 We're going to wait for a few minutes and let our, we're closing up one walk and learn and having some people walk over from that walk and learn to this one. But we're joining you from the Moravian archives today as well as from the Museum of Anthropology at Wake Forest University and we'll be getting our conversations in just a moment. I don't know how many of you have have seen other aspects of our conference. We've had a really full and interesting program with some really talented people contributing their skills. Andrew Minkins last night did a fabulous job weaving together lots of details. Sally Gant just now going through the fabulous collections that messed up, had a wonderful academic session which you'll hear about on Saturday. It's a great day going over some papers, a great introduction yesterday, more good things coming in this conference in the next day or two. But my name is Eric Elliott, I am the archivist here at Moravian archives and wanted to pass the baton around and let the two co conveners from Wake Forest University for this event introduce themselves now at this time. Good afternoon, my name is a week of eat house and I am Professor of the study of religions in the department for the study of religions and also American ethnic studies. It's a great joy for all of you to join us and listen to this next session. My name is Grant McAllister. I'm an associate professor and Levison faculty fellow in the Department of German and Russian at Wake Forest University. Welcome to our second walk and learn events. I'm so pleased to be part of the my colleagues here my co conveners. So far this has been a really wonderful conference and let's hope that it continues to go well and we don't have any technical issues here for this online conference. Before I let the last person in our video Scott to speak I want to introduce him today he's very special fellow. Name is Dr Andrew Gustel and he is an academic director at Wake Forest University's Museum of anthropology a wonderful place to go visit. Andrew got his PhD at the University of Michigan, his interest in museums focuses on making them the hubs of anthropological research. Places where research is both conducted and exhibited and so he's in the right spot to say afternoon to do both of that he's actually in the collections there at the Department of anthropology so we're so pleased to have him. You know his research. He's done archaeological and oral history research in West Africa including Ghana, Togo and Benin. He is the director of the save save a Hills you'll you'll correct me on the pronunciation as most people do with my southern accent. Save Hills Archaeological Research Project in Benin and the project goal is to examine the early history and development of the Shabe Yoruba kingdom between 1600 and 1960. Yeah, the title of this conference is becoming American. And yet we see that the title of this afternoon's walk and learn is something that completely inverts that it's becoming Moravian through the eyes of the collections, gathered there at the Museum of anthropology and now I'd like to turn our afternoon walk and learn session over to Dr Gristel. Thank you for the introduction, Eric, and thank you professors beat house and McAllister for having me at your wonderful conference. I was so honored to be invited to develop an exhibit around this concept of becoming American and what Moravian identity meant as it transformed and took on local dimensions in the new American context. And so when I was first reached out about what kind of contributions the Museum of anthropology might be able to make. I immediately thought about a very special collection we have here. One of the most interesting things about the Museum of anthropology is that we do not really acquire anything by intention. Everything is given to us everything is donated to us we make advantage, or we take advantage of every opportunity that is presented to us. And long before I took over as academic director back in 1983, the Wachovia Historical Society was in a bind, they had these immense collections of material culture of artifacts and objects from North Carolina but also from all over the world objects that had been generated by Moravian missionaries and sent back to the home communities. However, taking care of material culture is difficult. As I like to tell all of my students entropy is real. Everything is breaking down. And I'm sure as you thought Mesda right museums play a vital role in preserving that material culture and that material heritage. So while Mesda focuses on the American context, what to do with some of these objects that were generated in other provinces and parts of the world. Luckily, the goodwill between our institutions meant that the Wachovia Historical Society felt comfortable in trusting those collections with the Museum of anthropology and after a being a long term custodian of them in the early they were formally transferred into our collections. It's a very special collection and one that I take the obligation of caring for very seriously because they represent amazing evidence of the kind of connections that Moravian's had with people all over the world and evidence of the transformations that Moravian thought practices beliefs had on indigenous people and conversely of course the influence indigenous people had on Moravian themselves. So when I was invited to create an exhibit. Initially I was very excited because this was going to be my first time working with Eric to develop an exhibit for the Moravian archives like a a loan exhibit that the Museum of Anthropology could have there. Unfortunately, that didn't pan out quite so quite so well. I'm sure we'll do it again someday. Instead, we moved the exhibit to a virtual representation. I'm going to share the link to that in our chat box right now. And so if