Aron L. Crowell – författare

The appearance during the first millennium A.D. of small, exquisitely carved artifacts of walrus ivory in the Bering Strait region marks the beginning of an extraordinary florescence in the art and culture of North America. The discovery in the 1930s and 1940s of world-class carvings of animals, mythical beasts, shape-shifting creatures, masks, and human figurines astounded scholars and excited collectors. Nevertheless, the extraordinary objects that belong to this fascinating, sometimes frightening, world of hunting-related art remain largely unknown. Gifts from the Ancestors  examines ancient ivories from the coast of Bering Strait, western Alaska, and the islands in between—illuminating their sophisticated formal aesthetic, cultural complexity, and individual histories. Many of the pieces discussed are from recent Russian excavations and are presented here for the first time in English; others are from private collections not usually open to the public. The essays, written by an international group of scholars, adopt a refreshing interdisciplinary approach that gives voice to the various competing, and now sometimes cooperating, stakeholders, including Native groups, museums, archaeologists, art historians, art dealers, and private collectors. Distributed for the Princeton University Art MuseumExhibition Schedule:Princeton University Art Museum (October 3, 2009 – January 10, 2010)

History has many voices. In the words of Russian fur merchant Grigorii Shelikhov, who led the conquest of Kodiak Island, Alaska, in 1784 and sought to subjugate its indigenous Qikertarmiut population, "the arrival of the Russians in their land had brought them innumerable advantages, security, and prosperity" (Shelikhov 1981:121). Arsenti Aminak, a Qiker- tarmiut elder in 1851, held a different view. He recalled a Russian ship that visited the island several years before Shelikhov as a "strange monster, never seen before, which we feared and whose stench made us sick. " In 1784, the dead of his people lay on the beach at a place called A'wauq- meaning "to become numb" -where hundreds had been killed by Skeli- khov's cannon and muskets (Holmberg 1985:57-59). The Russian hunters who built the Shelikhov-Golikov Company's first outpost on Kodiak Is- land, at a small cove they called Gavan Trekh Svetitelei (as commonly translated, "Three Saints Harbor"), recalled their own miseries and de- spair: "We ...spent the winter in ceaseless labors and ...suffered great shortages and real famine ...Many contracted fever, scurvy, and other ills, and died" (Pierce 1976:75).Eyewitness statements about what happened on Kodiak Island dur- ing the Russian conquest and early years of colonial rule are important, but rare. They represent the experiences and views of a few individuals who lived through a time of turbulent change and traumatic contact between disparate cultures.