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Alexandra M Peck
I serve as the inaugural Audain Chair in Historical Indigenous Art & Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia's Department of Art History, Visual Art, & Theory. I am an anthropologist and material culture specialist with a research focus on Pacific Northwest Native art, archaeology, and geography.
My past publications have examined totem poles and Indigenous land reclamation, Haida argillite carving and sexuality, culturally modified trees and burial practices, wooly dog fur/cedar/mycological textiles, obstacles in repatriation, and a variety of other unique topics. My current scholarship emphasizes Indigenous cartography and ethnogeography, ancient Coast Salish stone sculpture, and digital cultural repositories.
My research is featured in a multitude of publications, including: Texte Zur Kunst, Journal of Northwest Anthropology, & Journal of American History, as well as funded by: the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Mellon Foundation, & Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund via the Reed Foundation.
I have also consulted on NAGPRA and repatriation cases in the U.S. and Canada, where I have curated gallery and museum exhibits and provided museum consulting services and workshops regarding Native cultural heritage, preservation, and conservation. I serve as co-editor of the journal, Archaeology in Washington, with Dr. Adam Rorabaugh, and organize the Audain Symposium on Historical Indigenous Art at UBC.
I earned my Ph.D. in Anthropology from Brown University, where I studied with Drs. Robert Preucel and Patricia Rubertone, and served as Visiting Scholar of Indigenous Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities' Institute for Advanced Study, where my work was supported by the Mellon Environmental Stewardship, Place, & Community Initiative.
I am actively recruiting graduate students and I welcome research collaborations.
Address: Dr. Alexandra M. Peck
University of British Columbia
Department of Art History, Visual Art, & Theory
400-6333 Memorial Road
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
V6T 1Z2
My past publications have examined totem poles and Indigenous land reclamation, Haida argillite carving and sexuality, culturally modified trees and burial practices, wooly dog fur/cedar/mycological textiles, obstacles in repatriation, and a variety of other unique topics. My current scholarship emphasizes Indigenous cartography and ethnogeography, ancient Coast Salish stone sculpture, and digital cultural repositories.
My research is featured in a multitude of publications, including: Texte Zur Kunst, Journal of Northwest Anthropology, & Journal of American History, as well as funded by: the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Mellon Foundation, & Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund via the Reed Foundation.
I have also consulted on NAGPRA and repatriation cases in the U.S. and Canada, where I have curated gallery and museum exhibits and provided museum consulting services and workshops regarding Native cultural heritage, preservation, and conservation. I serve as co-editor of the journal, Archaeology in Washington, with Dr. Adam Rorabaugh, and organize the Audain Symposium on Historical Indigenous Art at UBC.
I earned my Ph.D. in Anthropology from Brown University, where I studied with Drs. Robert Preucel and Patricia Rubertone, and served as Visiting Scholar of Indigenous Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities' Institute for Advanced Study, where my work was supported by the Mellon Environmental Stewardship, Place, & Community Initiative.
I am actively recruiting graduate students and I welcome research collaborations.
Address: Dr. Alexandra M. Peck
University of British Columbia
Department of Art History, Visual Art, & Theory
400-6333 Memorial Road
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
V6T 1Z2
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In the spring of 2016, we were invited by the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum to survey their small but distinguished Native American collection. We identified the objects and made exhibition (as well as digital and archival) recommendations. Many of the items were donations from alumni and often did not include detailed provenience. A group of 87 objects, however, were acquired in 1944 as part of an exchange with the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation. The Heye Foundation was founded in 1916 as a prominent research institution focusing on Native American artifacts and cultures, and its collections now comprise the core of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, D.C. We contacted Ann McMullen, curator at the NMAI and head of collections research, who provided us with a complete set of documentation for the RISD Museum's Heye Foundation objects. Perhaps most spectacularly, these items included a Tlingit headdress frontlet, whose provenance, impressive craftsmanship, and cultural meanings are the focus of this article.
