Description
Book SynopsisAn original perspective on the history of northern North American peoples grounded in things, this book explores how close, collaborative looking can discern the traces of contact, exchange, and movement of objects and give them a life and political power in complex cross-cultural histories.
Trade Review"Object Lives and Global Histories in Northern North America demonstrates how objects can be related to such diverse themes as status, masculinity, imperial and diplomatic relations, craftsmanship, perseverance of Indigenous traditions, cultural hybridity, personal relationships and gift-giving, consumerism, ways of knowing, and health and healing. It is a sustained application of material culture theory to a diverse range of Indigenous material culture that keeps the objects front and centre." Michelle Hamilton, University of Western Ontario
“Ultimately, Object Lives and Global Histories provides a broader appreciation of multidisciplinary approaches to Indigenous material cultures. It also encourages scholars, museum workers, and others to delve deep, to engage in slow or concentrated looking and multi-sensory explorations, as well as multi-vocal dialogues—to listen, to learn, and to honour the abundance of knowledges that function outside the walls of the museums, the archives, and institutional frameworks. It offers insights as to how decentre and reframe historical analyses of objects by bringing lives to bear on their existence.” RACAR
"Object Lives and Global Histories in Northern North America is without doubt 'a tool for future endeavours' as it sets out to be. Like the objects it analyses, it should circulate widely, across disciplinary borders and social networks beyond museum walls to help guide new methodologies around the study of collections whose diverse contexts—and our understandings of them—continue to change." Dress: The Journal of the Costume Society of America
"[T]his book is a feast for the eyes." Material Culture Review/Revue de la culture matérielle
“[An] impressive collection that will surely impact how scholars think about material culture, collaborative research, and decolonizing the academy for years to come.” HNet
