First Nations, Museums, Narrations

The story of an expedition to salvage First Nations artifacts as well as of the renewed relationship between the collection that resulted and the peoples whose heritage items were taken away.

The story of the Franklin Motor Expedition that collected First Nations artifacts on the Prairies in 1929 as well as a larger study of the relationships between museums and the indigenous peoples whose heritage items they house.

When the Franklin Motor Expedition set out across the Canadian Prairies to collect First Nations artifacts, brutal assimilation policies threatened to decimate these cultures and extensive programs of ethnographic salvage were in place. Despite having only three members, the expedition amassed the largest single collection of Prairie heritage items currently held in a British museum.

In this book, Alison K. Brown draws together the multiple narratives that make up this encounter, consulting descendants of the collectors and members of the affected First Nations and reviewing both expedition images and the artifacts themselves. In doing so, she explores the context within which the collection was made as well as the complex relationships between museums, anthropologists, and First Nations.

Accessibly written and vigorously researched, First Nations, Museums, Narrations raises timely questions about the role of collections in the twenty-first century and considers the way forward for indigenous peoples and the museums that house their cultural treasures.