Drawing on Museums: Early Visual Fieldnotes by Franz Boas and the Indigenous Recuperation of the Archive

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the first decade of his Northwest Coast fieldwork (1886–1897), Franz Boas made and commissioned a series of research drawings of Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) objects held by museums in Berlin and elsewhere. Using them as elicitation tools, Boas added primary fieldnotes (in German, English, and Kwak'wala) directly onto them, providing a basis for his earliest publications on anthropological theory and methods as well as Kwakwaka’wakw art, song, and ceremony. Until recently, however, these visual fieldnotes—long relegated to the archive—have been severed from both the museum collections and Boas's foundational ethnographic research. In this essay, I discuss the drawings in the context of current collaborative efforts to document historic ethnographic materials with the Kwakwaka’wakw, who are recuperating such anthropological and archival resources in support of current cultural production and ceremonial revitalization. [ethnographic methods, museums, history of anthropology, Franz Boas, Kwakwaka’wakw]