Michelle Hamilton - Böcker

North America's museums are treasured for their collections of Aboriginal ethnographic and archaeological objects. Yet stories of how these artifacts were acquired often reveal unethical acts and troubling chains of possession, as well as unexpected instances of collaboration. For instance, archaeological excavation of Aboriginal graves was so prevalent in the late-eighteenth century that the government of Upper Canada legislated against it, although this did little to stop the practice. Many objects were collected by non-Native outsiders to preserve cultures perceived to be nearing extinction, while other objects were donated or sold by the same Native communities that later demanded their return. Some Native people collected for museums and even created their own.

This inaugural volume of The Franz Boas Papers Documentary Edition series presents current scholarship from the various academic disciplines that were shaped and continue to be influenced by Franz Boas (1858–1942). Few of Boas's intellectual progeny span the range of his disciplinary and public engagements. In his later career, Boas moved beyond Native American studies to become a public intellectual and advocate for social justice, particularly with reference to racism against African Americans and Jews and discrimination against women in science. He was a passionate defender of academic freedom, rigorous scholarship, and anthropology as a humane calling. The Franz Boas Papers, Volume 1 examines Boas's stature as a public intellectual in three crucial dimensions: theory, ethnography, and activism. The volume's contributors move across many of the disciplines within which Boas himself worked, bringing to bear their expertise in Native studies, anthropology, history, linguistics, folklore, ethnomusicology, museum studies, comparative literature, English, film studies, philosophy, and journalism. This volume demonstrates a contemporary urgency to reassessing Boas both within the field of anthropology and beyond.