Conclusion

Conclusion

by | Nov 18, 2022 | Conclusion

 This image of what are likely four knobkerries greatly influenced my direction for this project. The inaccurate description of these knobkerries in the Huron Missionary Museum collection records as “Club used for infanticide” epitomizes the damaging influence of colonial collections. Photograph by Remi Alie.

The goal for this series of blog posts was to illustrate that many institutions like museums and universities exhibit colonial influence in their Indigenous collections. I conclude that these institutions can begin to heal the harm caused by their involvement in colonialism by researching their collections and engaging in the repatriation process. Huron University’s remaining Missionary Museum collection stands as an example of the colonial legacies of early archaeologists as actors of empire. I use this collection as a backdrop to analyze colonial collections at public institutions. In aiming to repair their colonial legacies, institutions should begin the process of repatriation. I stress that repatriation is about more than just returning objects to the people they came from. It takes many forms like researching the collection, providing wider access to information about the collection, extending partnership and agency in the collection, and loaning collections to communities.

Repatriating incorporates more opportunities for repairing the damages caused by colonialism than solely the return of artifacts to source communities. Additional means of repatriation lessen the barriers institutions face when considering decolonization. In “Repatriation in university museum collections: Case studies,” Jordan Jacobs, the Policy & Strategy Advisor, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research at Cambridge University, and Benjamin W. Porter, associate Professor of Archaeology at California University, argue that repatriation should be a common occurrence rather than an extraordinary circumstance for museums to undertake. Furthermore, they argue that, in addition to the physical return of objects, successful repatriation can be the “sharing of actionable information with potential recipients.” [1] Viewing repatriation as a normal operation for an institution with a colonial legacy is an important aspect of increasing willingness to begin repatriation. Further increasing the potential for repatriation is an awareness of repatriation as more than solely the return of objects to their communities. Returning objects is, of course, an immensely important part of repatriation. But research increases knowledge about the artifacts and can thus lead to more opportunities for the proper repatriation of objects. With institutions like Huron University where the remaining database lacks proper information about the collection, researching the objects could help identify aspects such as potential source communities, the meanings of the objects for a source community, or historical uses of the objects. For example, in researching the supposed “Club used for infanticide,” I found that many East African communities used clubs called knobkerries as weapons for hunting and occasional warfare. Thus, the clubs were not designed for infanticide and their proper name is knobkerrie. With this completed research, the database now provides more accurate information about the artifact.

To wrap up this series, I want to push colonial institutions to begin the process of repatriation. This is possible through a variety of methods, but researching collections is a significant first step. There are many ways they can go about this process. For example, have students or employees respectfully interact with the objects and research their histories, fund research grants to hire students or professionals to research the collection, and reach out to Indigenous communities for their object knowledge. It is through research that museums and universities can better understand the meanings of their colonial collections and thereby enact proper repatriation if source communities choose to explore the return of their objects.

 

[1] 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.

 

Indigenous Erasure and T. B. R. Westgate

Indigenous Erasure and T. B. R. Westgate

by | Nov 11, 2022 | Indigenous Erasure and T. B. R. Westgate

T. B. R. Westgate and his family at Watford, Ontario. Photograph from Lambton Heritage Museum. Westgate – Lambton County Museums (lambtonmuseums.ca)

This post is a follow-up to week 4’s post, titled “Huron’s Colonial Purpose in Africa. Since writing that post, I’ve conducted further research on T. B. R. Westgate, who I identified as a missionary in German East Africa and South America. Another significant part of Westgate’s life that I did not mention is his role as Chief Administrator of the Anglican Church’s “Indian and Eskimo Commission” for residential schools. [1] In this role, Westgate oversaw eighteen residential schools and opened many new ones across Canada under the Anglican Church. [2] Throughout his work as a missionary in East Africa and Field Secretary of the Anglican residential school system, Westgate aimed to assimilate Indigenous peoples and erase their history in favour of a Christianized culture. This post will discuss more of Westgate’s views of the people he interacted with as a missionary in East Africa and Field Secretary in the Anglican residential school system of Canada.

