Flattening Identity: Colonial Accumulation and Hidden Archives at Harvard's Philippine Collection

Abstract

Flattening Identity:Colonial Accumulation and Hidden Archives at Harvard's Philippine Collection Ingrid Ahlgren (bio) and Kathleen Trocino Geneta (bio) At the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, the Philippine collections amassed at the beginning of the twentieth century present an example of how the confluence of politics, science, and the urgent desire for accumulation precipitated—and continue to perpetuate—cultural erasure in museums. By critically and transparently engaging with these collections and the colonial legacies revealed in their associated documentation, museums like the Peabody can redress past practices and further serve as sites of reflection and learning. Introduction As one of the oldest and largest universal American anthropology museums, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University (hereafter Peabody Museum) was at the forefront of the development and professionalization of American anthropology. As such, it is implicated in century-old but still unresolved issues surrounding the subjugation and misrepresentation of indigenous peoples through the collection of their bodies and cultural heritage for the purposes of scientific inquiry. Despite a call for reckoning with these legacies over the last few decades, the sheer volume of unattended collections, limited access, and knowledge gatekeeping suggest the injustices of museum collecting are not relegated to the past. One year ago, Harvard University and the Peabody Museum issued an apology for the institution's links to colonialism and imperialism [End Page 254] through its collection of the remains of over ten thousand individuals.1 In confronting this legacy, the Philippine collections at Harvard must be critically investigated within these historic schemas of museum collecting practices and the context of the United States's policies of "benevolent assimilation" at the turn of the twentieth century. Far from being benevolent, anthropology and museum collecting were complicit in the development and application of the U.S. government's colonial experiment abroad. U.S. government officials, museums, as well as both professionals and amateurs within the burgeoning science of anthropology collaborated in the creation of a new Philippines. Engaging in "the first serious attempt to develop an Anglo-Saxon civilization in the Tropics and among a non-Aryan people," descriptions and portrayals of the diverse peoples of the Philippine archipelago as "semi-civilized" and "savage" were deployed to justify U.S. presence in the name of progress.2 The accumulation of museum collections was complicit in this process and, through a process of neglect, has manifested the same ethnic classifications the U.S. government "flattened" for political ends, collapsing diverse populations into a smaller number of simplified identifiers according to racial or cultural assumptions. This precipitated a pattern of ignoring cultural and historic specifics originally acquired during the collecting processes. Associated documentation became dispersed across multiple sites in the museum—effectively creating a hidden archive. Identifying data that has been disassociated from the objects themselves remains largely inaccessible to the public and hidden from view, perpetuating cultural erasure of Filipino identities and livelihoods today.3 To rectify this, more detailed data associated with the collections must be brought out of the archives and linked to the public-facing database. Engaging this documentation, alongside collaboration with source and descendant communities, can re-activate the collections in a more ethical and truthful manner, thereby reinventing the museum as a safe(r) space for stakeholder communities and reinvigorating it as a trusted site of learning for the wider public. Politics, science, and creating the Philippines The United States acquired the Philippines in 1898 from Spain after the Spanish-American War.4 Initially reluctant due to the glaring hypocrisy of interfering with the independence of a population, President McKinley eventually elected to subjugate the Philippines for its strategic geopolitical location and lucrative economic opportunities.5 He famously called the U.S. approach to civilizing the Philippines "benevolent assimilation," determining that the best solution for future Philippine sovereignty was to "as friends, protect the natives in their own homes."6 Motivated by the need for a roadmap after the Philippine-American War, the U.S. government required data to understand the diverse populations it was to administer. Science and the government became intimate partners where "modern industrial development is an outgrowth of pure science, and almost every discovery of science is ultimately...