you wish you may you know if any if at any point I'm a little too boring feel free to click over there and just start reviewing the museum exhibit on your own. It's a really fun exhibit. I had the pleasure of working with Wake Forest students who helped me develop it helped me research it helped choose the objects for it. And it's a small fun little exhibit that demonstrates some of these really interesting stories. These really interesting connections and moments of transformation about how indigenous communities all over the world became Moravian. As Eric stated, I kind of wanted to turn the phrase of the conference on its head a little bit, you know, have a little fun with it. But today, I'm, I don't want to just repeat all the hard work that the students and I put into that exhibit, because it is a virtual exhibit and you're welcome to review it on your own time. I'm not sure when it'll come down it might be living on our museum website forever depending on how long we're focusing on virtual exhibits that is. So instead today I wanted to focus in on just one of the five vignettes that the exhibit covers. So if you allow me today. While the exhibit is becoming Moravian, my presentation for today is just going to drill down on one cultural context that of the story of the Moravians in Southwestern Alaska, and their mission among the Eupak people. This is the story, as many stories are of people from two cultures meeting and living together. It's a fascinating story, and it's one that has been told before there's a lot of amazing historical documents, secondary sources treatments of this story, and so I won't repeat it in full. But what those stories often leave out in that they are based on the diaries official reports receipts ledgers family histories oral histories, all of those amazing sources were all familiar with. A lot of the stories leave out the material culture. Yes, there's interest in you pick material culture indigenous material culture what that means, but I'm more interested in this specific slice this assortment of material culture that the missionaries themselves collected in Southwestern Alaska. Not only did they collect it, but they sent it back to Salem. I think that's very important it implies some kind of intention some level of observation and and interest that goes beyond merely documenting material culture and takes another step to go out, collect that, and then send it back for others to learn from. I'll talk a little bit about that in its historical context of the late 19th and early 20th century. So again, here's a little preview of our browser exhibit if you again feel free at any point to click on over to the virtual exhibit. We are representing five different stories the stories of the Moravian's and Suriname in the Labrador coast of Canada in Nicaragua. In the Southwestern Alaska as I'll be presenting on today as well as in Jamaica showing some of the objects that are demonstrative not of, you know, I don't know if there is such a thing pristine indigenous cultures, but rather showing distinct moments of transformation between Moravian's and the indigenous people that they lived and worked among. But our story begins in Southwestern Alaska. Actually it begins in Europe right it begins in 1733 when Count Zinzendorf comes up with the idea of missions as a way of spreading of spreading the gospel of spreading Moravian influence throughout the world. But Zinzendorf's idea of a far flung mission wasn't necessarily that of only his own creation rather he was inspired by the lecture circuits of the early 18th century. Of course this is long before Zoom existed long before telecommunications or mass communications or long distance communication of any real kind existed. And so one of the most popular ways of spreading information about the other parts of the world that people did not have access to were of course, traveling lecturers people who had been there, who had seen the sites experienced the lands, and then came to tell their story about it. Two of the most influential for this story are two Inuit men by the name of Poc and Kipporok. Around 17 in the 1720s they traveled throughout Europe, lecturing in courts and castles and city centers all over all over Europe, talking about their experiences in Greenland and other Arctic places. And it fascinated the Europeans who heard it and indeed Count Zinzendorf heard them speak and became interested in what they were doing. He became very interested specifically then in sending Moravian missionaries into the Arctic to prophylatize among Arctic people. This was an area that was well beyond the scope of European knowledge in the early 18th century, although having been explored by Scandinavians and by other Europeans it was still an area that was sparsely settled by them and represented really one of these far flung corners of the world that Moravian knowledge was fairly limited on, yet nonetheless the idea of sending a mission there stuck. At the same time, in 1771 the first Labrador mission really got off the ground, and you'll see some of the artifacts in our exhibit that came from Labrador and made their way to Salem eventually. And in the course of living amongst Inuit people on the Labradorian coast, this idea of the Eskimo culture came into being. This was really one of the first kind of ethnographic or anthropological documentation of Arctic peoples. Missionaries were, in a sense, the first ethnographers to go in and try to understand from an indigenous point of view, as well as from their own European point of view, what life was like for people living in the Arctic. And although there were many problems, many stereotypes, especially with the name Eskimo itself, the idea of Arctic peoples derived from their observations. We're going to smash cut to almost 100 years later in our story here. I