T. B. R. Westgate’s goal as a missionary and Field Secretary of the residential school system was to Christianize Indigenous peoples. He saw Indigenous peoples of both East Africa and Canada as inferior and insisted that they needed to assimilate into Christian beliefs and thereby erase any prior cultural affiliations. Demonstrating his dedication to the goal of Europeanizing, Westgate stated “I have but one object to live for, and that is to carry the knowledge of Jesus Christ to those who are perishing for lack of that knowledge. This is and shall be my sole and simple object.” [3] During his time in Africa, Westgate became annoyed that the local people he taught English to did not immediately use the language to read Christian works. He stated, “The vanity and impudence of the educated n[*****] passes comprehension. There is no more contemptible or despicable production under the sun.” Westgate expected that these people educated by the Anglican missionaries would immediately embrace Christianity. [4] If they chose simply to share their skill with the community, Westgate angered quickly. In a quote from his time in East Africa, Westgate stated that the Wagogo peoples were an unevolved race. [5] These are the same people who supposedly greeted him with gifts of produce when he arrived at their region. [6] While the Wagogo people offered him welcoming gifts, Westgate fostered beliefs of their inferiority and need to convert to Christianity.

Westgate’s goal of Christianizing other peoples continued with his work for the Canadian Anglican residential schools. Regarding the Indigenous people under the Anglican residential school system in Canada, Westgate felt that Christianity would take away their “great wilderness of dense moral darkness.” [7] Westgate believed that the cultures of Indigenous peoples in Canada were morally inferior to Christian values. He hoped that the residential schools he organized would reverse the primitive cultures. In 1937, Westgate stated that if taken away early enough from their families and placed “with the best in our modern civilization,” they would overwrite a “thousand years or more of tedious evolution.” [8] Thus, Westgate insisted upon the early removal of Indigenous children so that they could replace the teachings and culture of their Indigenous families in favour of Christian values. To his credit, Westgate cared for those within his system. While at one of his schools in Saskatchewan, an Indigenous man travelled 13 days to find treatment for an infected gunshot wound. With the assistance of some locals, Westgate amputated the arm because travelling to the nearest hospital would take too long.  Westgate then wrote about the need for a hospital in that region as the nearest was still two hundred and fifty miles away. [9] While he did care for Indigenous peoples, Westgate insisted upon the erasure of their culture in favour of Christianity.

This demonstrates the problematic collection of artifacts in missionary museums. Some missionaries like Westgate believed that the Indigenous peoples they interacted with were inferior. Westgate demonstrates that the supposed help offered to Indigenous peoples of East Africa and Canada came with the expectation that they convert to Christianity. We do not know why Westgate collected artifacts from his time in East Africa. However, we do know he viewed the Indigenous people he associated with as inferior, and he worked toward their cultural erasure in favour of assimilation into Christianity. 

Notes

[1] Alan L. Hayes, “T.B.R. Westgate: Organizing Indigenous Erasure for the Anglican Church, 1920–1943,” Toronto Journal of Theology 36, no. 1 (2020): pp. 54-74, https://doi.org/10.3138/tjt-2020-0035, 54.

[2] Hayes, “T.B.R. Westgate, 65.

[3] R. I. Wilfred Westgate, Maureen Carter, and Dorothy Leach, T.B.R. Westgate: A Canadian Missionary on Three Continents (Boston, MA: Education and Resources Group, 1987), 9.

[4] Hayes, “T.B.R. Westgate, 56.

[5] Hayes, “T.B.R. Westgate, 68.

[6] Westgate, Carter, and Leach, T.B.R. Westgate, 107.

[7] Hayes, “T.B.R. Westgate, 68.

[8] Hayes, “T.B.R. Westgate, 68.

[9] Hayes, “T.B.R. Westgate, 68.

