‘Gi-mishoomis gaa-wiishkobaninig giigidowin’ Your grandfather’s words were very sweet: An Ojibwe petition from mid-19th century

By the mid-19th century the British and the Anishinaabe had entered into numerous treaties and surrenders throughout the Great Lakes area. The treaties were reportedly conducted in Ojibwe (aka Anishinaabemowin) with interpreters but there is no record of how they translated the treaty or the speeches of the Crown into Ojibwe – usually all that remains is the English record of the proceedings and the written treaty. This presentation will analyze a document written, or dictated, in Ojibwe by Captain Paudash of the Rice Lake Mississauga (Rice Lake, southeastern Ontario) detailing his account of the ‘Gun Shot’ Treaty and the 1818 Port Hope Treaty. This important document promises to shed light on how the Mississauga Anishinaabe understood treaty and their relationship to the British through the lens of their own language. The document (no date) has been transliterated from an obsolete Ojibwe orthography into the modern orthography. Attention will be paid to the Ojibwe vocabulary, metaphors, phraseology, and discourse, culminating in a comparative discourse analysis.

Rigid Forms and Flexible Reality: Contextualizing the 1892 Cooper Report

At precisely the time elite Americans abandoned or modified Christian theologies of perdition, American procedural law came to rely ever more strongly on the traditional link between law and the theology of divine punishment: the testimonial oath. While conventional histories of American evidence law tell a rather straightforward modernization story of a move from premodern sacral modes of prooftaking to rational forensic modes of examination, this paper shows that oathtaking did not diminish under modern law reform but significantly expanded with the influence of New York’s code of 1848. For the first time in America, the New York code required all pleadings to be sworn by the parties, and all parties and interested witnesses were made competent to take the oath and testify on the stand. Lawyers at first expected the dread of cross examination to deter perjury, but they quickly adjusted their theories in practice to detect lying under oath, which they believed had become rampant under the code. The lawyers’ faith in their ability to detect truth were stymied, however, as racialized witnesses came before the bar. In order to account for racial disqualifications on testimony in a world increasingly open to party testimony (and perjury), lawyers revived an older theology of perdition, swirling together supposedly premodern and rational modes of investigation well into the twentieth century.

Silencing the Torah in Museums

This paper contends that the way a museum treats the concept and object of Torah sheds light on the museum’s overall dramaturgy and ideology. The first step is unpacking the concept of Torah, distinguishing between different meaning of it as text, Law, subject, and a material object in the form of the Torah scroll. The work of Theodor Adorno and the idea of “silencing objects” by Philip Fisher then serve as a theoretical framework to analyze the way material objects, space, lighting, and multimedia come together in order to ascribe certain meanings of Torah and silence others. I focus on three case studies: The Jewish Museum London (JML), Polin: Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, and the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C. (MOTB). The JML puts the Torah in the center of an exhibition that follows a Life Cycle approach in a way that detaches it from a historical narrative and risks essentialzing Judaism. Polin takes a narrative-oriented “Theater of History” route, which leads to focusing on the idea of Torah rather on actual representation of actual Torah scrolls as material-historical objects. The MOTB treats and presents multiple Torah scrolls and other related objects, but in order to ultimately serve a supersessionist agenda that seeks to “eradicate biblical poverty.” The comparison between the three museums and the choices they make shows their broader ideological agendas, as well as the ways the curatorial praxis leads to the silencing of objects.

Quid Pro Quo: Egyptian Artifact Distribution and the Bureaucracy of Gentlemen’s Promises

Early in 1926, C. T. Currelly, Director of Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), sent a letter to the Mary Jonas, General Secretary of England’s Egypt Exploration Society (EES). Recalling a promise made to him by the famous excavator and papyrologist Bernard P. Grenfell some 20 years prior, Currelly asked Jonas that a collection of Arabic papyri be delivered to Toronto. These papyri, he claimed, were promised by Grenfell as a token of gratitude after Currelly had secured a substantial amount of money to support EES excavations. The request is notable, not because Currelly asked for papyri, but because it prompted internal debate over the handling and dispersal of Egyptian antiquities by the EES.

This paper argues that Currelly construed Grenfell’s promise according to the structural logic of EES artifact distributions, thereby ensuring that his request be given due consideration by EES officials. Crucial to this argument is my characterisation of EES artifact distributions as a quid pro quo arrangement – something received for something given. More specifically, the EES had committed to distribute Egyptian artifacts to given public museums in proportion to moneys given to the Society through subscription, a practice that has seen the dispersal of Egyptian artifacts (including papyri) to public institutions across the globe. At a time when museums and papyrologists alike are grappling with their complicity in the colonial appropriation of Egyptian cultural heritage and the trade in antiquities, this paper shows how the distribution of Egyptian artifacts was energised by a dynamic relationship between its official and public-facing commitment to distribute artifacts in proportion to subscription, “backroom” agreements negotiated by individual men, and in a bureaucracy mediated by the sitting EES Secretary.

Fragmented Promises, Pentimento & the Salvage Paradigm

This talk considers the meaning of promises un/made and re/made through worldmaking in common law, constitutional narrative, treaties with and oaths taken by the Crown. Together, we will examine worldviews reinforced through art and visual culture that romanticize Indigenous peoples, idealize empty promises, and fragment meaning.

Longing and Belonging in a Time of Post-Coloniality: Amel’s Chedda

Drawing on work on how politics shape kinship (Bennett, 2010; Lemons, 2019), this essay follows Amel’s chedda, a traditional western Algerian wedding garment, through four moments – her wedding procession, at a wedding show, at a meeting with friends outside of Paris, and in the preparations before the wedding party with her neggafa (bridal assistant) – to consider her transnational and trans-generational post-coloniality. I reflect on how both the benefits and burdens of Amel’s “postcolonial past” are woven into and negotiated through this garment and associated rituals (Guénif-Souilamas, 2000; Stoler, 2002; Surkis, 2010). Marriage partner preferences for “traditional” partners among my Muslim French of Algerian origin interlocutors in a northwestern Parisian suburb are part of a web of relations and desire tangled with post-colonial politics (cf. Salvatore, 2009:5). Prevalent scholarship characterizes “tradition” as a religious response to a secular France that, increasingly, demands the relegation of visible religiosity out of the public sphere, and surveils non-EU transnational marriage (see Robledo, 2007; Cole, 2014; Selby, 2017). In contrast, I aim to privilege desire and kinship to understand these preferences. Given how the control of intimacy and sexuality are central to colonial politics, including in France, I frame Amel’s desire for this marriage partner with specific “non-traditional” rituals as evoking her post-coloniality. Put differently, part of this seeking and reconstituting of traditionalism and the bled at the time of marriage is a bodily and emotional response to post-colonial identities. Islam is sometimes referenced and sometimes ignored. For many of my participants, like for Amel, the social bonds of tradition are best expressed through kinship ties in marriage.