in Canada. A strong way to begin healing a colonial history is by preparing to repatriate such collections by researching and properly documenting them.
Post by Post
This series will feature eight posts published weekly. Following this introduction, the next two posts will analyze two impactful books that focus on the meaning of cultural objects to Indigenous cultures. The first book is Collections and objections: Aboriginal Material Culture in Southern Ontario, 1791-1914, by Michelle Hamilton, a professor of history at Western University. The second book is Naamiwan’s Drum: The Story of a Contested Repatriation of Anishinaabe Artefacts, by Maureen Matthews, a curator of cultural anthropology at Manitoba Museum and adjunct professor at the University of Manitoba. Through analyzing object meanings to local communities, these works demonstrate the importance of repatriating colonial collections and will greatly add to the impact of this project.
Next, I’ll write about Huron University’s missionary connection in East Africa. Specifically, Huron University alumni by the name of T. B. R. Westgate and his major role in the creation of a theological school named Huron Training College. T. B. R. Westgate, partnered with the German East African regime during the period of the Maji Maji Uprising. Causing this Uprising was the institution of brutal labour practices forced upon Tanzanian peoples. To suppress the Uprising, German East Africa killed hundreds of thousands of Tanzanian people both during and after the Uprising.
The fifth post will demonstrate the damaging language found in the main inventory for the Huron Missionary Museum collection. One example is of a knobkerrie, or as the Huron Missionary Museum inventory describes it, a “Club Used for Infanticide.” The knobkerrie, however, is a common East African club designed for warfare and hunting. This demonstrates the inaccuracy of descriptions in the Huron Missionary Museum and how they damage the knowledge and reputation of origin cultures.
The next post will investigate another artifact to show the generic descriptions found in the Huron Missionary Museum database and how they can limit the potential for repatriation. This artifact in the Museum database is a “Six string Native Fiddle.” The inventory offers little other information outside of this basic description. This lack of information and the potential for music instruments to hold significant meaning for source communities increases the stakes for improper repatriation.
Post 7 will focus further on T. B. R. Westgate and his role as a leader of the Anglican residential school system in Canada after returning from his missionary work in East Africa. Westgate’s goal remained the assimilation of Indigenous people as he viewed their culture and beliefs as wholly inferior.
The eighth and final post will argue for the responsibility of institutions to engage in repatriating their colonial collections. While repatriation efforts do not always result in every object returning to its rightful community, institutions should do their best to make it right by their colonial pasts. Rather than think of this as an extraneous task, institutions should consider repatriation efforts as a normal process of decolonizing their institution. [3]
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the CURL Fellowship program at Huron University College for supporting this project. This series would not be possible without the assistance, knowledge, and project inspiration provided by Professor Thomas Peace. I would also like to thank Professor Amy Bell, who guided some of my early ideas for the project and provided useful resources.
This upcoming series of blog posts would not be possible without the work of former Huron University College student, Rémi Alie. As part of Professor Amy Bell’s “The Historian’s Craft” at Huron, Alie created a catalogue for much of the remaining collections of the Huron Missionary Museum in 2015. In the final remarks of this project, Alie stated “How does this collection relate to the broader historiography of anthropology, collecting, and missionary work in Ontario?” [4] This series of posts will aim to answer the question and expand by bringing in the argument for repatriation.
Notes
[1] Kim Knowles et al., 150 Huron Memories, 1863-2013 (London, ON, Canada: Huron University College, 2013), 6.
[2] Ronda Allen, “The Museum of Ontario Archaeology,” Education Forum: The Magazine for Secondary School Professionals 36, no. 2 (2010): pp. 36-39, 36. “Wilfrid Jury’s Legacy: Wilfrid Jury (Part 5).” Museum of Ontario Archaeology, July 20, 2017. https://archaeologymuseum.ca/wilf_jury_5.
[3] Jordan Jacobs and Benjamin W. Porter, “Repatriation in University Museum Collections: Case Studies from the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology,” International Journal of Cultural Property 28, no. 4 (2021): pp. 531-550, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0940739121000400, 533.
[4] Rémi Alie, “Notes/Recommendations for Further Student Projects,” (unpublished, March 15, 2015).