A-Whaling We Will Go Encounters of Knowl PDF

A-Whaling We Will Go: Encounters of
Knowledge and Memory at the Makah

Cultural and Research Center
Patricia Pierce Erikson
Smith College
A-Whaling We Will Go
I am coming back to be caught again.
—Makah whale song
On a summer morning in 1995, like nearly every other morning that year, I went
to the Makah Cultural and Research Center to research the history of the reser-
vation community in Neah Bay, Washington. This morning was set apart from
the others, however. There on the table, awaiting the staff, sat a paper plate
stacked with smoked whale blubber. The blubber—boiled and smoked by a
Makah linguist on the museum staff—was a novelty. As endangered species,
California and Pacific gray whales had been off limits to hunting for many years.
Whale hunting was once a significant spiritual, social, and economic practice
for the qwidicca7atx, or Makah people,2 and they were adamant about securing
the right to it in their 1855 treaty with the U.S. government.3 Although the
Makah people still enjoy occasional meals of salmon, halibut, sea urchin, goose-
neck barnacles, and many other sea creatures, gray whale has not been a part of
their diet since they ceased whale hunting early in the 20th century. By the
1920s, the whale population, decimated by commercial hunting, could no longer
support this tradition (Pascua 1991). The smoked blubber sitting on the staff ta-
ble that summer morning had come from an "accidental whale."4
It was July, and the net of a Makah fisherman accidentally entangled a gray
whale. Entanglement in Makah nets had reportedly occurred five times in the
prior 15 years. Each time, the federal government either confiscated the whale
or sought prosecution for killing an endangered species (Bock 1995; Tizon
1998). But this time the Makah were allowed to keep the whale. Ironically, only
two months prior to the "accidental whale," the Makah Tribe had announced its
intention to resume hunting the gray whale because this species had recently
been removed from the Endangered Species List. This announcement generated
considerable commotion internationally among anti-whaling activists. The
Cultural Anthropology 14(4):556-583. Copyright © 1999, American Anthropological Association.
556
THE MAKAH CULTURAL AND RESEARCH CENTER 557
"accidental whale" compounded the effect of this announcement and effectively

