Indigenous Teenage Interpreters in Museums and Public Education: The Native Youth Program in the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia

By Madeline Bronsdon Rowan

"Rowan and her team show the rest of us working in museums that we have a responsibility to enable indigenous youth to have a more important role in museums and in the broader community.
I highly recommend this refreshing and illuminating story to those who believe or need to be reminded that museums can be the catalyst for social change--the kind of change that helps heal and gives a stronger voice to indigenous people."

--Susan Enowitz - Executive Director of the Coronado Museum of History & Art

"If she ever got sufficient financial support, she would revolutionize museum education and we would all be better for it."

--Dr. Michael Ames - Director Museum of Anthropolgy, UBC 1974-1997, 2002-2004

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diamond River Books
• Release date: Nov 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9780987873866

Madeline Bronsdon Rowan

Madeline Bronsdon Rowan was Curator of Education and Ethnology at UBC's Museum of Anthropology from 1975 to 1986, and taught in the Anthropology-Sociology Department from 1967. Her belief in the educational potential of museums of anthropology led to the creation of the Native Youth Program.

Book preview

Indigenous Teenage Interpreters in Museums and Public Education:

The Native Youth Program in the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia

Madeline Bronsdon Rowan

Published by Diamond River Books at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Madeline Bronsdon Rowan

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

*****

Table of Contents

Native Youth Program Reviews

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Prologue

Part One: The Native Youth Program

Chapter l: What We Did in the Native Youth Program

Chapter 2: Participants Look Back on the Native Youth Program

Chapter 3: Participants Look Forward—Identity & Consensus Building

Part Two: Insiders and an Outsider Inspired by the Native Youth Project

Chapter 4: Visit to Musqueam Village

Chapter 5: What Participants Now Say

Chapter 6: Inside Views: Managers and Coordinators

Chapter 7: A Program Elsewhere

Part Three: Making a Modern Museum

Chapter 8: Museums and Public Education

Chapter 9: Working with Indigenous Communities: Sharing Knowledge and Authority

Part Four: A New and Provocative Mandate for Museums, Schools, and Public Education

Chapter 10: School Programs and What We Tried to Do at MOA

Chapter 11: The NYP Model in Museums and Schools

Chapter 12: Internal Changes Necessary in Museums

Chapter 13: Initiation into Cultural Heritage

Chapter 14: Teacher Training: Change is Necessary

Part Five: Overcoming Resistance to Change

Chapter 15: Inside Museums

Chapter 16: The Phenomenon of Burnout: MOA’s Lessons

Chapter 17: Measuring Success in Museums:The Marketplace Influence

Chapter 18: Measuring What is Learned in Museums

Epilogue

Appendix

Author Biography

Native Youth Program reviews

You don’t know what it is like to have your life exhibited in glass cases.

Doreen Jensen, Gitk’san Artist and Cultural Consultant

Is the Native Youth Program (NYP) a good idea? Of course it is, but of course it is not. Museums . . . are complex and contradictory places, damned if they do and do not.

Dr. Michael Ames, Director, Museum of Anthropology, UBC, 1974 – 1997, 2002 – 2004

The NYP gave me a start in understanding my own culture and other First Nations cultures. The opportunities are good. You have to weigh one thing against the other, but students benefitted. The program could change their lives.

Eileen Joe—Squamish Nation


I think a program like the NYP could be set up in my home community, and I think one should be. It is important for the youth to learn about the culture. I grew up in the city knowing nothing about my culture.

Lori Speck—Kwakwaka’wakw Nation

Taking kids from the city and talking about First Nations culture to the public in a museum is very problematic. MOA, all museums, are now under scrutiny. I now feel I was appropriated by the museum to promote the museum.

Greg Brass—Anishinaabeg (Saultaux)

There are now students who will say the NYP is a token program and hasn’t changed since it was born. If a program like this is to exist with nice little brown faces in front of the public who benefits most? Indians? The public? The museum? The museum benefits more. This will change if it is taken out of a political space and put in a First Nations cultural centre.

Don Bain—Lleidli T’enneh Nation

The NYP was such a valuable lesson because of the research and public speaking skills we acquired. If every First Nations student could be involved it would be ideal.