apologize for that when I deal with objects and not documentary sources, there's a lot more gaps sometimes, but we're going to smash cut to 1867 and William Seward's purchase of Alaska from Russia. As you can see here, it was ridiculed at the time trading American technology and treasure for land and the Arctic seemed like a fool's bargain and depicted here as such. But it sets the stage for the Moravian mission in southwestern Alaska because now, following 1867, the United States has claim in their eyes legally owns this territory of Alaska having purchased it from the Russian. And it's such they need to start administrating it. But there's a problem 1867, the Civil War is taking its toll reconstructions around the corner and there's really no appetite for American imperial expansion yet at this point that would not come until later in the 19th century. And so what to do with this territory that America owns, but is very little to do with the answer rather than send out the American military rather than send out American or federal institutions or federal agents to go and try to colonize this directly. There's a new plan. And it's the plan of this man Sheldon Jackson, the admit one of the administrators for the new Alaskan territory outside of the still very small kind of coastal cities that Americans occupied, much of Alaska remained out of reach of Americans. Jackson had an idea though as the Minister of Education or I'm not the minister, but Secretary of Education for the Alaskan territory. He had some immense power and cloud within there he was responsible for what would now be under the Bureau of Indian Affairs or management within indigenous communities, as well as the schools directly and of course schools were also some of the only government outposts they functioned as post offices. They functioned as notaries. They functioned in all kinds of capacities. So through his control of schools, Jackson wielded immense power and his idea to expand American presence within the Alaskan territory was to call on the power of churches, churches in the lower 48 or in the I guess and they just the United States at that point. He was very interested in feeling how he could essentially outsource some of this colonial labor into church organizations and indeed there's even evidence that Jackson came to Salem to pitch this to Moravian communities, and it seemed like it was effective. Because in 1885 a missionary couple as well as others who did not stay in Alaska quite as long, but John and Edith Kilbuck pictured here with her daughter Katie Kilbuck in 1897 went to Alaska and they founded the town of Bethel, which is today, the largest city in southwestern Alaska has about 3000 people in it so that gives you a sense of what the population density is like out there, but this is an immense territory, and they had a very difficult job of coming to southwestern Alaska and setting up this missionary effort. They created Bethel near an existing trade outpost and eventually began growing the Moravian congregation there, and they were incredibly successful and as I'm sure many of you already know. They were incredibly successful for several reasons, but one of the reasons was that John Kilbuck was himself indigenous, a member of the Lenape tribe. John was also Moravian, he occupied this interesting social category of being simultaneously Moravian and indigenous. And because of his knowledge of indigenous peoples in the United States as well as the struggles that they faced and the prejudice and racism they faced. His approach to missionary activities was somewhat different, although not fair not as different considering the broader scope of Moravian mission for activities. He immediately set about learning the Yupik language, he dedicated himself to conversing fluently in Yupik he translated church text into the Yupik language. And he really respected in a sense, more so than maybe other peers of his time. He respected the cultural practices. He understood the motivations and reasons for Yupik spirituality for Yupik beliefs, even if he didn't necessarily agree with them. So here we have a sense of Alaska it is an immense and immense state and Bethel is right there on the Cusco Quinn River as it empties out into the Delta. As you can see this delineation of territory represents the extent of traditional Yupik settlements and the Yupik villages within this territory. Bethel, smack dab in the middle represented a central hub from which to engage in these missionary activities. What did the killbots want? Well, they wanted to establish a successful mission. John and Edith Kilbach were lived in Alaska for almost 40 years before John died there. And while they were there, they really earnestly wanted to set about a productive community and improve the lives of the people they were living with. And why did they give them? Well, they brought in much of the trappings of missionary activity, education, infrastructure, government support, all of these valuable commodities that the Yupik appreciated. But what did they take? And that's where our story intersects with the Museum of Anthropology and why I'm in this big museum warehouse right now. They took with them all kinds of things. Over those 40 years they sent back hundreds of objects to the United States, hundreds of objects to Salem specifically. They sent objects of daily life, which I'll show now. So I know I'm sharing my screen, but I have a feeling that most of you can also see my talking head box as well. But if you can, I encourage you to expand that talking head box as big as you can because I have the objects right here with me. And I'm going to very, in a very high tech fashion, hold them up to my camera so that you can get a glimpse of them. Some of these objects are in, have better photos of them taken and are in the virtual exhibit. But