Native Belongings and Institutional Values at the Oregon Historical Society, Then and Now

Abstract

Oregon Historical Society (OHS) Deputy Museum Director Nicole Yasuhara reflects on Sarah Keyes’s Summer 2020 article titled “From Stories to Salt Cairns: Uncovering Indigenous Influence in the Formative Years of the Oregon Historical Society, 1898–1905.” Yasuhara’s primary role of “safeguarding the institution’s three-dimensional cultural resources” at OHS also involves “delineating and safeguarding the information we have about each object” — a task that is often extremely difficult. There are approximately 5,200 Native belongings in the OHS Museum collections, most collected during OHS’s formative years, and as Yasuhara attests, those objects “were stripped of their history,” no doubt due to “power structures between pioneer collectors and their Native sources.” Yasuhara also discusses current institutional practices and goals that guide confront this history and “begin to address the inherently colonial practices of early collecting institutions, including OHS.” That change, she urges, must grow from deeply personal ideological shifts in which practitioners recognize our own privilege and utilize an inclusion and equity lens in our everyday lives.”