Harry Nyce—Nisga’a Nation


I already see a desperate need for further programs like the NYP.

Monica Jeffrey—Gitk’san-Tsimshian Nation

If she could ever get sufficient financial support she would revolutionize museum education and we would all be the better for it.

Dr. Michael Ames 1989

*****

Acknowledgements

Ex-Native Youth Program (NYP) students whose invaluable contributions made this book possible:

Don Bain, Lleidli T’enneh Nation

Greg Brass, Anishinaabeg (Saultaux) Anishaw Nation

Vivian Campbell, Musqueam Nation

Cindy Erwin, Heiltsuk Nation

Kim Guerin, Musqueam Nation

Monica Jeffrey, Gitk’san-Tsimshian Nation

Eileen Joe, Squamish Nation

Harry Nyce, Nisga’a Nation

Norman A. Point, Musqueam and Chehalis Nations

Lori Speck, Kwakwaka’wakw Nation

Others who contributed are past project managers Pat Berringer, Jean McIntosh and Elena Perkins; Pam Brown, current Supervisor of the NYP, and Gina Laczko, Director of Education and Public Programs, The Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona.

Special thanks to my editor Betsy Nuse, for her generous, patient, insightful, and highly professional work in shaping this final form.

*****

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the world’s indigenous teenagers and to Bob, for his wise encouragement.

And to honour Michael Ames, Audrey and Harry Hawthorn, and all the others at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) who supported the NYP.

Prologue

Whatever revolution I might have helped create, the NYP was the beginning, the point of departure, for a new way of thinking. Whatever we learn and apply from having indigenous teenagers as interpreters in museums, we have an obligation to use in museums and public education. That will be the real revolution.

Madeline Bronsdon Rowan 2012

Preface

Summer 1986 one o’clock in the afternoon

The Theatre Gallery in the Anthropology Museum at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver is a grey carpeted, gently sloping area with over ninety seats. At the front, two First Nations teenagers, male and female, unlock two large wooden wheeled storage units and place various raw materials and artifacts on a platform while museum visitors take their seats. The girl sets a slide tray in a projector at the back of the theatre, pulls down a screen in front, and dims the lights. The young male goes to the podium and says:

"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the UBC Museum of Anthropology. My name is Don Bain, and this is Eileen Joe. We are members of the Native Youth Program here at the museum, and our presentation will be about the traditional uses of the cedar tree among the cultures of the Northwest Coast Indian peoples.

At the end you are welcome to come up and handle these touchable artifacts and other materials which we will use during the presentation.

The slide presentation begins, and Don reads the commentary from the podium. The slides include scenes of various Northwest Coast villages around 1900, showing houses, totem poles, canoes, men and women fishing and gathering food, dressed in traditional clothing. It lasts about ten minutes and then the two students display the raw materials and touchable artifacts, with diagrams and other visuals, showing how parts of the cedar tree were used to make objects in traditional life.

Introduction

Having First Nations teenagers give public talks to museum visitors about their cultural background and contemporary culture seemed like a good idea. Museums are where objects from their traditional cultures are exhibited, and it seemed sensible to have these students interpreting these objects to the public. Museums would obviously be offering them an employment and educational opportunity. But would a museum also be using students to advance its own interests and attract more visitors? And would the students be exploited when they willingly participated in such projects, knowing they would be gaining something?

This book begins with the Native Youth Program (NYP) at the UBC Museum of Anthropology (MOA): what can be learned from describing and analyzing it, and how this relates to public education. The NYP was an influence on its student participants, but these lives were already formed by their families and their cultural background before they came to the museum.

This book grew out of an earlier unpublished manuscript, Speaking For Ourselves, in which the NYP was the centrepiece. But when I asked two former students, Don Bain and Greg Brass, to read it I discovered they felt the NYP deserved more attention and a different emphasis. Their comments were sound, because even though I had used a few quotations from students to illustrate my account, it was my voice, my perspective as an anthropologist, a curator, and a museum educator that prevailed. The responses of three former MOA colleagues who read the manuscript confirmed those of Don and Greg. A stronger voice from NYP participants was necessary.