some of these are not. Eric, comment. I was going to say at the upper right corner, you'll see a choice within Zoom to swap the screens. You'll put the, the upper right corner you swap these, the share screen for your video and that's how you get your head big. Swap screen. Okay. I am. I am. Swap shared screen with video and that's how we get to you. If you say so. Yes. I can pause share. Do you think that would do it? I don't think it would do anything. I'm just telling our guests if they want to see you rather than that's for the guests. We want to keep you just like you are. You're perfect. Okay, great. So all of these objects were personally collected by the kill box and sent to home community members in Salem. They were sent for many reasons. Sometimes this is still the age of traveling lecture circuit. They would come to Salem frequently and talk about their experiences in the Arctic, and they would bring back objects with them. They would also sell these objects quote unquote, or they wouldn't quite sell them it wasn't so crass as that, but they would give them as gifts, often exchange for donations to keep the missionary activities afloat. I'm sorry Carol and I wish I could help you with that but I'm going to soldier on regardless. They tend to the privilege objects that were of immense interest to the people to the kill box themselves or to the people back in Salem. This is a pretty typical bent wood container. It is simply a container for everyday use it doesn't have any special significance, but it does represent pretty quite clearly you pick aesthetics in creating everyday life as you can see it is painted with red die. And there's also black die has been coming and painted on small depictions of animals like seals and caribou. You can also see, especially clearly on this view, why it's called bent wood. This is a kind of wood as you might imagine in the, in the swampy tundra of Western Alaska is a scarce commodity and every bit counts. So this is a thin plank of wood that has been treated soaked in salt water until it is pliable. It was then bent into shape that's the name bent wood and sewn together with additional strips of wood here and then left to dry until it was in a hardened form. This kind of technology this kind of ingenuity fascinated the kill box and they wanted to share this kind of technological sophistication with home communities back in Salem again, unlike some of their peers the kill box were very interested in portraying the you pick people very sympathetically showing them not as as other tropes of the time period might have them not as savages or people in need of saving. In terms of their physical well being or their communal well being, but rather sophisticated and well adjusted to their social environmental context. Other objects of everyday life, this enormous serve serving spoon also carved out of wood showing the sophistication skill and again the attention poured into objects of everyday life again painted with geometric design. They also brought in objects that were other aspects of everyday life that maybe weren't as savory. This is a tobacco container and say a quid box so it would be used for small quids of chewing tobacco, chewing tobacco in the Arctic was obviously put in. No one grew tobacco in the Arctic, but when they acquired it, you think people would often mix it with a kind of like in as well as minerals to produce a semi psychoactive effect alongside the tobacco when chewed at length, and this quid boxes in the shape of a seal as well. I'm also quite interested in hunting technologies. Oh, what timeframe is this bent wood box, how is it used. So all of these objects were collected by the kill bucks between 1885 and 1922 1925 ish. And along that material culture, it probably extends back at least 400 years or so, and an archaeological excavation ongoing at a site called Kinugak in the south southern area of the Eupik territory. Archeological excavations are have actually because of the amazing preservation conditions there have found wooden objects preserved that are at least 400 years old, often would is very difficult to preserve anywhere. But back at least that far. Most wooden containers have been displaced by plastic and metal containers today but these are retained and the knowledge of creating them is still retained as a kind of heritage graph. Wonderful question. Thank you, Brooke for asking. You want me to turn off the slide. Okay, I'll do that. I wasn't I don't want to keep turning it off and on but you know what that'll be just fine. Let's take a look again at that bent wood box. So here is the caribou phase in the wooden stitch that is tying together the two ends. As you can see where it's one continuous piece of wood that circles around and is then stitched together right here. I just wanted to remind my folks are watching some they're having trouble expanding the screen if you have this not in full screen mode. That's when you see the option to get out of it if it's in full screen mode, you won't necessarily have that option. I'll just keep going back tacking back and forth between the all share screen mode and not. I think that might just be easy for everyone. And here again is that that little quid box in the shape of this. I think very adorable little seal some of my students. Other objects that the Moravian's collected. There was a preference for hunting technologies. And I think this goes again with this idea of portraying the you pick as sophisticated knowledgeable people who are very well adapted to what most others especially back in Salem considered a very inhospitable environment, the Arctic and so hunting technology is very well represented in the collections of the visionary set back. Like this. No, these aren't Kanye West sunglasses. These are hunting visors. There's no blind goggles you