A “Native Fiddle” and the Dangers of Collection Ignorance

A “Native Fiddle” and the Dangers of Collection Ignorance

by | Nov 4, 2022 | A “Native Fiddle” and the Dangers of Collection Ignorance

“Native fiddle” located in the bottom left of the image. Photograph taken by Remi Alie

The administrators of Huron University’s Missionary Museum often put forth generic information about the artifacts in their collection. These generic records still form much of the information tied to the Huron Missionary Museum. The presence of an artifact described only as a “six string Native Fiddle,” represents the potential danger of repatriating artifacts without conducting proper research. The third post in this blog series discusses Naamiwan’s Drum: The Story of a Contested Repatriation of Anishinaabe Artefacts by Maureen Matthews, the Curator of Cultural Anthropology at the Manitoba Museum. In this work, Matthews brings forth the case of Naamiwan’s Drum to demonstrate the potential harm of repatriation while neglecting to conduct proper research on the meaning of objects to their source communities. To the Pauingassi Ojibwe community from which Naamiwan’s Drum originates, the instrument carries special significance because of its connection to Naamiwan, who was its first owner. The Pauingassi believe objects like Naamiwan’s Drum are animate and encapsulate a spiritual presence from their owner. [1] Conducting proper research is therefore an essential aspect of the repatriation process to ensure the return of objects to the proper communities. The collection inventory used in this post comes from the Principal of Huron College during the Huron Missionary Museum’s Operation. From 1911-1941, Principal C.C. Waller created an inventory of the Huron Missionary Museum Collection. Remi Alie, a student at Huron College, transcribed this inventory as part of a project in the class “HIST 3801: The Historian’s Craft” at Huron University College. According to Principal Waller’s collection inventory, the artifact located in the bottom left corner of Figure 1 is a six-string “Native Fiddle” from German East Africa, donated by T. B. R. Westgate. However, the inventory mentions nothing of the source community and the potential meanings associated with this object. This lack of specificity means that Huron University knows very little about objects like the “Native fiddle” because it has few other collection resources to consult. We learned in the third post of this blog series that different cultures can attach different meanings to objects. For example, the Pauingassi Ojibwe people from which Naamiwan’s Drum descended, view the object as animate and they thereby have much personal connection it. Administrators at the University of Winnipeg assumed that the Pauingassi Ojibwe no longer practiced traditional Ojibwe beliefs and thereby incorrectly interpreted the Pauingassi’s adaptation of Christian values as a form of distancing from the traditional aspects of their culture. In University’s view, this supposed transition away from traditional values justified the repatriation of the drum and other objects to another Ojibwe community. This decision upset the Pauingassi Ojibwe people who had no idea that these objects (of massive significance to them) would transfer to another community. [2] The University of Winnipeg caused great harm to the Pauingassi Ojibwe by repatriating the objects to another community. If Huron University chooses to explore repatriation without attributing proper research, the college risks repeating the mistakes of the University of Winnipeg. Expansive research plays an important role in improving knowledge of collections. The Waller inventory provides little information about the fiddle found in this image. In this case, it is important that we further explore this fiddle’s history. T. B. R. Westgate (who featured more extensively in the fourth post of this blog series) was a Huron alumnus who partnered with the German East African regime during his time as a missionary in East Africa. This regime killed hundreds of thousands of Indigenous East African people during its rule. [3] It is from this period that Westgate collected objects like this fiddle. This knowledge of Westgate’s colonial influence and collaboration with German East Africa changes the nature of owning or repatriating such objects. Huron now has significant reason to question the ethical collection of objects in its collection. We must ask ourselves: under what conditions did Westgate procure this fiddle? If Huron were to repatriate this object, this question needs to be front and centre. Answering it will help the college respond more appropriately if the source community accepts repatriation. With the knowledge that objects carry different meanings to different cultures, the lack of information known about the “Native fiddle” means Huron could commit grave injustices toward the source community of this object. Committing further time and resources through the practice of practical relativism to researching objects in the collection, like what has begun with this project, will give far more context to the objects. This will allow for more proper coordination and communication with potential source communities as Huron will be better informed of the community’s history and relationship with the object.