launched the Makah people into the international news arena—a place already
familiar to them, as I discuss below. Journalists and television crews traveled
from as far away as Norway and Japan to feature the Makah and their territory
on the northwestern tip of the Olympic Peninsula.5 As an anthropologist re-
searching how tribal museums articulate with community history and contem-
porary self-determination, I felt privileged to witness how the Makah Cultural
and Research Center became one of the crossroads for local and global forces.
This account of the Makah Cultural and Research Center uses the whaling con-
troversy to highlight the way in which tribal museums become critical points of
encounter for knowledge-making and remembering processes.
The Makah Cultural and Research Center, founded in 1979, is reputed to be
one of the finest tribal museums/cultural centers in the United States and nor-
mally hosts between 15 and 22 thousand visitors to the reservation each year.
Visitors to the Makah Reservation drive by this tribal center, known locally as
"MCRC" or "the museum," as they enter the village of Neah Bay. Throughout
this article I use the somewhat awkward term tribal museum/cultural center to
capture the sense that these institutions combine the practices and technologies
typical of mainstream museums with a wide array of cultural programming in-
tended to further a cultural survival mission. At least one member of the board
of trustees objected to using the term museum because it potentially negates the
mission of supporting "living culture" that is signified by the term cultural cen-
ter. MCRC's remarkable collection of precontact artifacts from Ozette, a now-
uninhabited Makah village site, is one of the primary cultural tourism attractions
that bolster the reservation economy (Dean Runyan and Associates 1995;
MCRC n.d.). With the advent of the whaling controversy, the museum addition-
ally became a virtual pilgrimage site for media from around the world.
What drew the reporters and television crews to the museum were the col-
lections, exhibitions, and readily available Makah staff members. The museum
curates historical photographs, linguistic and oral historical documentation, and
precontact material culture from the Ozette archaeological site. All of these
document traditional Makah lifeways, including the longevity, intensity, and
nature of the whaling tradition. In addition to archival collections, the museum
exhibitions represent Makah whaling practices. The organization and quality of
MCRC's exhibitions reflect the fact that representations of tradition are signifi-
cant to contemporary Makah identity. The juxtaposition of turn-of-the-century
house posts, carved by a man named Young Doctor, with the well-stocked gift
shop suggests pride in the continuation and recuperation of artistic expressions.
In addition to the whale motifs on MCRC's sign outside, an artistic assemblage
of whalebones in the introductory gallery initially alert visitors to the presence
of whales in Makah historical experience. Next, the permanent galleries—or-
ganized by season and featuring their associated subsistence activities—begin
with an explanation of whaling and sealing traditions during the spring season.
The text of the first exhibit case in the main gallery explains the importance of
whaling:
558 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
While the Makah were noted for their ability as fishermen and seal hunters, they
were probably most noted for their exploits as whale hunters. More than anything
else, whale hunting utilized almost every technical skill possessed by the Makahs
from the building of the canoes, to the development of the equipment, the intense
physical training, the fulfillment of spiritual preparations for the hunt, and ex-
traordinary knowledge of the ocean. The whaling canoe holds a crew of eight men
with each man having a specific task to perform throughout the entire whale hunt.
Once the whale was harpooned, float bags made of hair seal skins were attached to
the harpoon line and were thrown into the water as a means of tiring the whale. The
actual killing of the whale was done by a special lance. Once this was done, a man
dove into the water and sewed the whale's mouth shut to help prevent the whale
from sinking after he was dead. The whale was then towed ashore and was divided
among the people of the village. More than anything else, the whale hunt repre-
sented the ultimate in both physical and spiritual preparedness and the wealth of
the Makah Indian culture.
The media has been drawn not only to these narrations of the history and tech-
nology of whale hunting but also to the dramatic centerpiece of this spring sea-
son gallery—reproductions of whaling and sealing canoes and their equipment.
Visitors may walk around and touch these canoes carved from cedar trees. On
the wall behind the canoes, a photographic image attributed to Asahel Cur-
tis—enlarged to some twenty feet high—documents a Makah whaler thrusting a
harpoon into the back of a whale (see Figure 1). In addition, through temporary
exhibits such as Riding in His Canoe: The Continuing Legacy of Young Doctor
MCRC has offered the media narrations of how Makah cultural sensibilities
have continued in the midst of dramatic social change.6
Narrations of Makah history at the MCRC can also draw from the mu-
seum's library and the collection of Ozette artifacts. A staff member can choose
to point out passages in Frances Densmore's Nootka and Quileute Music (1939)
which detail the significant presence of whaling in Makah ceremonial life early
in this century.7 Densmore details how Makah Wilson Parker described pot-
latches organized by successful whalers. In these potlatches, special dancers
wore "prayer garb," imitated the motions of a whale, and shook a whaler's rattle
of elk horn. According to oral history gathered by Densmore (1939) and James
Gilcrest Swan (1870), the area around the dorsal fin of the whale was ceremoni-
ally significant. When whale meat was distributed on the beach, the dorsal fin
area, or "whale saddle," was hung, decorated, and treated ceremonially for days.
Apparently, whaling-related ceremonies took place in the presence of the
whale's saddle or in the presence of a wooden effigy of the saddle (Swan
1870:21-22). One of these wooden effigies—inlaid with more than 700 sea
mammal teeth—was excavated at Ozette and is now on exhibit at MCRC. This
remarkable artifact is available for staff members or other interpretive guides to
point out in conjunction with explanations about the history of Makah whaling.
By way of curating their exhibitions and archives, the MCRC has become one of
the possible backdrops for projecting Makah voice(s) and projecting Makah in-
terpretations of why recuperating whaling is important to many members of the
community. Of course, Tribal Council chambers, fishing wharves, and private
IHl- MAKAII CUM URAL AND RESEARCH CliNTLR 559
Figure 1
In the only known photograph depicting historical Makah whaling in progress, a
Makah harpooner thrusts a harpoon into the back of a whale as it tows their
hand-carved cedar canoe. This image, enlarged to some twenty feet high, provides
a dramatic backdrop for one of the Makah Cultural and Research Center's
permanent galleries. Photo by Asahel Curtis, 1910, negative #56519. Reproduced
by permission of Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma.
living rooms have also served as significant locations for Makah people to ar-
ticulate their opinions to the public.
The antagonism generated by the pro-whaling position of the Makah Tribe
and the anti-whaling position of animal rights activists also drew media, espe-
cially from the Northwest region. These reports were picked up and distributed
nationally by the Associated Press. In the wake of Save the Whales campaigns,
the Free Willy and Free Willy II movies, and the saga of repatriating the whale,
Keiko, to his original homeland in Iceland, the Makah people have been facing
considerable anti-whaling sentiment. The Sea Shepherd Society and Progres-
sive Animal Welfare Society have led very high profile campaigns against the
Makah intention to whale. Some of the more intense elements of this anti-whal-
ing strategy have included threats to destroy Makah whaling vessels, blockading
of the Neah Bay harbor, and plans of swamping the annual Makah Days gather-
ing with protestors (Mapes 1998b). Not all animal rights organizations have
made the same choice, however. Greenpeace, for example, has maintained a low
profile, choosing not to challenge indigenous rights secured by treaty and citing
that other factors pose a greater threat to whale populations (Tizon 1998, 1999).
On the morning of the day I submitted this article for review, the national
news announced that the Makah people had broken their whale-hunting hiatus.
The following account of the whale hunt has emerged since this article was ac-
cepted for publication.8 In the early morning of May 17, 1999, Makah whalers
paddled their 32-foot, hand-carved cedar canoe, the Hummingbird, off the coast
of Point of Arches. Anti-whaling protestors were absent because days before the
U.S. Coast Guard had confiscated their boats. The Coast Guard cited the protes-
tors for violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act that dictates the distance
from whales that boats must remain. In using their boats to shield the whale and
to haze the Makah canoe, the protestors entered this protected halo around the
whale.9 Throughout the melee, the media shadowed the movements of the cedar
canoe, prompting one journalist to comment, "Saturday's unsuccessful hunt,
during which the Coast Guard seized at least three protest boats, was broadcast
live for almost 10 hours by Northwest Cable News, prompting a Seattle Times
television critic to describe it as 'this region's own CNN-style epoch' " (Ver-
hovek 1999:A14). Despite this, on the morning of the successful hunt, the U.S.
Coast Guard and National Marine Fisheries Service observers looked on with-
out the protestors. Motorized Makah support boats stood ready. In her home,
Makah Elder Helma Ward lay motionless in bed following the belief that female
relatives must observe certain taboos to ensure the success of the hunt.10
Pulling up alongside a 30-foot, juvenile, female gray whale, harpooner
Theron Parker stabbed the whale with his harpoon. With the whale towing the
canoe by the harpoon line, the motorized chase boat pulled alongside, and a
Makah shot the whale in the vicinity of the brain with two bullets from a .50-
caliber rifle (see Figure 2). n The whalers refloated the sinking whale and, with
the help of two fishing boats, towed it to Neah Bay harbor, where a crowd of
tribal members had waited hours for their arrival. After they approached the har-
bor with an accompaniment of four other canoes from neighboring tribes, the
whalers detached the whale from the fishing boat and pulled it to shore with their
canoe.
Following a jubilant landing and a ceremonial dusting of the crew and car-
cass with eagle down, tribal members hauled the whale—hand over hand—onto
the beach with the towline. Over a span of several days, the Makah people butch-
ered the whale, cooked the meat, rendered its oil, and hosted a parade and large
potlatch celebration for hundreds in the high school gym. From the sand of Neah
Bay's beach, or from a chair set up at the potlatch, the momentum of the celebra-
tion must have seemed to exceed that of the backlash (Figure 3). The Seattle
Times, however, received hundreds of phone calls, letters, faxes, and emails—
many of them laced with hateful or racist remarks. Communications from pro-
testors outnumbered those from supporters at a 10:1 ratio (Tizon 1999). As one
journalist characterized it, "Blood has spilled, and a door has opened to all man-
ner of incivilities. The public discussion has become a free-for-all. Political cor-
rectness, for better or worse, has gone out the window" (Tizon 1999: A16).
The contours of the anti-whaling argument are complex and shifting, espe-
cially now that the hunt has become a reality. A full account of the arguments
is not my intention here. However, it is critical to point out that one of the
main objections to Makah recuperation of their whaling tradition is based in the
THE MAKAH CULTURAL AND RESFARCII CENTER 561
Figure 2
Wayne Johnson, captain of the whaling crew, carries a high-caliber rifle designed
with the help of veterinarians to more quickly and humanely kill the whale. Critics
of Makah whaling have argued that the use of modern technology contradicts the
Makah assertion of their cultural need to recuperate whaling. Photo by Alan
Berner. Reproduced by permission of Seattle Times.
562 CULTURAL ANTHROPOI O(,Y
Figure 3
More than one hundred protestors gathered in Seattle for a candlelight vigil the
night the Makah people were carving up and distributing the carcass of their gray
whale on the Neah Bay beach. The vigil, organized by the Progressive Animal
Welfare Society, called for ten minutes of silence to memorialize the whale's death.
Another protestor carried a sign that read, "Save a Whale, Harpoon a Makah"
(Burkett 1999). Photo by Benjamin Benschneider. Reproduced by permission of
Seattle Times.
conviction that the Makah people are opening a "Pandora s box ' on commercial
whaling (Watson 1999a). The Sea Shepherd Society, perhaps the most visible
opponent to Makah whaling, predicts that the Makah Tribe will pursue a "hid-
den agenda": selling the whale meat internationally (Watson 1999b). The fear is
that the Makah's successful use of "cultural necessity" as a justification for
hunting will embolden others to cite cultural necessity, such as other Northwest
Coast aboriginal groups in the United States and Canada, as well as groups in
Norway, Japan, and Iceland.
What I am highlighting here is how the specter of reopening commercial
whaling is leading animal rights activists and commentators to question the no-
tion of "cultural necessity" and to question the sincerity and legitimacy of cul-
tural recuperation by the Makah people. In the process of asserting animal
rights, human rights and cultural survival issues are coming under attack.1' Al-
though the Makah right to hunt whale is secured by their 1855 treaty with the
U.S. government, it is the specifications of the International Whaling Commis-
sion that are shaping the debate. One of the exceptions to the worldwide ban on
whaling is "aboriginal subsistence, an exception that requires demonstration of
a "continuing ' tradition of hunting and eating whales (Blow 1998). The Makah
people have negotiated this stipulation by arguing the following:
Many of our tribal members feel that our health problems result from the loss of
our traditional seafood and sea-mammal diet. We would like to restore the meat of
the whale to that diet. We also believe that the problems that are troubling our
young people stem from lack of discipline and pride and we hope that the restora-
tion of whaling will help restore that. But we also want to fulfill the legacy of our
forefathers and restore a part of our culture that was taken from us. [Johnson
1998:B9J
Anti-whaling activists seek to undermine these cultural arguments by highlight-