can imagine in the Arctic, especially during the winter months. When hunting is a priority when there is very little other gathering of wild resources hunting is very important and being able to see your prey becomes crucial being able to slowly approach and stock your prey and and secure the resources are of utmost importance. So these no blind goggles reduce glare in two different ways the narrow slits reduce glare both coming directly from the sun from the oblique angle, it'll be bounced off the wooden frame, as well as bounced light reflecting up off the snow. So the narrow slit helps reduce that kind of glare and allow the hunter to adequately see their target. Hunting visors like this again made out of bent wood hunting visors like this would be worn and also used to produce glare, but while these tools were often interpreted as technology. Sometimes the social dimension the cultural meaning invested in these objects was lost. Very little reference in contemporary sources of the kill box and the kill box themselves are their contemporaries talking about the meaning of visors like this visors like this were worn exclusively by men. They were not considered sacred necessarily but they were considered gendered, and they were and, and they would often be elaborated the more successful a hunter was the more elaborate, their visor might become the material culture was often preserved. So it entirely was the meaning the meaning was sometimes lost other objects and these are the students always gravitate towards objects like harpoons marine hunting is incredibly difficult, and taking down a large marine mammal is a group effort, especially when you're hunting it with simple technologies without the use of firearms for example. So harpoons like this demonstrate kind of the that that you pick hunters had harpoons like this would be embedded in a marine animal like a seal or a walrus or a whale. The tip comes off intentionally and is tethered so that rather than trying to kill the animal with a thrust. The harpoon acts as a tether, dragging the animal and tiring it out until the animal can be can be dispatched. Other objects that the meridians collected were children's objects there's a lot of children's objects and I think this goes back to that lecture circuit there is no, you know there's no nothing in the kill box diaries that say we're collecting these objects for this reason specifically rather a lot of it is silences that need to be interpreted about why these objects were selected over the entire potential universe of objects that are out there. But children's objects are very well represented and I think it's because children sell well on the lecture circuit it's very easy to empathize with children, right, especially when you're asking for donations to fund mission efforts. So there's a lot of children's. Children's dolls are very well represented. This is kind of a contemporary cloth doll that the kill books would have encountered it already has heavily and heavy influences from Russian trade and culture. You can see evidence of glass beads that the doll is wearing as well as the glass eyes trade fabric that the doll is clothed in, as well as the style of dress itself is distinctly European as well so this doll would have been current and the kill bucks had already arrived, but they also collected archaic children's traditional ivory dolls like these made out of marine ivory coming from walrus or or sperm whale. Dolls like this would have been kind of old fashioned at the time that the kill bucks arrived but nonetheless, we're still circulating in society, representing kind of maybe a more distant past and something that the kill bucks were interested in and collected and sent back the same. They also collected some enigmatic objects like this, a yaw rune. This is an ivory knife, but it's not sharp at all it has no real edge to it but it is kind of knife shaped. Yaw rune like this are children's toys. And while I already mentioned one gendered object that hunting visor this too is also gender. This is an object used by young girls. This is a storytelling knife, the yaw rune are used to depict or to create pictures in the ground that a company kind of traditional stories and games. It's a very elaborate tool this ivory. This with scrimshaw etching on it this kind of knife, again shows the elaboration the sophistication of material culture, even in children's toys. This is collected. Oh, before I get on to that point. The final thing that they collected were new crafts and that's primarily what the virtual exhibit focuses on in every cultural context that it touches on what kind of new material forms resulted as a as a product of Moravian influence within indigenous communities. And there are certainly many cases of that for the you pick as well. It's not quite funny like this a letter opener. I don't know how practical a letter opener is when you don't have a postal service, but it is pretty. It is cute it's in the shape of a walrus carved out of a walrus tusk I always find that very macabre there's so much ivory carving that is in the shape of the animal it came from that always seems a little. That's macabre as I said but nonetheless this walrus shaped letter opener. This was probably exclusively made to send out of you pick communities. And this is really where we see this begin. It doesn't happen earlier in Russian influence in Alaska, but when the millions come there's a new there's kind of an explosion of new craft forms that are being created, many of which seem to be kind of souvenirs kind of kind of small trinkets or kind of non functional objects that nonetheless are symbolic of the place and people that created them and often intended to be used outside of those communities as well. There's also the silences within this material culture archive, just as