My dissertation is organized into nine chapters, including the Introduction and Conclusion. Chapter 2 provides a brief timeline of pre-colonial JST history, and highlights how the Tribe engaged in cultural interaction and exchange prior to settler colonialism. Chapter 3 examines early JST relationships with non-Native individuals, and charts the region’s complicated trajectory from initial coexistence to conflict and Indigenous exile. Chapter 4 discusses how the Olympic Peninsula was transformed into a literal and metaphorical wilderness, the ways in which settler colonists adopted an Indigenous identity for themselves while denying JST presence, and contemporary consequences of erasure. Chapter 5 traces the historical and modern status of S’Klallam material culture, with emphasis on the gradual shift to a pan-Northwest Native genre (inclusive of totem poles) as a result of early 20th century tourist, academic, and museum attitudes that disparaged S’Klallam art and culture. Chapter 6 proposes various hypotheses for why the JST adopted totem poles beginning in the 1960s-1990s, and analyzes these recent monuments through a lens of identity performance and heritage maintenance. Chapter 7 highlights the discontent associated with JST poles by exploring issues of cultural property rights, cultural appropriation, and power imbalance within the Tribe, whereas Chapter 8 analyzes how totem poles have increased JST visibility and enhanced the Tribe’s cultural preservation attempts.
Over the course of eight years, Giddings transformed this small private museum with a Native American focus into a university teaching museum with worldwide scope and a dynamic, global vision. He engaged students in all aspects of its operation—from collections management to exhibitions and object acquisition.
At the same time, Giddings expanded the foundations of western Arctic archaeology. He conducted archaeological excavations, performed ethnographic research, and established protocols for collaborative work with Indigenous communities far ahead of his time. His work, and that of his students, represents a 75 year commitment to a region and its Native communities, perhaps the longest collaboration of its kind in the Americas.
For the Museum's 60th Anniversary, we look back not only at J. Louis Giddings' life, but also at the work of his students and the Museum itself, using objects from the collections to explore the vision he had, and the horizons he crossed, to transform the King Philip Museum into Brown's Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology.
In the spring of 2016, we were invited by the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum to survey their small but distinguished Native American collection. We identified the objects and made exhibition (as well as digital and archival) recommendations. Many of the items were donations from alumni and often did not include detailed provenience. A group of 87 objects, however, were acquired in 1944 as part of an exchange with the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation. The Heye Foundation was founded in 1916 as a prominent research institution focusing on Native American artifacts and cultures, and its collections now comprise the core of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, D.C. We contacted Ann McMullen, curator at the NMAI and head of collections research, who provided us with a complete set of documentation for the RISD Museum's Heye Foundation objects. Perhaps most spectacularly, these items included a Tlingit headdress frontlet, whose provenance, impressive craftsmanship, and cultural meanings are the focus of this article.
My dissertation is organized into nine chapters, including the Introduction and Conclusion. Chapter 2 provides a brief timeline of pre-colonial JST history, and highlights how the Tribe engaged in cultural interaction and exchange prior to settler colonialism. Chapter 3 examines early JST relationships with non-Native individuals, and charts the region’s complicated trajectory from initial coexistence to conflict and Indigenous exile. Chapter 4 discusses how the Olympic Peninsula was transformed into a literal and metaphorical wilderness, the ways in which settler colonists adopted an Indigenous identity for themselves while denying JST presence, and contemporary consequences of erasure. Chapter 5 traces the historical and modern status of S’Klallam material culture, with emphasis on the gradual shift to a pan-Northwest Native genre (inclusive of totem poles) as a result of early 20th century tourist, academic, and museum attitudes that disparaged S’Klallam art and culture. Chapter 6 proposes various hypotheses for why the JST adopted totem poles beginning in the 1960s-1990s, and analyzes these recent monuments through a lens of identity performance and heritage maintenance. Chapter 7 highlights the discontent associated with JST poles by exploring issues of cultural property rights, cultural appropriation, and power imbalance within the Tribe, whereas Chapter 8 analyzes how totem poles have increased JST visibility and enhanced the Tribe’s cultural preservation attempts.
Over the course of eight years, Giddings transformed this small private museum with a Native American focus into a university teaching museum with worldwide scope and a dynamic, global vision. He engaged students in all aspects of its operation—from collections management to exhibitions and object acquisition.
At the same time, Giddings expanded the foundations of western Arctic archaeology. He conducted archaeological excavations, performed ethnographic research, and established protocols for collaborative work with Indigenous communities far ahead of his time. His work, and that of his students, represents a 75 year commitment to a region and its Native communities, perhaps the longest collaboration of its kind in the Americas.
For the Museum's 60th Anniversary, we look back not only at J. Louis Giddings' life, but also at the work of his students and the Museum itself, using objects from the collections to explore the vision he had, and the horizons he crossed, to transform the King Philip Museum into Brown's Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology.