Bruchac, Margaret
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Disciplines
Arts and Humanities
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Social and Behavioral Sciences
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Position
Associate Professor, Coordinator of Native American & Indigenous Studies
Introduction
Museum Anthropology
Research Interests
Collection
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Publication Iñupiaq Smoking and Siberian Reindeer(2015-01-01) Bruchac, MargaretThis semester, my students in Museum Anthropology conducted close examinations of objects from Arctic locales in the collections of the Penn Museum. During our object analysis of this walrus tusk ivory Iñupiaq pipe (item# 39-10-1) in the Collections Study Room, I was intrigued by the idea that it was used for smoking opium, given the absurdly small hole in the bowl. After further research, a very different story emerged. The pipe’s shape was, indeed, inspired by Chinese opium pipes, but a survey of Arctic scholarship revealed cultural exchanges from Siberia. Iñupiaq pipes like this—with a curved tusk shape, wide bowl, and very narrow bore—closely resemble the chukch pipe used by the Indigenous Sami of northern Asia.Publication In Search of the Indian Doctress(1999) Bruchac, MargaretPublication Constructing Indigenous Associations for NAGPRA Compliance(2010-03-01) Bruchac, MargaretImagine a world where one’s right to property (including possession of one’s own body parts) is predicated upon having politically powerful relatives. Those who lack such kin are routinely disinterred and scientifically dismembered after death. When their relatives seek to recover their bodies, they encounter bureaucratic reconstructions of their identities. Who would tolerate such injustices? Now, imagine this scenario within the context of the NAGPRA legislation. NAGPRA procedures were intended to remove Indigenous ancestral remains from museum control and facilitate their repatriation. Yet, thousands of deceased individuals remain separated from their relatives, held captive, in part, by modern notions of association.Publication Ephemeral Encounters and Material Evidence(2016-11-01) Bruchac, MargaretPublication Indigenous Knowledge and Traditional Knowledge(2014-01-01) Bruchac, MargaretOver time, Indigenous peoples around the world have preserved distinctive understandings, rooted in cultural experience, that guide relations among human, non-human, and other-than human beings in specific ecosystems. These understandings and relations constitute a system broadly identified as Indigenous knowledge, also called traditional knowledge or aboriginal knowledge. Archaeologists conducting excavations in Indigenous locales may uncover physical evidence of Indigenous knowledge (e.g. artifacts, landscape modifications, ritual markers, stone carvings, faunal remains), but the meaning of this evidence may not be obvious to non-Indigenous or non-local investigators. Researchers can gain information and insight by consulting Indigenous traditions; these localized knowledges contain crucial information that can explain and contextualize scientific data. Archaeologists should, however, strive to avoid interference with esoteric knowledges, sacred sites, ritual landscapes, and cultural property. Research consultation with local Indigenous knowledge-bearers is recommended as a means to ensure ethical practice and avoid unnecessary harm to sensitive sites and practices.Publication Abenakis at Ashuelot: The Sadoques Family and Keene(2006-09-01) Bruchac, MargaretThe area around Keene, New Hampshire was originally known to the Abenaki Indian people as Ashuelot. Although the name is now best known as a river, it originally translated to “land between place,” referring to the flat land between the surrounding mountains, criss-crossed with trails that lead to other familiar places.Publication Levi Levering's Headdress: Blurring Borders and Bridging Cultures(2017-12-11) Bruchac, MargaretThe feather headdress labeled 38-2-1 in the Penn Museum Collection is richly colored and composed of many types of materials. It consists of a felt cap with a leather forehead band covered with a panel of vivid loomed beadwork (in orange, blue, yellow, and white tipi shapes) and two beaded rosettes (blue, yellow, white, and red) on either end of the band. Hanging from each side are ear pendants made of buckskin with metal beads attached, and dyed downy feathers and long ribbons trail from the headdress. Extending from the top of the band are felt cylinders (faded perhaps due to light exposure?), red and yellow down feathers, and long turkey feathers topped off with more green and pink down feathers.Publication Visualizing Native People in Philadelphia's Museums: Public Views and Student Reviews(2018-01-17) Bruchac, MargaretMaterial representations of Indigenous history in public museums do more than merely present the past. Exhibitions are always incomplete and idiosyncratic, revealing only a small window into the social worlds of diverse human communities. Museums create, in essence, staged assemblages: compositions of objects, documents, portraits, and other material things that have been filtered through an array of influences. These influences—museological missions, collection processses, curatorial choices, loan possibilities, design concepts, research specialties, funding options, consultant opinions, space limitations, time limits, logistical challenges, etc.—will be unique for each museum and each collection. Taken together, they will inevitably determine which objects are selected for display, what events will take precedence, how cultural interactions will be re-conceptualized, and whose stories will be told.Publication The Mineral Springs of Saratoga(2007-01-01) Bruchac, MargaretPublication Schaghticoke and Points North: Wôbanaki Resistance and Persistence(2005-01-01) Bruchac, MargaretThe popular versions of New England's Native American Indian history often contain a gap in reporting on the Native peoples of the middle Connecticut River Valley after Metacom's War, also known as King Philip's War (1675-1676). Some nineteenth century historians have suggested that the Agawam, Nonotuck, Pocumtuck, Quaboag, Sokoki, and Woronoco peoples vanished altogether after this tumultuous event. A closer look at the surviving documentary records, however, reveals a far more complex story as Native families chose various paths of resistance and persistence. The Native families that remained in the valley, pursuing traditional lifeways, were poorly documented by European colonists who imagined them to be remnants and wanderers. Some Native individuals assimilated into white communities. Some married or were adopted into neighboring tribes, or traveled west with fur traders. Hundreds of Native families held tight to kinship ties as they relocated to places situated outside the colony of Massachusetts. Some of those relocations were temporary while they and their allies struggled to retake their homelands. Other relocations resulted in the formation of new communities that persist today.