ing the modernity of the Makah people (for example, the use of modern technol-
ogy in the hunt). As Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Society stated on the To-
day Show following the successful hunt, "This is the most expensive whale hunt
in history, and for what? Fun. . . . We don't see any tradition in this" (1999a).
Some of the submissions to the Seattle Times reveal how the whaling issue
has unraveled some fragile seams holding back general anti-Indian sentiments.
The following are some samples published by the Seattle Times:
Hey, I think we should also be able to take their land if they can take our whales.
Publish this article but don't use our last names. We wouldn't want to lose our
scalps. [Wendy and Erica, mother and daughter, quoted in Tizon 1999: A16]
These peoples want to rekindle their traditional way of life by killing an animal
that has probably twice the mental capacity they have. These idiots need to use
what little brains they have to do something productive besides getting drunk and
spending federal funds to live on. [Steve Greenwood, quoted in Tizon 1999:A16]
I am anxious to know where I may apply for a license to kill Indians. My forefa-
thers helped settle the west and it was their tradition to kill every Redskin they
saw. "The only good Indian is a dead Indian," they believed. I also want to keep
faith with my ancestors. [Phillips Wylly, Pebble Beach, California, quoted in Ti-
zon 1999.A16]
Such is the racial hatred, drawing from pan-Indian stereotypes, that is directed
at the Makah people. Part of what fuels this debate are the conceptual separation
of Makah whaling from its history and the insinuation of the disingenuity of
Makah "cultural needs." This skepticism has been compounded by accusations
that any intentions to sell the whale meat would strip whaling of its aboriginally
(Tizon 1998). The underlying assumption here is that traditional Native Ameri-
can "culture" was and should be separate from economic trade. Striking a mid-
dle ground, some critics have suggested that, rather than kill whales, the Makah
people should spiritually "count coup," that is, simply touch them. Furthermore,
some have suggested that if such encounters were reenacted for ecotourists, it
could help revitalize the reservation economy. 13
Opposition to whaling has not come from strictly non-Makah sources,
however. Some members of the Makah community feel that the Makah "know
who we are" and do not need whaling to prove "Makahness." Others fear for the
lives of the whalers. Significantly fewer Makah individuals share animal rights
activists' sentiment that whale hunting constitutes a wrongful abuse of animal
rights.14 Still others, while indifferent to the prospect of resuming whale hunt-
ing, maintain the legitimacy of their right secured by treaty.
Like many people, I am internally conflicted on this issue. While I am de-
cidedly pro-Makah in supporting their self-determination efforts (including
whaling), I also have little interest in commercial whaling driving various spe-
cies to the brink of extinction once again. Despite this internal conflict, I am
compelled to point out that the Makah are as much at risk as the whale here.
Anti-whaling passions are running high. In an attempt to draw conservative sup-
porters, the Sea Shepherd Society is decrying the involvement of the U.S. Coast
Guard as wasteful expenditure of "U.S. taxpayers' dollars." The situation is
clearly inflaming strong regional anti-Indian sentiments. From my perspective,
at the heart of this whaling controversy are the processes of authenticating and
discrediting Makah identity in the 20th century. Who gets to control the expres-
sion of Makah identity—both its legitimacy and legality? Who gets to decide
what is "cultural," "traditional," or "necessary"?
Here, the identity politics and politics of representation inherent to the
whaling controversy articulate with my own research on the evolving relation-
ship between museums and Native peoples in the Western hemisphere. Since the
1960s, an increasing number of indigenous communities have founded their
own museums and cultural centers (Erikson 1996a, 1996b, 1996c). Indigenous
peoples have become better represented in the museum and cultural preserva-
tion professions; they have also increasingly asserted their value systems in the
legal arena, thus fostering the passage of crucial laws such as the Native Ameri-
can Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990.15
By looking at the case of the MCRC and one of its temporary exhibits, en-
titled Riding in His Canoe: The Continuing Legacy of Young Doctor, we can see
more clearly the general links between museum representation and Native
American efforts to achieve self-determination. As is well known, Native peo-
ples (including the Makah) have long been targeted for various assimilation pro-
jects. These projects were designed to create American citizens by eliminating
traditional, cultural lifeways (Erikson 1996a: 125-168). Beliefs in the inevitable
expansion of Euro-American civilization created expectations that Native
American peoples were destined for cultural extinction. We can see this in the
perspective of James Swan, who wrote an ethnography of the Makah people un-
der the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution in the late 19th century. He
penned the following:
Their ancient [Makah] history is wrapped in an impenetrable obscurity—that of a

more recent date I have endeavored to exhibit; their future can be read in the annals
of the New England emigrants. The steady wave setting to our western shores will
have its due effect upon the Indian races, and in the lapse of another century the
places that now know them will know them no more. [1870:61]
Many indigenous museums seek to tell the history of these assimilation projects
and to disrupt the current ideologies that are their legacy.16 Additionally, many
hope to utilize museums/cultural centers to help mitigate (through language,
land, material culture, and oral history preservation projects, for example) the
effects of colonization.
This year, the Makah people celebrate 20 years of forwarding cultural pres-
ervation and self-representation through the MCRC. Using the museum/cultural
center as a tool to reclaim traditions, lifeways, and identities previously targeted
by assimilation projects has lent additional significance to the importance of the
museum. From the Makah perspective, potential interference with treaty-pro-
tected whaling rights resonates with a long history of being defined and control-
led by others.17
Now that the Makah people have landed a gray whale, the media frenzy and
controversy are far from over. A lawsuit challenging the legality of Makah
whaling under the U.S. Whaling Convention Act of 1949 is before the Ninth Cir-
cuit Court of Appeals (Watson 1999b). The Sea Shepherd Society continues to
campaign against Makah whaling, arguing, "We have made the case that the
whales are citizens of the seas, with the right to pass by this place unharmed, and
that inventing a new category of 'cultural whaling' has not given the Makah the
right to flout international law and start killing whales with an eye on future
commercial trade" (Watson 1999b).
In the ongoing dialogue between non-Native and Native peoples regarding
who "Indians" are and how they should live, tribal museums/cultural centers be-
come a critical tool for negotiating the significant gap between the dominant
constructions of Indianness and self-perceptions by Native peoples. As a promi-
nent member of a Makah whaling family has said, "We've got to get the story
out. . . . If we didn't we'd be these horrible, dirty savages, the killers of the
whales. It's just not that way" (Keith Johnson, quoted in Verhovek 1998.A13).
Museums have always been highly complex "zones" where "contact" between
indigenous and nonindigenous peoples takes place (Clifford 1997). However, in
an era characterized by abundant tribal museums and charged by the politics of
treaty rights and repatriation, the nature of this contact has recently become sig-
nificantly different.
Anthropology of Museums: Analyzing Encounters of Knowledge

and Memory
. . . some stories are enshrined in books while others remain marginalized.
—Julie Cruikshank, The Social Life of Stories
Before I offer a particular account of how the MCRC, in general, and a tem-
porary exhibit, in particular, relate to community history and processes of self-
determination (including pursuit of the right to whale), I should describe briefly
my "anthropology of museums" framework. Michael Ames (1986) was one of
the first theorists to define the anthropology of museums literature. He called at-
tention to the nature of museums as both "social artifacts" and social actors. The
term social artifacts calls attention to museums as social constructions. They are
not somehow freestanding but are products of political, economic, and cultural
forces. Therefore, museums bear traces in their architecture, organizational