our silences in any archive what what isn't being mentioned what isn't being saved, and we can think about that with the Moravian missionary collections as well. This is another carved wooden bowl that was in our collection but it's a very unique and special object. I think it's one that maybe escape the notice of the kill bucks. And speaking on the visor I said that sometimes the deeper cultural meaning was lost within a rush to talk about functionality of these objects. And I think that might be the case with this object. As you can see, modeled on the object there's a small human face it's a effigy bowl this is a small lamp oil lamp. But with this human head on it takes on a very specific ritual and spiritual significance. It seems unusual that the kill bucks would have collected this object and sent it back to home communities, given that it was an example of the paganism that they were there to eradicate. The kill bucks did not collect any other kind of sacred objects typically and did not send them back they did not collect idols they did not collect masks, they didn't collect shamanistic paraphernalia. For the most part they stuck to these other kind of ethnographic categories of objects of daily life of hunting technology of children's toys of dress and clothing of transportation of small dioramas and models. All of those kind of typical ethnographic categories but they did not collect ritual or spiritual objects. I think that this one made its way through only because they considered it simply an oil lamp and did not consider what the head on the end of it was signified. Oh, are those remnants of white paint on the harpoon and the visor on the harpoon know that's ivory that it's made out of again a lot of materials are made out of marine ivory. Visor yes it is that would have been one of these elaborations although painting that would was not terribly uncommon as demonstrated by the spoon and box as well. Thank you for your question. Right, I'm going to go back to sharing my presentation. An example of what they did not take. Shamanistic masks, you pick shaman masks are incredible works of art. Don't ask me I mean don't ask my opinion for it at least I mean ask the almighty dollar, the most expensive piece of Native American quote unquote art that was ever sold at auction was a you pick mask for two and a half million dollars. Not, oh maybe only 10 years ago now, I was a mask owned by the surrealist painter to naughty, and it was from a collection by Adam Hollis twitchel a trader who lived in in Southwestern Alaska was a contemporary of the kill bucks and twitchel collected dozens of masks. After shamanistic ceremonies, these masks could often be destroyed, rather than destroying the masks twitchel was able to convince the shamans and from what we know that it seems that this was a legitimate transaction not one done under duress, but nonetheless he collected and then ended up sending many of them to the Smithsonian and many others he sold these masks would eventually fall out of practice with the growing influence of Christianity masks like masking ceremonies and shamanistic ceremonies like this in general, we're often suppressed, not violently but certainly socially they were suppressed. It's interesting then that masks like these were not collected they were obviously quintessential examples of you pick spirituality of culture of aesthetics of deeply held beliefs of interaction between humans and the environment I mean, these are some of the most significant meaningful objects and there's no doubt that the kill bucks were very aware of these masks, however they did not collect any. In fact, as I mentioned they didn't collect really any ritual or spiritual objects. So, a very strong example of how material archives just like written archives can be prone to silences and biases within their collections flash forward to 1959 in Alaska achieved statehood and incredible events right and with this new responsibilities and obligations and opportunities for the indigenous communities living within. I'd like to show this photo after the previous one. This is approximately 40 years after the previous photo was shown. And as you can see there's still our masks circulating within the posky out communities. The posky out is a small you pick town just down the river from Bethel quite close by actually. And in this photo we see a group of you pick children wearing these paper plate masks and I like to show this image as well because it was taken by my great grandmother, my great grandmother was a Bureau of Indian school teacher within you pick communities for about 15 years, stretching the 1950s until well she was served in other Alaska communities as well but in you pick me is until the late 1960s. And I don't think my great grandmother knew anything about masking traditions I've read all her journals transcribed all her letters and she doesn't mention them at all. I don't think it was something she knew about nor really cared to learn about very much either. So I wonder if she was aware of any of the kind of historical resonance between masks and the importance within you pick communities and then this photo she took of a craft project she undoubtedly led the in. After nearly 100 years the more even influence you pick people began to recontextualize what their culture meant no longer was it simply evidence of kind of adaption to a inhospitable environment or evidence of pagan practices right it had no longer was culture cast in these Eurocentric terms or under the lens of missionaries who collected these objects but now, especially 1995 with the founding of the you pick Kariot Museum in Bethel you pick culture has gone under a kind of renaissance a revitalization of what it means to be you pick and what material culture of you pick means. In addition to that, in 2008, a you