Notes

[1] James Leonard Giblin and Jamie Monson, Maji Maji: Lifting the Fog of War (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010), 1. [2] Matthews, Naamiwan’s Drum, 177-178. [3] Maureen Matthews, Naamiwan’s Drum: The Story of a Contested Repatriation of Anishinaabe Artefacts (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 66.
Continued Colonialism and Museum Collections

Continued Colonialism and Museum Collections

by | Oct 28, 2022 | Continued Colonialism and Museum Collections

A photograph of four likely knobkerries found in the Huron Missionary Museum collection. Each classified in the Waller collection inventory as a “Club Used for Infanticide.” Photograph taken by Remi Alie

During its operation between 1911 and 1941, the Huron Missionary Museum took a generic and inaccurate approach to describing artifacts within its collection. These descriptions remain as the only pieces of information associated with the artifacts in the Huron Missionary Museum collection. This post and the following will each bring forth one type of object from the Huron Missionary Museum collection that demonstrate the issues with providing inaccurate and generic information about artifacts and the cultures they come from. The inventory of the Huron Missionary Museum describes the artifact type featured in this post as “Club[s] Used for Infanticide.” The true name of these artifacts is knobkerrie. A knobkerrie is a common type of weapon used by many East African cultures for hunting and warfare. These weapons feature long wooden handles that thicken at the top to create a circular shape. The top acts as a club to inflict damage upon targets. [1] The description of the knobkerrie inaccurately depicts the source communities of this artifact. Rather than describing the true use of the knobkerrie as a weapon for hunting and warfare, the museum administrators chose to portray the weapon as a tool used solely for infanticide and thereby inaccurately portray the source community. “Club[s] Used for Infanticide” continues to be the only description tied to these knobkerries in the Huron Missionary Museum. Inaccurate and generalized descriptions of artifacts misrepresent the people they come from. The so-called “Club[s] Used for Infanticide” demonstrate how some museum administrators in the early twentieth century chose to misrepresent the cultures of artifacts in their collection. Colonial museums should expand repatriation efforts to begin healing the harms of misrepresentation. The collection inventory used in this post comes from the Principal of Huron College during the Huron Missionary Museum’s Operation. From 1911-1941, Principal Waller created an inventory of the Huron Missionary Museum Collection. Remi Alie, a student at Huron College, transcribed this inventory as part of a project in the class “HIST 3801: The Historian’s Craft” at Huron University College. Items in the Huron Missionary Museum feature descriptions that inaccurately depict the cultures from which the objects originate. The Huron Missionary Museum collection features several knobkerries or similar objects solely classified in Waller’s collections inventory as a “Club Used for Infanticide.” Rather than a tool created for infanticide like Waller’s inventory insinuates, many East African cultures used knobkerries in large-scale warfare or for hunting. While, like any other weapon, a person wielding a knobkerrie could commit infanticide, this was not the intended purpose of the weapon. [2] Describing the knobkerrie as an infanticide club demonstrates that organizers of the Huron Missionary Museum inaccurately represented cultures instead of presenting a factual and respectful history. A person viewing this description could believe this to be a purpose-built tool for infanticide. This grossly overstates the prevalence of infanticide and casts an overtly violent depiction of the East African communities using weapons like the knobkerrie. The inaccurate descriptions of artifacts in the Huron Missionary Museum continue to be the main source of information available to those looking into the collection. Thus, these descriptions still inform much of the University’s knowledge about this collection. As described in the second post of this series, in Collections and Objections, Michelle Hamilton, a history professor at Western University, argues that early twentieth century collectors of Indigenous objects, like David Boyle, viewed themselves as paternal experts on Indigenous cultures while dismissing the knowledge of Indigenous peoples. [3] This example of the knobkerrie presented as an infanticide club shows that such collectors abused this reputation of expertise at the expense of Indigenous peoples in the various countries that they collected artifacts from. They presented inaccurate information that remains attached to objects in collections like the Huron Missionary Museum. For example, the recent inventory of the Huron Missionary Museum collection relies on the binders created by Principal Waller. Without significant research applied to this collection to find more accurate information, the inaccuracies of Principal Waller will continue to inform those looking into the Huron Missionary Museum. These examples demonstrate the importance of expanding efforts to understand the meaning of objects in colonial collections. The depiction of the knobkerries as solely “Club[s] Used for Infanticide,” shows that museum organizers created inaccurate depictions of objects despite presenting themselves as experts on the subject. That such descriptions remain attached to objects in the Huron Missionary Museum brings further urgency to expanding research efforts to better understand items in the collection for eventual repatriation. Future researchers trusting the inventory descriptions of the Huron Missionary Museum may mislead readers and continue the colonial perspectives put forth by the original Huron Missionary Museum administrators. Furthermore, the current state of the Huron Missionary Museum descriptions makes repatriation extremely difficult. With little knowledge of the collection, Huron University risks incorrectly repatriating objects in the collection. The example put forth by Maureen Matthews with the artifact, Naamiwan’s Drum, at the University of Winnipeg as described in post 3 of this series, serves as a warning for the consequences of improper repatriation. [4] Universities and museums wanting to increase decolonization efforts should conduct proper repatriation through the use of practical relativism, otherwise known as conducting proper research of the object’s history and communities it may belong to.

