Recovering Voices Research

The Hopi Pottery Oral History Project (HPOHP) is a collaborative research initiative that documents and disseminates knowledge about the social value of Hopi pottery and focuses on transmitting knowledge to younger generations of Hopis about the role of pottery in building Hopi society. It is co-led by Gwyneira Isaac (Recovering Voices, NMNH), Lea McChesney (Maxwell Museum, University of New Mexico), Karen Charley (Hopi, First Mesa) and Val Kahe (Hopi, First Mesa).

The HPOHP started in 2012 through a Recovering Voices Community Research Program visit and has grown to include the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office (HCPO), as well as the Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies at the University of New Mexico. This collaborative group now holds an annual Intergenerational Hopi Pottery Festival that brings together Hopi scholars and potters to present lectures on topics from the archaeological history of pottery to museum collaborations around collections. The HPOHP produces Hopi Pottery workbooks that distribute images and information about the NMNH collections to the Hopi community. To date this work has been supported by the Smithsonian Grand Challenges, RV funding and Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies and has resulted in the publications McChesney and Isaac 2018; Isaac and Pérez Báez, forthcoming.

Health is one of the most critical issues affecting Native Americans today. The Health and Culture Research Group (HCRG) is a collective of researchers, health experts and federal agencies that seeks to understand the relationship between health, culture and language vitality. Our aim is to document and disseminate community-based cultural revitalization responses to health issues. The HCRG started as a workshop in 2014 with funding from the Smithsonian Consortia and in collaboration with NMAI , and was followed by two workshops in 2015: ‘Patterns of Native Health and Wellbeing: An Intercultural Symposium’ in collaboration with Western Carolina University; and ‘The Value of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) for Environmental Health and Biomedical Sciences’ in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health (NIH). To date, the group has published a series of articles on their findings that include recommendations to researchers and funders working in Native health and TEK (Finn et al 2017; Isaac et al forthcoming). Current research concentrates on methodology used in grassroots programs in Native communities and the factors that affect the intergenerational transmission of traditional knowledge.

Led by Joshua A. Bell (Recovering Voices, NMNH), this multi-faceted project examines the dynamics of indigenous knowledge and ecology in one of the most biologically, culturally, and linguistically diverse areas of the world. Central to this project is Bell’s ongoing work in the Purari Delta of Papua New Guinea documenting the region’s histories, material culture and cultural transformations in the wake of resource extraction. This work has also involved Papua New Guinea collaborators Capsey Aivei (I’ai), Henry Ke’a (I’ai) and Sebastian Haraha (Orokolo) coming to DC to work on songs traditions and ecological knowledge (2011, 2012 and 2014). Dr. Jarrillo de La Torre (Research Associate, NMNH) has been carrying out an affiliated project on the return of the Jerry W. Leach Trobriand Folklore Collection (1969-78) at the National Anthropological Archives to Trobriand communities.  The resulting bilingual book will help preserve and document Trobriand storytelling. To date this work has been supported by the Smithsonian Grand Challenges, and the Christensen Fund and has resulted in numerous publications (Bell 2010, 2013, 2015a, b & c, 2016a & b; Bell, West & Filer 2015; Ke’a & Bell 2012). 

Joshua A. Bell (Recovering Voices, NMNH) began the Melanesian Network Project to document the professional, personal and indigenous entanglements in NMNH’s biological, cultural and visual materials. To date this has involved work on the US North Pacific Survey and Exploring Expedition (1853-56), A.C. Haddon’s material from Torres Straits (1888), W. L. Abbott West Papuan collection (1914), W. M. Mann’s Expedition to Fiji and the British Solomon Islands (1915-1916), and the United States Department of Agriculture’s Sugarcane Expedition to New Guinea (1928). The ultimate aim of this work is to connect these collections to their communities of origin through enhanced documentation. This work has resulted in several publications (Bell, Brown & Gordon 2013; Bell & Hasinoff 2015; Bell 2010, 2013a &b, 2015a & b, 2017a, b & c).

As vehicles for survival, exploration and migration, canoes have significantly contributed to the perpetuation and development of cultural knowledge in Oceania. This project centers on a 230 year-old Hawaiian outrigger canoe (wa’a in Hawaiian) gifted to the Smithsonian in 1888 by Queen Kapi’olani to create a dialogue between Hawaiian and Māori to think about what canoe making can do for contemporary Oceanic communities. The project is a collaboration between Bell (Recovering Voices, NMNH), Kālewa Correa (Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center), James Eruera (NZMACI Te Tapuwae o te Waka), and master Hawaiian canoe carvers Ray and Alika Bumatay as well as staff at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute. Project members came together in June 2018 to study the wa’a and are planning to meet in the near future to make a replica canoe in Hawai’i. A team from the University of South Florida (USF) Library’s Digital Heritage and Humanities Collections (DHHC) Center scanned the wa’a in June 2018 and are making a 3D digital rendering for educational purposes.

Recovering Voices established an evaluation research program for the Community Research Program (CRP) in 2018. Our mission is to understand the program’s impact, both for the participating communities and for the museum, in terms of its role in knowledge revitalization. We aim to comprehend: How are materials used by communities once returned home? How do museum collections influence the transfer and revitalization of knowledge? How are museum-based methods distinct from the use of other sources of knowledge, such as secondary publications? And moving forward, how can the CRP be improved to better meet the needs of participating community groups? We have conducted surveys and interviews with previous RV partnering communities and CRP researchers. This assessment provides us with an invaluable opportunity to follow up with communities and maintain important relationships, and to share successful methods to the wider network of researchers and communities working in revitalization programs.