pick language school was founded in Bethel, although unfortunately in 2015 has burned to the ground, and a new school building has yet to replace it. Something that I hope that I can make contributions to as well as soon. So all of this is to give a long historical narrative about how over the course of hundreds of years Moravian people and you pick people became enmeshed with one another and how the material culture that was sent back from southwestern gives evidence to some of that context. All of this is a promotion of course for the value of object based research, how can we conduct research on these kind of objects and understand more about the people who produced them. I want to end and I know I might already be going on but I wanted to end if you'd treat me by showing an example that one of our students here at Wake Forest University conducted using some of these objects because now that they are in a museum as Eric said one of my interests in museums is to not just exhibit works, but to think about how these objects can continue to serve research purposes. Some of the research that's being conducted on these objects and I just realized I did not prep this ahead of time. So give me one minute while I pull it out of these shelves. Feel free to please talk amongst yourselves. I'm going to stop sharing as well here. Alright, I'll be right back. You know, while Andrew stepped away, one of the things that's really been fun is to realize in all the inconvenience of COVID, this kind of live show would not have been possible if we'd had a live conference in one location here we're able to share from your places where you are and actually go into Andrew's workplace and watch him and so we really appreciate this opportunity today. I like his bookshelves by the way. They're not bookshelves, they're object shelves. I like those are both shelves. There are no books on there. We might have one book on there. You and Paul have the compact shelving. I'll be all about to do this one day. Yeah, it's great. Let me just see. Okay, while we wait for Andrew to get back, I just saw a really interesting Q&A from Riddick, one of our conference presenters. And I would like to share that with all of you. So Riddick writes, thank you so much for your presentation and for showing these you pick objects and drew a comment on cultural and environmental influences on the Moravian and on children subjects. My great-grandparents Ernst and Kerry Weber where the second missionary couple in Bethel, my grandfather Christian Otto Weber was born in Bethel in 1892. We have photos of the family while they were in the States on furlough. He and his brothers are young boys dressed in traditional you pick up while their parents are wearing Victorian American clothing. My cousin still owns a kid sized snowshoe. When he started his studies at the Nazareth military school, Chris spoke you pick more fluently than English. So the historical narrative is really continuing and it's crossing over in this concert, which I find fascinating. This is a very, very interesting story. Thank you so much Riddick for sharing that. And I hear exactly what you're saying about hearing from great grandparents about their experiences in you pick communities because that was something that I very much appreciated to my great grandmother lived to be 101 years old. So I had the pleasure of knowing her for a very long time and hearing a lot of her stories there, although of course I had no idea that eventually I would be managing collections of you pick materials as part of my professional work. So the object that I wanted to share then are these you pick caribou belts. And again, this is maybe the most enigmatic objects and there's actually three of them in our collection here that were sent back. They were personally collected by the kill bucks, and I don't believe that they gave these out as gifts I believe that these were retained by the family itself until donated to the Wachovia Historical Society. It blows apart my entire theory that the you are that the kill bucks didn't collect any ritual objects because these three are certainly relate to a kind of spirituality that would be very much at odds with Moravian beliefs and practices. And yet here they are, perhaps maybe they were just so unique so special that the kill bucks decided to include them in their collections either, or perhaps as all research I just need to find more examples of the kind of things they encountered in other collections to put together a more complete picture of what there is. Any questions about that questions are there any efforts to increase our practical digs and Bethel special warming. Yes, there is. I don't know about Bethel specifically I'm not sure there is a lot at Bethel, but definitely in you pick communities at this excavation at which is on the southern coastal area below the delta that is being I believe led by the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. And they are working overtime I mean the reason that excavation is happening is because of global warming and because of the melting permafrost. That's why they're able it's kind of a rescue operation. That's why they're able to pull out these amazing wooden objects. Martha also asked what is the source for the wood. There are trees in the Arctic there is some sources of wood, and there is certainly driftwood that comes down the YK river the Yukon Cuscoquim rivers and ends up in the delta. But it is still a scarce resource, and it's still something that is definitely has a lot of value and is definitely intentionally used. I have another comment from Douglas I worked with, and was a friend of Ted and kaka linebock. Catherine Schwald was born in Akiak, Alaska 1923 to Maria the missionaries did she and her husband contribute any objects to the collection. That is a great question