In 2000 I began to try to find ex-NYP students I had known, using lists compiled by MOA staff for the NYP’s 20th anniversary in 1999. I interviewed some in person, most by telephone, and a few wrote answers to the questions, then talked with me on the telephone. Since 2002 I have spoken to most of them several times to keep up with changes in their lives. The long conversations with these ten former students were an unusual opportunity. I learned a great deal about them, the NYP, and about British Columbia and First Nations people today. The result was Learning To Listen, a manuscript for which I could not find a publisher. With helpful advice from friends, my husband Bob, and my editor Betsy Nuse, I finally embarked on the present project which uses elements from the two manuscripts to present a commentary on the relationships between indigenous teenage interpreters, museums and public education.

We at the museum did not presume to teach indigenous teenagers about their culture, which they live day to day, but we did offer a unique opportunity for them to learn some more about their traditional heritage through the study of artifacts. Much about the difference between these—culture and heritage—appears in the former students’ statements in Chapter 5. It is important reason to read these statements in full, for they are enlightening and moving.

******

The NYP began in 1979, has changed over the years, and continues at MOA today. There are no quick answers in this book to questions the program raises such as the wisdom of creating such programs, how they should relate to the feelings and ideas of First Nations people, and if there is a future for them that will satisfy all involved. Learning to listen and to understand others isn’t easy for anyone, especially if we hold preconceived ideas about the speakers. Most important, I have written this book to help all its readers begin to better understand programs like the NYP, the evolving worlds of young people, First Nations people and people from varying cultural backgrounds, and how all of these relate to museums, schools, and public education.

A Note on Language

Many terms of reference related to First Nations people are very different from those used twenty-five years ago. Many language and cultural group names have changed, such as Kwakiutl, Kwagulth, and Kwaguitl which once were used to designate the whole Kwak’wala-speaking language group. Recognizing the evolving nature of naming among First Nations groups, I have left terms, names, and expressions as they were used by those I interviewed. I have used First Nations to designate the indigenous peoples of Canada and Native American to apply to indigenous people in the United States. Many First Nations people use the terms Indian, native, aboriginal, or indigenous, while non-First Nations people generally use First Nations.

~~***~~

Part One: The Native Youth Program

~~***~~

Chapter 1: What We Did in the Native Youth Program

You get to learn all this stuff about your culture, and you get to be a star!

Senior NYP student to a newcomer.

The idea for the Native Youth Program (NYP) arose in the summer of 1978, two years after the new Museum of Anthropology (MOA) in Vancouver, British Columbia opened. It seemed time to offer some special programs to local First Nations children at the nearby Musqueam reserve. In consultation with the summer recreational director at the village we organized a workshop for children between the ages of four and ten. Hilary Stewart, the well-known writer and lecture on traditional Northwest Coast culture was my partner in this, and our co-worker was Beverly Berger, the wife of former Chief Justice Tom Berger, then a graduate student in the UBC Faculty of Education. Our goal was to introduce the children to how their ancestors had used local resources for food, shelter, clothing, and transportation. They gathered berries, wove simple mats of cedar bark strips we gathered from the forest, and carved simple spoons for Indian ice cream made from soapberries. The children’s summer camp supervisors were teenagers from Musqueam, and it became clear that they were interested in what their young charges were doing and that they themselves did not know much about these traditional technologies. We were happy with the workshop, but Hilary and I believed we would be providing a greater educational service if we gave this information and more to teenagers who could then present it to museum visitors. It seemed a more sensible use of our resources.

At this time I met and began to work with Brenda Taylor, Heiltsuk Nation, who in addition to being a home-school worker for the Vancouver School Board, was President of the Native Indian Youth Advisory Society, the sponsor of a First Nations theatre and school, Spirit Song. Brenda was instrumental in helping secure funds from federal agencies. It was she who said It’s time for us to show what our native youth can do.And so began in the summer of 1979 the experimental Native Youth Project.

The project was a good idea and has certainly stood the test of time. But ideas do not just spring out of thin air. They have histories and precedents—things that have happened which give rise to innovations and new ways of seeing the world. The NYP was born because of earlier experiences, and to put this story in context I will go back more than forty-five years when I was a student in anthropology.