structure, collections, and exhibitions of the various worldviews and material
realities through which they have operated. Despite this, museums are not sim-
ply passive reflections of their social environments; they are also social actors
that cluster objects and discipline the movement of bodies through space to
naturalize particular representations of universe, truth, identity, and beauty. In
other words, they play an authoritative and significant role in influencing social
constructions of meaning.
The anthropology of museums acknowledges that museums have been
valuable sites for practicing science, in general, and anthropology, in particular.
However, in contrast to museology, it goes beyond the "archaeology of objects,"
which entails discovery and recovery of the "original" meaning or context of an
object. The anthropology of museums pursues the "biography of things"—the
history of an object's social life. In so doing, it analyzes how objects are recon-
textualized amid production, collection, exhibition, and viewing. Layers and
layers of meaning are superimposed not only on objects but also on the museum
itself.18 Ultimately, the "anthropology of museums" approach uses the museum
as a theoretical thoroughfare for understanding broad, social processes of repre-
sentation, of identity formation, and of the establishment, reproduction, and dis-
ruption of social inequalities.
My understanding of the anthropology of museums is that it necessarily ac-
commodates both concerns for ethnographic authority and substantive, ethno-
graphic, and historical research bent on understanding how museums "do their
work."19 Despite the often troubled history of museums' relations with Native
peoples, contemporary Native communities and individuals have considerable
interest in the phenomenon of museum identity or sense of self. Instead of mu-
seum identity, however, I offer the term museum subjectivity, drawing on femi-
nist theories on the complexity of human identity.20 Like the subjectivity of in-
dividuals, the subjectivity of a museum is neither innate nor independent of its
contexts. It is relational.21 The concept of "museum subjectivity," then, refers to
the institution's subjective experience, its sense of self as related to the world
around it. Museum subjectivity is the product of the interaction between the in-
stitution, various individuals, and organizations, on the one hand, and broad so-
cial processes, on the other. If we want to understand how museums relate to
these processes (such as knowledge making, remembering, and reinforcing or
dismantling social inequalities), then we need a sense of how museums "work."
Along with Eilean Hooper-Greenhill (1989, 1992), I have found that Fou-
cault's writings on knowledge and power travel well to analyses of museum set-
tings. Foucault (1970) defines "subjugated knowledge" as a whole set of knowl-
edges that have been disqualified as inadequate or insufficiently elaborated,
naive, or beneath the level required of science. The museum is one of the forums
through which some versions of knowledge are legitimated and others are folk-
lorized. Foucault's genealogical project was to make visible the struggles that
silenced some ways of knowing and established others as true knowledge and
scientific discourse (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982:107-110). One could say, as I
THli MAKAH CULTURAL AND RESEARCH CENTER 567
am arguing here, that the post-1960s Native American movement has been
marked by critical discourses conducting a "self-genealogy." By "self-geneal-
ogy" I mean the process of establishing one's own subjugated knowledge as
valid, as part of an emancipatory or self-determining process. Self-determina-
tion through museums has entailed necessarily calling attention to the processes
that have constructed "official knowledge." Clifford's analysis of museums as
"contact zones" (1997:188-219) captures this sense of the museum as an arena,
zone, or border where knowledge and meaning are negotiated in the midst of un-
even power relationships.
Clifford illustrates the concept of museums as contact zones by describing
a 1989 "encounter" between curators of the Portland Museum of Art in Oregon
and several Tlingit Elders. Tlingit Elders were present in the basement of the
Portland Museum of Art as consultants for a project intending to reinstall the
Rasmussen Collection (a collection gathered in the 1920s in southern Alaska
and coastal Canada). Whereas Clifford (in the role of consultant) and the cura-
tors expected the Elders to comment on the objects, they instead used the objects
as mnemonic devices, or what Clifford calls "aides-memoires" (1997:189). In a
somewhat spontaneous ceremonial event, the Elders performed songs and sto-
ries in the museum basement. In part, the ceremony was a dialogue between
members of different Tlingit clans and a demonstration of their respective rights
and privileges. But it was also a dialogue with non-Natives. Clifford quotes
Austin Hammond as saying to the museum staff, "We're telling you these
things.. . . We hope you'll back us up [with respect to land rights, fishing
rights]" (1997:190). It became obvious to Clifford and the museum staff that the
objects in the Rasmussen Collection were far more than aesthetically pleasing
objects with cultural meaning. The Tlingit referred to them as " 'records,' 'his-
tory,' and 'law,' inseparable from myths and stories expressing ongoing moral
lessons with current political force" (Clifford 1997:191). What sort of genre,
then, would guide the reinstallation—objects as artifact or as art?
In the particular situation recounted by Clifford, the Portland Museum staff
had the responsibility of deciding which meanings should be highlighted. Addi-
tionally, they faced the dilemma of how the museum could reciprocate to the
communities represented. Hence, Clifford uses the concept of museum as a con-
tact zone to highlight the encounter between different systems of meaning in
which wow-Native paradigms have, historically, been those institutionalized and
legitimated (1997). 22 Clifford takes this concept from Mary Louise Pratt's pro-
ject to critique and complicate diffusionist models of colonialism (diffusionist
models that either celebrate or criticize an "inevitable" spread of colonization).
As Pratt defines it, a "contact zone" is a space of colonial encounter involving
"conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict" (1992:7).
Her term contact zone preserves the sense of inequality yet allows human
agency to the colonized. For Pratt, a "contact zone" is
an attempt to invoke the spatial and temporal copresence of subjects previously

separated by geographic and historical disjunctures, and whose trajectories
now intersect. By using the term "contact" I aim to foreground the interactive,
improvisational dimensions of colonial encounters so easily ignored or sup-

pressed by diffusionist accounts of conquest and domination. A "contact" per-
spective emphasizes how subjects are constituted in and by their relations to each
other, fit stresses | copresence, interaction, interlocking understandings and prac-
tices, often within radically asymmetrical relations of power. [1992:6-7, cited in
Clifford 1997:192, emphasis added)
To reiterate, the concept of contact zone emphasizes that subjectivity (human or

institutional) is constructed intersubjectively, albeit with some forces predomi-
nating. Following Pratt, then, Clifford argues for theorizing museums more
complexly. He argues that museums are more than tools for inevitable coloniza-
tion, globalization, or homogenization of particular ways of knowing and repre-
senting the human past (1997:216).
Museums can also become the means to negotiate and counteract dominant
trends in a society. Indeed, by looking at tribal museums and cultural centers, we
can recognize them as the product of ongoing "contact" between divergent ways
of seeing the world. In an environment in which power relations are uneven,
tribal museums emerge as related to, and yet distinguished from, mainstream
museums. This complexity of tribal museum/cultural center subjectivity mir-
rors the complexity of Native American identity.
Tribal museums/cultural centers such as the MCRC entail dynamics both
similar to and different from those observed by Clifford at the Portland Museum
of Art. Tribal museums are also contact zones, points of articulation between lo-
cal and global forces and identities (Erikson 1996b). As compared with main-
stream museums, tribal museum/cultural center settings differ in that they allow
Native peoples relatively greater ability to demonstrate and assert an authority
to interpret their own culture. They provide a recognized, institutional setting
from which to participate in projects where knowledge is made about them. This
is done from inside, rather than from outside, the profession. Family-based oral
history and gatherings have always provided an outlet for expressions of Makah
identity, even when this identity was a target for transformation. A tribal mu-
seum/cultural center offers a new and institutionalized format for these expres-
sions, one more readily "heard" by the non-Makah world. Indigenous institu-
tions provide the opportunity to express the memories of tribal traditions—such
as whaling and sealing in the Makah case.
The MCRC expresses the Makah sense of continuity between contempo-
rary identity and oral history, songs, objects, and landscape (both land and sea),
even in the absence of certain cultural practices related to these domains. For ex-
ample, despite the fact that native speakers of the Makah language can be counted
on one hand, the MCRC implements language-maintenance strategies in a vari-
ety of ways. One strategy has been implemented by cataloging and categorizing
Ozette artifacts according to the semantic domains of Makah language rather
than English-language or archaeological categories. Through collections manage-
ment policies such as this (exhibitions that incorporate Makah-language termi-
nology and instruction), the MCRC addresses cultural loss and a long history of (on-
going) uneven power relations with Euro-American society. The museum/cultural
THE MAKAH CULTURAL AND RESEARCH CHNTER 569
center is able to represent both seemingly contradictory sentiments of change

and continuity.
Although who gets to decide the authenticity of Makah claims to whaling is
far from a democratic or inclusive decision-making process, the existence of the
tribal museum does challenge an essential point. To a people slated for cultural
or biological extinction, it has been a long journey from being solely the object
of study to becoming active and recognized participants in one of the "indus-
tries" of knowledge making: museums. As a contact zone, tribal museums assist
Native peoples in counteracting the legacy of colonization while addressing
contemporary challenges to their cultural self-determination. The current whaling
controversy reveals both the popular expectations that Makah people can still be
defined by Euro-American notions of civilization and progress and the Makah
convictions that they still participate in authoring their past, present, and future.
The Makah Cultural and Research Center

