The Force of Family : Repatriation, Kinship, and Memory on Haida Gwaii

Over the course of more than a decade, the Haida Nation triumphantly returned home all known Haida ancestral remains from North American museums. __The Force of Family__ is an ethnography of those efforts to repatriate ancestral remains from museums around the world.

Over the course of more than a decade, the Haida Nation triumphantly returned home all known Haida ancestral remains from North American museums. In the summer of 2010, they achieved what many thought was impossible: the repatriation of ancestral remains from the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. The Force of Family is an ethnography of those efforts to repatriate ancestral remains from museums around the world.

Focusing on objects made to honour the ancestors, Cara Krmpotich explores how memory, objects, and kinship connect and form a cultural archive. Since the mid-1990s, Haidas have been making button blankets and bentwood boxes with clan crest designs, hosting feasts for hundreds of people, and composing and choreographing new songs and dances in the service of repatriation. The book comes to understand how shared experiences of sewing, weaving, dancing, cooking and feasting lead to the Haida notion of “respect,” the creation of kinship and collective memory, and the production of a cultural archive.

Contents 5 Illustrations 7 Acknowledgments 9 Note On Orthography 11 Abbreviations 13 1.Introduction 15 2. Departures And Arrivals 31 3. Family, Morality, And Haida Repatriation 53 4. The Structural Qualities And Cultural Values Of Haida Kinship 88 5. The Values Of Yahgudang: The Relationship Between Self And Others 114 6. Haida Structures Of History And Remembering 138 7. The Place Of Repatriation Within Collective Memory And Identity 162 8. Conclusions And Beginnings 184 Interviews 191 Notes 193 Bibliography 205 Index 225 "Explains the intimate tie between Haida repatriation and kinship in its associated forms of memory, history, and respect."--Back cover