Notes

[1] Cyril B. Courville, “War Weapons as an Index of Contemporary Knowledge of the Nature and Significance of Craniocerebral Trauma: Some Notes on Striking Weapons Designed Primarily to Produce Injury to the Head,” Medical Arts and Sciences: A Scientific Journal of the College of Medical Evangelists 2, no. 3 (July 1948): pp. 85-111, 89. [2] Courville, “War Weapons,” 89. [3] Michelle A. Hamilton, Collections and Objections: Aboriginal Material Culture in Southern Ontario (Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010), 169. [4] Matthews, Naamiwan’s Drum, 177-178.
Huron’s Colonial Connection to Africa

Huron’s Colonial Connection to Africa

by | Oct 21, 2022 | Huron's Colonial Connection to Africa

From St Philips Theological College. St Philips Theological College Kongwa – About Us (webs.com)

Huron University was once part of a large Christian missionary movement found across much of the world. During the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, missionaries with ties to Huron partnered with a brutal colonial regime, building the Huron Training College in German East Africa. In the years leading up to the creation of the Huron Training College, German officials in East Africa brutalized and murdered hundreds of thousands of Indigenous Tanzanians during, and in retaliation for, the Maji Maji Uprising after local Tanzanians revolted against forced labour practices. [1] The objects from the Huron Missionary Museum (1911-1944) and the collections remaining at Huron University come, in part, from donors who lived in German East Africa as part of their missionary efforts. To better understand how the Huron Missionary Museum collection developed, this essay aims to demonstrate how the Huron Missionary Museum connects Huron University College to European colonial regimes in Africa. The collection of artifacts by missionaries who partnered with these colonial regimes brings into question the ethical status of the Huron Missionary Museum itself. Huron University originally opened as a theological college for the Anglican Diocese of Huron. Benjamin Cronyn became the first bishop in 1852 and just over a decade later he founded Huron College as a theological institute to train priests and missionaries in the Anglican faith and for service in the new diocese. With the creation of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Church of England in 1883, members of the Huron Diocese took a more expansive view of their faith work. In this first year alone, the Huron Diocese contributed $2,438.33 to support overseas missions. In 1902, the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada (M. S. C. C.) replaced the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society as the organization directing missionary efforts for the Anglican Church in Canada. The Huron Diocese contributed $11,000.[2] This new institution started by enrolling every member of the Anglican Church in Canada into its membership.[3] Huron Diocese members hoped for the expansion of missionary work in the Anglican Church of Canada to equal their counterparts in the Anglican Church of England. In A Jubilee Memorial-Diocese of Huron 1857-1907, Archdeacon Richardson, the Archdeacon of London, Ontario, hoped the Anglican Church in Canada would work “in all regions of the heathen,” and become “herself a missionary church, like the missionary Church of England, from which she sprang, taking her full part in the evangelizing of this world.” [4] By the early twentieth century, the Huron Diocese put significant focus on expanding overseas missionary efforts. By 1911, Huron College established the Huron Missionary Museum to display artifacts brought back by alumni on overseas expeditions. Much of the museum’s objects came from the collection of Reverend Thomas Buchanan Reginald Westgate, who graduated from Huron College and later joined the Church Missionary Society in German East Africa around 1902.