The Ozette houses are canoes carrying scientists into a world that respects the oral
history of our people. The Ozette houses are war clubs against ignorance and hos-
tility. The Ozette houses are thunder and lightning for Makahs, voices from the past
illuminating our heritage. At Ozette, endings have become beginnings. From Ozette
comes new understanding.
—Makah Cultural and Research Center introductory gallery text
I went to the Makah Reservation in 1994 for 12 months of dissertation re-

search and volunteer service to the museum (service was expected by the Tribal
Council and museum trustees; in my case, this service turned out to be fund-rais-
ing).23 My research on the MCRC focused on what meanings the Makah people
attributed to the institution and how the museum related to both Makah commu-
nity history and recent changes in the museological profession (Erikson 1996a).
I was fascinated by the dramatic change in the role of Native peoples in museol-
ogy and by the reform it was prompting in museums and academia more gener-
ally.
Narratives of the history of the MCRC usually begin in 1970, when a par-
ticularly forceful winter storm eroded a coastal area of the Makah Reservation
known to the Makah as use7i4, or Ozette. Formerly, Ozette was one of the
tribe's five main villages. The rich, temperate rain forest directly behind the vil-
lage site offered ready access to medicines, plant fibers, animal skins, and the
trees essential to producing tools, homes, and canoes. More importantly for vil-
lagers, Ozette was extraordinarily positioned for successful whale and seal hunt-
ing, as well as fishing.
James Swan, who frequented each of the Makah villages for many years,
commented, "There is no portion of a whale, except the vertebrae and offal,
which is useless to the Indians. .. . Whale oil serves the same purpose with these
Indians that butter does with civilized people; they dip their dried halibut into it
while eating, and use it with bread, potatoes, and various kinds of berries"
(1870:22). Following his fascination with whale-hunting technology, Swan
fastidiously collected and documented for the Smithsonian Institution barbed

harpoon tips; long, twisted, whale-sinew towropes; yew harpoon staffs; and
sealskin buoys. He also observed how whaling permeated the ritual forms of
Makah life. In the last half of the 19th century, prenuptial ceremonies would
take the form of a mock whale hunt, with prospective husbands harpooning the
longhouse doors of prospective brides (Swan 1870:11). Swan reports that, with
seemingly equal vigor, young boys played for hours on the beach using kelp as
a pretend whale for their mock hunts (1870:14-15). According to Swan, the
long, and very private, ritual preparations for whaling and other hunts sought en-
counters with spirit beings who might bequeath medicine to the hunter, ensuring
a successful hunt (1870:63-64). Swan's ethnographic attention to whaling tech-
nology and ritual preparation foreshadowed the later studies of Drucker (1951)
and Waterman (1920) on these topics.
By the early 20th century, the Makah people abandoned year-round resi-
dency at Ozette. The mandatory schooling of children in Neah Bay and the cen-
tralization of commerce there propelled consolidation of the villages. My sense,
after living in Neah Bay and working at the museum, is that Ozette had become
a highly charged site of memory because of its historic association with a par-
ticular aspect of Makah experience with colonization. The fact that Ozette even-
tually passed out of Makah control and had to be regained as part of the Makah
Reservation further intensified the resolve to control the future of this site. In
1970, when the winter storm waves exposed the remains of a longhouse in the
village embankment and hikers from nearby Olympic National Park began
walking away with artifacts, the Makah Tribe decided to excavate and preserve
the Ozette village site (Claplanhoo 1994; Daugherty 1995).
In the decade following this winter storm, the Ozette excavation became
one of the most important in the Northwest Coast, significantly raising public
awareness of the Makah people. Archaeologist Richard Daugherty and journal-
ist Ruth Kirk were particularly effective at communicating the extraordinary na-
ture of this site to the public and to Congress.24 Their efforts were matched by the
strong leadership and moving oratory of several Makah Tribal Council members
and Elders. The excavation, conducted jointly by Washington State University
and the Makah Tribe, uncovered more than 55,000 artifacts from several long-
houses. These longhouses, and their contents, had been preserved 500 years ear-
lier when the hillside behind them gave way, encasing them in mud. Preserva-
tion enabled archaeologists to uncover not only house structures and material
possessions but fine details characterizing the daily environment, including bee-
tles, green leaves, and cedar shavings at a carver's work site (Mauger 1994). The
effects of the excavation were many. By 1979 the tribe established the MCRC,
governed by an all-Makah board of trustees. This institution played a significant
role in making the Makah people more visible and placing them on the cultural
tourism map. The renown of the excavation (in addition to the reservation's lo-
cation at the northwestern-most tip Of the United States) made the MCRC a de-
sirable tourist destination.
Furthermore, the excavation and museum project encouraged Makah youth

in the 1970s and 1980s to pursue university, workshop, and intern training in ar-
chaeology, linguistics, education, and museology (Daugherty 1995; Heilman
1995; Mauger 1994). This training essentially placed the Makah people closer to
the position of practitioners and reformers in their respective disciplines, rather
than that of objects of study for those disciplines. Planning and constructing the
museum also led to an accentuated interest in preserving and highlighting the
oral history of Makah Elders, whose collective memory reached back to the life-
ways of Ozette (Johnson 1995; Renkerand Arnold 1988).
Most accounts of the history of the MCRC that were (and are) primarily in
the popular press have suggested that the Ozette archaeological excavation
stimulated a "cultural renaissance" among the Makah people (Kirk 1974).
While it is clear that the serendipity of the storm and the force of outside exper-
tise and funding brought about a remarkable moment in Makah history, previous
accounts have overstressed a phoenixlike model of cultural change in Neah Bay.
My analysis is that, while it is true that the museum is a relatively recent appro-
priation by the Makah people, its adoption represents the historic continuity of
Makah efforts to self-determine their ways of knowing and living in the world
around them. This self-determination has always entailed a balance between ac-
commodation and resistance. Thus, my assertion here, and elsewhere (Erikson
1996a), is that a historical narrative of the MCRC more appropriately begins in
the 19th century, during the period of accelerated adaptation to political-eco-
nomic change and cultural assimilation.
I stress here that the museum is a relatively recent appropriation because
there are indications that the MCRC is not the first Makah-operated museum in
the reservation's history. At the very least, the MCRC is certainly not the first
attempt to negotiate dominant constructions of Indianness with Makah repre-
sentations.25 I was inspired to consider this possibility by Riding in His Canoe:
The Continuing Legacy of Young Doctor, an exhibit that the MCRC staff, volun-
teers, and board members developed to commemorate the museum's tenth anni-
versary. This exhibit stressed that Young Doctor's home—organized as a kind
of protomuseum—was a means for cultural adaptation. I highlight this tempo-
rary exhibit in the climate of the whaling controversy in part because we can see
how both the MCRC and Young Doctor's protomuseum have accommodated
their political economy, have provided a focus for community activity, and have
expressed the relationship between whaling and Makah identity to non-Makah
audiences.
The Riding in His Canoe exhibit featured a Makah man named Young Doc-
tor, cyuy7i, born in 1851, who was said to carve with the guidance of spirit help-
ers that came to him in his dreams (McCurdy 1981). Young Doctor's life history
appeared to be an ideal vehicle for the Makah people to communicate cross-cul-
turally themes important to them in the museum because of the rich and varied
documentation available on him: Makah oral histories, photographs, ethnogra-
phies, audio recordings, and Young Doctor's own artwork. The museum/cul-
tural center enables the Makah people to rely on their oral histories to represent
themselves, in conjunction with these other more conventionally used docu-