******

Then anthropology seemed so simple. Of course it wasn’t. In North America and all over the world cultural and social anthropologists lived with indigenous peoples, studied them, and wrote about them. Their descriptive analyses of these different ways of life (ethnographies) were read and studied by colleagues and students learning about cultures that were rapidly changing or were in danger of disappearing. Some cultures were already gone when I read about them as a student. Anthropology seemed important work, especially if anthropologists were interested not only in the ideas, beliefs, and behaviour of these peoples, but also in the objects they made and used in daily and ceremonial life—the artifacts in museum collections.

Educating a wider audience about this remarkable range of human creations and experiences seemed to me the natural responsibility of anthropology in not only the university but also in public education. Anthropology could open people’s minds to the internal logic and richness of another culture shared by a group of people, a society. And by understanding other cultures people could also begin to see how systems of kinship, religion, economics, politics and art functioned in their own society.

Artifacts seemed to be an important way of teaching anthropology, for they were intrinsically interesting because of their appearance, the ways in which they were made and used, and because they were so closely related to the cultural context from which they came. Museums were an obvious and natural venue for this work, but working with teachers and students in the public schools seemed also particularly important to me. Anthropology seemed eminently useful as an educational tool. The term useful anthropology became well-known later; it was used for the first time in a paper by Harry Hawthorn in the 1970s delivered at a conference in Victoria, as Michael Ames recalls. The term referred to a whole range of new ways in which anthropological knowledge and research techniques could be employed outside the usual academic context, usually for the benefit of indigenous people. Anthropologists were beginning to do research for indigenous communities, and also training indigenous people to do their own research.

Working with the coastal indigenous people of B.C. was crucial to MOA’s work. Gathering and recording information about collections and the cultures from which they came was a high priority, and First Nations artists and cultural consultants had been part of the museum’s life since the early l950s. Kwakwaka’wakw artist Chief Mungo Martin, born in Fort Rupert, had laid the foundation for this tradition by passing on to the Hawthorns valuable information about the art and culture of his people. He also created the first massive cedar sculptures on the UBC campus, which stood in what was then known as Totem Park on South West Marine Drive. Another and larger complex, this time based on the Haida tradition, was created by Bill Reid and the Kwakwaka’wakw ‘Namgis (formerly known as Nimpkish) artist Doug Cranmer from Alert Bay in the early l960s. The longhouse, mortuary house and massive sculptures also stood in Totem Park. Many other artists followed: Robert Davidson (also Haida), Roy Hanuse of the Oweekeno Nation at Rivers Inlet, and others. Della Kew, a writer and cultural consultant born at the Musqueam reserve near UBC, came and assisted in refining information about the Coast Salish collections. In the 1970s Gloria Cranmer Webster, Doug Cranmer’s sister, was an assistant curator in the museum and supplied more information about the Kwakwaka’wakw collections. People like these not only contributed new knowledge, but in the case of artists, studied the collections intensely and began to create new art works based on their different traditions. In time their work revolutionized the publics, and the museums’, appreciation and understanding of Northwest Coast traditional and contemporary culture. Out of these collaborations came lasting changes in coastal First Nations contemporary art and culture as well as in relations between First Nations people and museums.

As an anthropology graduate I had found a spiritual home at the old Museum of Anthropology (MOA), which in the l960s was still lodged in the main UBC library basement, next to the Fine Arts Gallery. The museum was small: two work rooms with much of the space used for storage, and a fairly large room for exhibits, which gradually shrank over the years as it too was used for storage. I took museum studies, and what was then called a primitive art course from curator Audrey Hawthorn, and worked with her and other graduate students. I had already met her husband Harry, head of the anthropology and sociology department and director of the museum. As students we learned the basics of museum work, organizing new collections donated to or bought by the museum, placing small numbers on them to identify them, and mounting exhibitions in the big awkward white wooden cases in the exhibit room.

Later I taught anthropology in the UBC department and became in 1975 Curator of Education and Ethnology in the new MOA (opened in l976 in its spectacular new building). I brought my earlier training with