[5] The Canadian branch of the CMS partially amalgamated with the M. S. C. C. in 1903. Westgate remained a missionary under the German East African C. M. S. while also receiving support from its Canadian counterparts. [6] Westgate’s work with the CMS went hand-in-hand with German imperial interests. In a book about Westgate’s life, his son, Wilfrid, wrote that German administrators saw his father’s missionary work as “an asset to this part of the German colonial empire.”[7] A true test of this relationship came with the Maji Maji Uprising in 1905. The German East African administration enacted legislation for local peoples to perform forced labour to produce cotton. Despite significant language and cultural differences between them, the local population revolted against their colonial rulers. [8] Westgate and his wife feared that the German East African army would lose to the Indigenous population. Westgate showed this fear as he maintained contact with German authorities who protected his missionary station.[9] In 1913, C. M. S. members in German East Africa decided to build a college to train local people to become pastors in the Anglican faith. Westgate had much success gaining fundraising support from fellow alumni of Huron College. Using these funds, the C. M. S. began constructing the building, which they would name Huron Training College and welcomed thirteen students in January 1914. The First World War paused the partnerships with German East Africa, forcing Westgate and administrators to close the school. While Westgate was no longer the principal, Huron Training College reopened in the early 1920s with 47 students enrolled by September 1923.[10] The college continues today under the moniker: St. Philips Theological Seminary. Reverend Thomas Buchanan Reginald Westgate and the Huron Training College of Tanzania demonstrate the connection of Huron University and the Huron Missionary Museum to colonial institutions in Africa. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the Anglican Church of Canada placed more focus on missionary work. This priority, along with the work of other missionary societies, provided the foundation upon which to raise funds to support the work of missionaries like Rev. T. B. R. Westgate. Westgate was Huron Training College’s first principal and alumni of Huron College. As part of his work, Westgate partnered with a colonial regime in Africa in the same region he collected artifacts that are now in the Huron Missionary Museum Collection. The Training College bore the same name of “Huron” before changing to St. Philips Theological Seminary. Many Huron alumni donated toward constructing the school.

Notes

[1] James Giblin and Jamie Monson, eds., Maji Maji: Lifting the Fog of War (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 1. [2] Ven. Archdeacon Richardson, “Historical Sketch of the Diocese,” in A Jubilee Memorial-Diocese of Huron 1857-1907 (London, ON: The London Printing and Lithographing Company, n.d.), pp. 7-91, 88ee-89. [3] Eugene Stock, The History of the Church Missionary Society, vol. 4 (Salisbury Square: London Church Missionary Society, 1916), 88. [4] Richardson, “Historical Sketch of the Diocese,” 90-91. [5] Yves Engler, Canada in Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation (Black Point, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing, 2015), 56-57. [6] Stock, The History of the Church Missionary Society, 538. [7] Engler, Canada in Africa, 56-57. [8] Giblin and Monson, eds., Maji Maji, 1. [9] Engler, Canada in Africa, 56-57. [10] Hugh Prentice, History of Kongwa: A Centenary History of St Philip’s Theological College, Kongwa, Tanzania, 2014, Chapter 1. https://a.co/bpTBGCo