mentations. Makah oral accounts of their history and their knowledge have not
always been respected, however. It was not until Ozette yielded a precontact
fishing net that courts decided in favor of allowing the Makah people to use nets
as a "traditional" technology (Greig Arnold, quoted in Cutler 1994).
The MCRC enables the Makah people to respond to official forms of mak-
ing knowledge. The text of the introductory gallery at MCRC conveys a chal-
lenge to assumptions that centers of knowledge making lie elsewhere or that
centers of cultural creativity and progress lie only within Euro-American insti-
tutions and communities. One of the means for achieving this new under-
standing has been for the Makah to offer to themselves and to the general public
representations of the Makah people that are preferable to those of the dominant
historiography. Representations of Young Doctor in the Riding in His Canoe ex-
hibit stressed Makah cultural continuity and contemporary vitality, in addition
to drastic social change. The MCRC highlighted Young Doctor's "museum" as
one of the many avenues Makah people have used to strike this balance.26
Following the permanent galleries, which highlight precontact Makah life-
ways, the Riding in His Canoe exhibit documented that Young Doctor's accom-
modation to a budding cultural tourism industry in the 19th and 20th centuries
represented a cultural survival strategy. The exhibit urged visitors to see, by
looking at Young Doctor's life, how the Makah people adapted to colonialism,
using their pride in Makah identity as a resource for strategically surviving a
new political economy. Establishing a precursor to the current tribal museum
appears to have been one of Young Doctor's strategies.
When Young Doctor moved from Wa ? ad ? a Island in Neah Bay's harbor to
the village on the mainland, his new longhouse evolved in a dramatic manner.
His home became known as a store, a "potlatch house," and a "museum"
adorned with large totems. Frances Densmore's Nootka and Quileute Music
(1939) leaves us her impressions of Young Doctor's rather eclectic home/busi-
ness. Densmore notes that the house had a "carved doorway which he sketched
and has duplicated over the inside of the front door of his store. The Posts at
either side of the door represent men while the beam across the top of the door
represents a whale" (1939:6-7). According to Makah Elders, this store sold dry
goods, candy, blue plates, canvas shoes, and peanuts.
By 1907 the store had expanded into a roller-skating rink where Young
Doctor rented skates to children and sold hot peanuts. The oral history gathered
in producing the exhibit related that Young Doctor used to invite Elders "to his
house to come and watch the children careen around totem poles on roller
skates" (MCRC 1989). Young Doctor is said to have turned his house into a
small museum that catered to tourists, in addition to its function as a roller-skat-
ing rink. Makah oral history indicates that he may have received a commission
for showing objects, such as model canoes, paddles, harpoon points for whale
and seal, and harpoon points for sea otter and duck, in his cases. Although his
personal collection of objects was not for sale, he apparently carved duplicates
of these for tourists (MCRC 1989).
In the summers between 1923 and 1926, Young Doctor recorded over sixty
songs on wax cylinders with Frances Densmore. Densmore writes that Young
Doctor recorded the songs in the rear of his store, where he "carves and paints
many articles for commercial sale" (1939:72). He would occasionally interrupt
his recording of songs with Densmore to go and wait on customers up front
(Densmore 1939:xxv). In the rear of the store where Densmore and Young Doc-
tor recorded songs, a cotton cloth representing one of his dreams hung beside
them on the wall. Apparently, Young Doctor explained to Densmore that spirit
helpers conferred powers and enabled Makah individuals to accomplish
tasks—such as carving, healing the sick, fishing—that would not otherwise
have been possible. He labeled these spirit helpers tumanos.21 Half a century ear-
lier, Swan explained these dreams as encounters with animals who were mani-
festations of spirit beings, beings that had chosen to show themselves in a par-
ticular form (1870:63-64).
Young Doctor also told Densmore that some of the songs he was recording
with her were sung in "dream language," which could only be understood by the
person who received the song in her or his dream. Other singers could only learn
and repeat the syllables (Densmore 1939:xxv). As Densmore explains it, Young
Doctor considered this spiritual knowledge, this Makah way of knowing, as the
basis for creating and interpreting the use of material culture items. Young Doc-
tor specifically described for Densmore situations in memorial potlatches in
which "dream songs" of the deceased were sung and the belongings of the de-
ceased—such as a whaler's rattle or whale harpoon barbs—were displayed,
shown great respect, and curated by the deceased's children for such instances
in which they were needed to terminate mourning (Densmore 1939:34, 39).
In Young Doctor's lifetime, missionaries sternly disapproved of Makah
cultural expressions such as songs, potlatching, and gaming. This censure, in ad-
dition to the new political-economic strains on family structures that interrupted
hereditary patterns, contributed to the loss of songs. These changes led Young
Doctor to modify the traditional, kinship-based system of passing down knowl-
edge. Young Doctor, who died in 1934, bequeathed a selection of songs, and
their associated regalia, to the community at large. These eventually became a
part of Makah Days celebrations. These songs, including the paddle song, are re-
hearsed by children in Neah Bay's community hall for many weeks leading up
to Makah Days (the annual August celebration of Makah identity). The staff of
the MCRC curates the dance paddles and spears and often helps teach the chil-
dren and guide them when they perform on the village street for as many as
1,000 Native and non-Native onlookers. Celebrating these traditions and inter-
preting them to outsiders are among the ties that the MCRC sees between itself
and Young Doctor.
For two decades, the MCRC has afforded the Makah people the opportu-
nity to participate in the making of knowledge about themselves by providing an
institution that allows them to practice social science in a manner both accessi-
ble and effective for them. The museum is a new mstitutional format whereby
the Makah may synthesize their oral history with ethnography and archaeology
to make sense of their culture history. The museum has become a new tool for
collecting and representing the memories that are distributed throughout differ-
ent Makah families. Central to the subjectivity of the MCRC is that it collects
oral history and material remains of the past, and it also serves as a tool for en-
couraging remembering and for encouraging the continuation of culturally sig-
nificant practices.
In short, the museum reveals its concept of itself as embodying the cultural
preservation project that individuals like Young Doctor (and many others) be-
gan a century earlier. Between Young Doctor's potlatch house and the high-pro-
file excavation of Ozette, cultural preservation efforts took many forms. Some
Elders led classes meant to celebrate Makah heritage. These carving, language,
and basketry lessons were held in the Neah Bay school (Erikson
1996a:223-232; Renker and Arnold 1988). Others founded and maintained
clubs that celebrated Makah identity through carrying on song, dance, and bas-
ketry traditions. Through less institutionalized means, Makah identity was ex-
pressed and reinforced through the continuation of potlatching, often in the
guise of parties to celebrate birthdays, Christmas, the Fourth of July, or World
War II homecomings (Erikson 1996a:212-218; cf. Cranmer Webster 1991).
To put Makah whaling in context, the current recuperation of whaling is
only one example of Makah efforts to adapt to social changes in their commu-
nity, changes that are a response to the surrounding political economy. Because
Makah actions are articulated with national and global political economies,
Euro-American notions of "what Indians are" or "what they should be" come
into play in a manner very familiar to the Makah people.
Conclusions
But our opponents would have us abandon this [whaling] part of our culture and re-
strict it to a museum. To us this means a dead culture. We are trying to maintain a
living culture. We can only hope that those whose opposition is most vicious will be
able to recognize their ethnocentrism—subordinating our culture to theirs.
—Makah Tribe, Makah Whaling: Questions and Answers
This excerpt from the Makah Tribe's website captures the line that the
MCRC walks between being a museum and being a cultural center. Based on
personal experience, I would say it is not uncommon for Native American com-
munity members to associate, at least partly, the idea of a museum with repre-
sentations of Native American cultures as "dead" or extinct cultures. Main-
stream museums have certainly played a role in making the public comfortable
with particular traditional and folkloric representations of Native American cul-
ture. Tribal museums, such as the MCRC, may approximate a mainstream mu-
seum in professional quality and the format of their exhibitions and operating
procedures. Yet, by embracing the mission of a cultural center to support Makah
cultural survival, the MCRC demonstrates its conviction that Makah people
have the right to participate in authoring not only their past but their present and
future.
The current discourse swirling about Makah whaling reveals a popular re-
luctance to accept the complexity of Makah identity. When the Makah whalers
harpooned their whale, Peter M. Golly from Woodinville, Washington, submit-
ted the following to the Seattle Times:
Michael McCarty, a Makah, was quoted as saying, "Harpooning, going back to the
old days, is just awesome for the whole tribe." Wouldn't it be even more "awe-
some" to really go back to the "old days"? Make your clothing on looms so you
will look like your ancestors when you are hunting. Give up Gore-Tex and Thin-
sulate, wear moccasins instead of sneakers and hiking boots. Grow and hunt the
rest of your food, stop going to grocery stores. Stop using electricity and all the ap-
pliances it supplies. . . . Stop living in modern-day homes and live in lodges like
your forefathers.... If you really want to return to the "old days" of your culture,
then turn around and go all the way back. [ 1999:B9]
Another opinion submitted to the Seattle Times by Shannon Morrison reveals a

