AIC's 52nd Annual Meeting

In 1999, a carved wooden sculpture in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) referred to as the “beaver prow” was repatriated to the Deisheetan Tlingit people of Angoon, Alaska. To convey a narrative about museum-community reconciliation and Native survivance to the museum public, Tlingit carver Joey Zuboff was commissioned in 2020 to carve a replica of the canoe prow, which he referred to as the original prow’s “sister” or “shadow”, for display in AMNH’s newly renovated Northwest Coast Hall. When the shadow was delivered to the museum, staff discovered that Zuboff had packed the replica with two pieces of devil’s club root, a thorny shrub native to the US Pacific Northwest used, in addition to medicinal purposes, for protection and to ward off evil spirits. Zuboff had requested that the root be exhibited together with the shadow because of this.

For Northwest Coast communities, the root is not an inert and passive material. It has, using a concept introduced by Jane Bennett, a vitality that communicates its intentions with humans and guides their behavior. It has such a significant role in Northwest Coast communities that the presence of devil’s club root was incorporated as an integral part of the conservation efforts for the entirety of the renovation project. The material turn, represented by theorists such as Bennett, Tim Ingold, Vivieros de Castro and Bruno Latour, has argued for further exploration in understanding the complex, entangled relationships of humans and the material world. They call for a challenge to traditional Western ontologies, which have served as the foundation for conservation practice. It is with these ideas in mind that conservators can shift their understanding of the materials that they treat. The shadow and root will be discussed as an example that rejects the role of agency as a solely endowed human quality, instead highlighting ways within conservation to make space for community needs by acknowledging the agency of things. Ultimately, the beaver prow shadow is a case study demonstrating that by thoughtfully and reflexively incorporating other ways of knowing, we make room for a more thoughtful, ethical conservation practice.