similar equation of Indianness with the distant past: "The experiences of a cul-
ture's past that have rightly faded into a time in history should be left to that time
in history. Especially when it comes to the well-being of a living creature [a
whale]" (Seattle Times 1999.A9). In addition to letters such as these, a political
cartoonist working for the Arizona Republic graphically depicted how popular
culture entraps "real Indians" in the ethnographic past and condemns contempo-
rary Native Americanness to a comical and inauthentic presence amid moder-
nity. The cartoonist sketched a two-frame cartoon entitled "Native American
Traditions." The first frame, labeled "PAST," depicts a Plains Indian astride a
horse shooting a stampeding buffalo and saying, "I need you to feed my family."
The second frame, labeled "PRESENT," depicts a Makah whaler shooting at a
whale with a rifle from his cedar canoe and saying, "I need you to feed my ego"
("Benson" 1999).
These types of sentiments are directed at Native Americans generally, not
just at the Makah people. In March 1999, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld
the fishing and hunting treaty rights of the Mille Lacs band of Chippewa against
the State of Minnesota, Governor Jesse Ventura's response was, "If that's the
way they want it, they can go back to birch bark canoes!" (Van Develder
1999.B7). Popular American culture is rife with images of what a "real Indian"
is and what "authentic" behavior should be. "Real Indians" purportedly practice
a "pure" Indian culture in the prehistoric past and are largely devoid of the com-
plex identity that predated colonialism and was accentuated by cultural contact
(see Figure 4).
The MCRC is an important means for the Makah people to continue to vi-
talize their ways of knowing. It is also an important means to establish their
knowledge as valid in the eyes of outsiders, as part of a self-determination pro-
cess. The vitalization of their ways of knowing may take the forms of continuing
to remember and honor ancestors, such as Young Doctor, or remembering to
care for objects as possessions of ancestors rather than simply as scientific arti-
facts (Mauger and Bowechop 1995). As Julie Cruikshank (1998) has pointed
out, museums can be arenas where different narratives intersect. Historically,
576 CULTURAL ANIHROPOl OdY
they have been where official narratives confront oral tradition. Through exhib-
its like Riding in His Canoe, the Makah people produce and validate knowledge
about themselves, offering representations that are preferable to, but in dialogue
with, those of the dominant historiography. Exhibits such as Riding in His Ca-
noe document how the Makah negotiation of dominant notions of Indianness
has been one of their strategies of survival and self-determination.
This venue for indigenous knowledge making becomes very salient in the
highly charged atmosphere of the whaling controversy. At issue is who gets to
control the expression of Makah identity. Following the successful whale hunt,
Wayne Johnson, captain of the whaling crew, wrote to the Seattle Times,
Some people have criticized us for this [post-whaling] celebration saying that it
should have been a somber event and that we should have mourned the whale in
the way they imagine to be proper. I am so tired of the Paul Watson's [Sea Shep-
herd Society] crew—and the long line of missionaries and government Indian
agents that preceded them—pushing their cultural values on Makah people and
telling us how and how not to be Makah. [ 1999:B9]
Obviously, the media (newspaper, television, the Internet) is a vital means for
the Makah people to try to communicate to the public why they are breaking
Figure 4
The adoption of turn-of-the-century Euro-American clothing, worn here by Makah
people harvesting meat and blubber from a whale carcass, reveals a complexity of
identity not often anticipated, or accepted, by the non-Native public. Photo by
Asahel Curtis, 1910, negative #NA?21. Reproduced by permission of Special
Collections, University of Washington Libraries.
with reified notions of Indian culture, notions in which only a particular era of
the past is "authentic." Yet it is through their museum/cultural center that the
Makah people can frame their interpretations of the past, present, and future in a
format the public associates with knowledge. Despite this similarity, tribal insti-
tutions such as the MCRC differ in their long-standing commitment to reaffirm-
ing Makah ways of knowing in order to ensure cultural survival.
Like mainstream museums, tribal museums/cultural centers are "contact
zones" where human subjects are constituted through their relations with each
other, often within unequal power relations. The MCRC is a critical tool for at-
tempts to equalize this imbalance in power relations and to regain knowledge
making and remembering among those whose knowledge has been previously
discredited.
The forces buffeting contemporary Makah whaling are likely to continue
operating within predominantly non-Native perceptions of Indianness. The
mere presence of the MCRC, however, disrupts notions of inevitable cultural
loss. Furthermore, the juxtaposition of the permanent gallery, featuring Makah
whaling, with temporary exhibits, such as Riding in His Canoe, contests notions
of culture as static. The museum represents what Euro-Americans expect to be
Indian "tradition" (i.e., whaling), but MCRC also implicitly connects this tradi-
tion to the present and future. Whaling artifacts, for example, are not only ob-
jects that represent the past; they are objects that can provide guidelines for
thinking about the present and the future (Cruikshank 1998:103). They serve as
mnemonic devices for remembering, and pursuing, Makah versions of Makah
identity.
Tribal museums/cultural centers, such as the MCRC, demonstrate a pre-
sumed authority to interpret the cultures of their respective tribes and to partici-
pate in projects in which knowledge is made about their tribes. In tribal muse-
ums/cultural centers, Native peoples are not just participating as informants,
consultants, or even cocurators, but as owners and curators of their own collec-
tions. This opens up other possibilities for how they are able to influence their in-
teractions with non-Native peoples. The hope is for greater Native American
agency in counteracting stereotypical representations and exploitive relations.
Nevertheless, these accomplishments and negotiations occur in a social land-
scape that continues to be structured in dominance. This is evident in how the
museum has become one of the localized points of encounter with global forces,
such as the international debate on commercialized whaling.
In the midst of the whaling controversy, it would not be surprising for pub-
lic attention to turn to the direct representations of whaling in the Makah Cul-
tural and Research Center. Perhaps more instructive than these expected repre-
sentations of tradition are the MCRC's temporary exhibits, such as Riding in His
Canoe, which make a subtle point. This point is that "being Makah" can con-
tinue in the midst of dramatic social change and that this identity may continue
to honor the past at the same time that it must adapt to survive.
Notes
Acknowledgments. I am indebted to members of the Makah Tribal Council and the
Makah Cultural and Research Center Board of Trustees for permission to conduct re-
search on the Makah Reservation. Deborah Cahalen's reading of an earlier draft of this
article is greatly appreciated. Support for this research was generously provided by the
National Science Foundation and the Jacobs Research Funds.
1. This song was sung by James Guy for Frances Densmore and documented by
Densmore as "No. 7 A Whale Returns." According to Densmore, Guy's explanation of
this song was that "it was said that a man had a dream in which a living whale came to
him. This was a whale he had caught at some previous time and it came back, saying it
was ready to be caught again" (1939:66).
2. In their own language, the Makah are known as the qwidicca?atx, or People of
the Cape—more specifically, People Who Live by the Rocks and Seagulls (Makah Tribe
1999). The term Makah is Salish in origin and was mistakenly assigned to the
q w idicca ? atx as their official name during the treaty and reservation-building era, thus
becoming firmly embedded in government documentation. The qwidicca?atx have in-
habited the Cape Flattery region for more than 4,000 years, primarily as fishermen, seal
hunters, and whale hunters, but also as land-mammal hunters and gatherers. Today,
tribal members work in commercial and subsistence fishing, commercial logging, art-
istry, and tourism-related retail businesses, as well as in Tribal Government, the Indian
Health Service, the Neah Bay public school system, the Makah Cultural and Research
Center, and the Clallam County Correctional Facility (as well as other major off-reser-
vation employers).
3. The Makah Nation remains the only tribe in the United States to have treaty-
secured whaling rights. See Kappler 1904 for the Treaty of Neah Bay text.
4. I take this term from Bock 1995.
5. These nations are particularly interested in the Makah intention to resume whal-
ing, for they have historically challenged and sought loopholes in the international ban
on whaling.
6. This exhibit was created in 1989 for the ten-year anniversary of the Makah Cul-
tural and Research Center. It was remounted in 1995 while I was working there. Cur-
rently, this temporary exhibit space hosts an exhibition featuring Makah basketmakers
and their artistry.
7. I witnessed a staff member pointing out these resources to journalists while I was
there. She provided the resource and then left them to make their own conclusions.
8. For examples of the published accounts, see Mapes 1999 and Mapes and Solo-
mon 1999a, 1999b.
9. Obviously the Makah canoe, from which Makah planned to harpoon the whale,
was also violating the halo dictated by the Marine Mammal Protection Act. However,
their permission to hunt the whale exempts them from this restriction. Anti-whaling pro-
testors bitterly pointed to the irony in the confiscation of their boats (Watson 1999a).
10. See Gunther 1942:67-68 for a description of these taboos.
11. The introduction of high-caliber rifles was recommended by veterinarians in
order to "more humanely" and quickly kill the whale (Makah Tribe 1999). Death by har-
poon used to be a very slow process: Makah oral history suggests that sometimes Makah
whalers were towed for more than a day before the whale died.
12. Similar confrontations elsewhere, for example, over wall-eyed pike spearing in
Wisconsin and seal hunting on Baffin Island, are discussed in Wenzel 1991.
13. To see the different threads of this discourse, see Johnson 1998 and Peterson
1996, 1998.
14. See Hogan 1996, Mapes 1998a, and Verhovek 1998 for accounts of these sen-
timents.
15. For an account of how Makah whaling pertains to repatriation from museum
collections, seeTweedie 1999.
16. In addition to that in the MCRC, I have seen critiques of colonization in indige-
nous museums at the following locations: Warm Springs, Oregon; Mashantucket, Con-
necticut; Salamanca, New York; and Santa Maria Yucuihiti, Oaxaca, Mexico.
17. See Harmon (1999), who charts the dialogue between Native and non-Native
peoples regarding who Indians have been, or are supposed to be, over the last century.
18. Michael Ames articulates these two levels of analysis while reflecting on es-
says by Virginia Dominguez and Ira Jacknis. Ames sat on a panel with them ('The Ob-
jects of Culture") at the November 1988 American Anthropological Association
meeting in Phoenix (Ames 1992:141, n. 173).
19. Clifford Geertz recently characterized James Clifford's Routes (1997) as "hit-
and-run" or "walk-through" ethnography (Geertz 1998). He was referring to Clifford's
alterNative readings of museum exhibits and practices. Clifford's methodology has been
shaped by his well-known concerns for ethnographic authority (1988).
20. Specifically, I refer to feminists who have been influenced by poststructuralists
(such as Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault) in their theorization of the construction of human
subjectivity. While influenced by poststructuralism, some feminists argue with post-
structuralism's denial of human agency, and here I find affinity with them. See Alcoff
1997 and Nicholson 1997, for example.
21. As Linda Alcoff describes, "Identity [is] relative to a constantly shifting con-
text, to a situation that includes a network of elements involving others, the objective
economic conditions, cultural and political institutions and ideologies, and so on"
(1997:349).
22. Compare Jonaitis' s (1991) discussion of encounters between museum staff and
Native community members with Cranmer Webster's (1991) discussion of the meaning
of tribal museum collections to see this juxtaposition.
23. This kind of collaborative working relationship is currently common and is a
response to Native critiques of academia. See Biolsi and Zimmerman 1997, Jocks 1996,
and Kidwell and Plane 1996.
24. For representative popular publications on the Ozette excavation, see Kirk
1974, 1975.
25. I explore less "institutionalized" means by which Makah people negotiate by
way of self-representations—such as basketry—in Erikson 1998.
26. As Ruth Phillips (1991) has pointed out, material culture expressions produced
in postcontact settings (such as Huron embroidery, for example) reveal not only the in-
terrelationship of Native and Euro-American political-economic systems but also Na-
tive efforts to present "preferred self-images." Trudy Nicks makes a parallel observation
in her study of how an Iroquois, Dr. Oronhyatekha, used his material culture collection
to reject and negotiate the views of dominant society which designate Native peoples at
a low rung on the social ladder (1996:501-503).
27. Bracken (1997) writes at length about the etymology of this term and the con-
fused Euro-American understandings of it.
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A-Whaling We Will Go: Encounters of

Knowledge and Memory at the Makah

Cultural Anthropology 14(4):556-583. Copyright © 1999, American Anthropological Association.

"accidental whale" compounded the effect of this announcement and effectively

Anti-whaling activists seek to undermine these cultural arguments by highlight-

Their ancient [Makah] history is wrapped in an impenetrable obscurity—that of a

Anthropology of Museums: Analyzing Encounters of Knowledge

forces. Therefore, museums bear traces in their architecture, organizational

an attempt to invoke the spatial and temporal copresence of subjects previously

improvisational dimensions of colonial encounters so easily ignored or sup-

To reiterate, the concept of contact zone emphasizes that subjectivity (human or

center is able to represent both seemingly contradictory sentiments of change

The Makah Cultural and Research Center

I went to the Makah Reservation in 1994 for 12 months of dissertation re-

fastidiously collected and documented for the Smithsonian Institution barbed

Furthermore, the excavation and museum project encouraged Makah youth

themselves, in conjunction with these other more conventionally used docu-

Another opinion submitted to the Seattle Times by Shannon Morrison reveals a

Dreyfus, Hubert L., and Paul Rabinow

Jonaitis, Aldona, ed.

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