I will have to go through and look. As far as I know, all of these objects. Most of the objects in our provenance are actually associated with the donor, who was likely a Salem resident and likely to never never went to Alaska. Only if that donor recorded which missionary gave them the object is that known. And as far as I have in my records, the only reference missionaries are the kill box. That's something I would love to look into more. And I also know that there are other collections of you pick objects collected by meravians and other institutions. So I know that this collections by no means the only collection. I am just only thinking about the objects that made their way to Salem specifically. Thank you so much for those very interesting questions. So this caribou belt, or I guess I have an interest the object the object in question is these healing belts, they're very interesting objects and they weave together quite a bit of you could culture. They're long moose hide belts that have been stitched all along with what looks like beads, you can see that there are blue beads but as I bring it closer you'll notice that the white beads. They're not quite what you might expect. These are rows and rows of caribou tea, specifically the front incisor palette of caribou, as we all know, caribou actually only have one set of front incisors. They have no top teeth. In fact, they only have this kind of bony plate and the bottom incisors clip against that when they're munching that grass, of course as ungulates they have immense molars to grind all that grass up. But these front delicate incisors smaller than human incisors considering how big caribou are all of these are the entire front plate that gray material is the desiccated gums holding the teeth in place. They've all been stitched together on this belt. There were 202 caribou pallets stitched to this belt, representing 202 distinct animals. Every single one of those animals was hunted by a single person. This belt represents the hunting prowess of a family of a nuclear family of a male hunter, a female wife and their children. There's an interesting significance in that while all of the caribou incisors are supplied by the male hunter, the belt itself is made and worn by women. Women would use these belts in a sense, and I'm going to do a terrible justice to the metaphysics of traditional youth spirituality, so I apologize on that behalf. The hunting prowess, the skill, the manifestation of spiritual strength that is hunting is imbued in the belt, and it is added to by the spiritual strength of the woman to create kind of a composite object imbuing both male or masculine and feminine spiritual strengths. By virtue of the women wearing these belts, they imbue them with more and more energy, and when someone falls sick, gets ill, these belts are draped over the person so that the energy then flows the other way out of the belt and into the sick person to heal them. It's an amazing object, very interesting, and again, loaded with symbolism about hunting, gender roles, illness, spirituality, all kinds of amazing ideas loaded into one object. Alright, more comments. Were there more forests in the north? In some parts of Alaska, yes, there are definitely lots of forests in Alaska. In the southwestern Delta, it is a very swampy and kind of tundra-like environment. There is not a lot of tree cover, and it differs pretty significantly with the boreal forests that characterize other parts of Alaska. Andrew, you say the question about if there are any archeological digs that you know of in the Bethel area about indigenous culture? This is the site of Kinhagak, which I mentioned before, which is the excavation led by the University of Edinburgh. I don't know of any other ongoing excavations. There are some on some of the Aleutian islands a little bit farther away, but not within that YK Delta area specifically. The teeth look too tiny for a mature animal. I agree. They are the tiniest incisors, but these are from mature caribou. They definitely are. I'll talk a little bit about what we can do with that knowing that they are from mature animals and what my students did. Is it likely the kill bucks did not know that these were spiritual objects? I would say unlikely. John spoke fluent Yupik, Edith spoke Yupik as well. I would find it very unlikely that over the course of 30 to 40 years living amongst Yupik people, they would not know what these belts, which are very visible, I mean, very distinctive, what they would be used for, maybe something like a small oil lamp that has a small effigy head attached to it. That might slip through the cracks as I hypothesize, but a belt like this where it has one very specific significance of use would seem pretty unlikely for someone as knowledgeable of music culture. Great question though. I am going to share my screen one more time to finish this up. All right, everyone can share this. I hope you can see this again. Could I get a thumbs up from my panelists just to confirm that I'm sharing this accurately. Okay, thanks. So, what I want to know is how can this object be used to interpret it in time and place? What does this mean in Yupik spirituality? What does this mean about colonialism, about missionary history, about global trade, industrialization, climate change? This is where I'm so proud of my wake for students. A few years back, I had an amazing senior anthropology student who, for her senior thesis, wanted to work with some kind of object in the museum and she'd always been fascinated by the Yupik objects. She had done an internship previously and familiarized herself with our immense collections and she wanted to do something here. I encouraged her to think about how objects can tell more than kind of cultural stereotypes. They can be used for more than just like this belt is typically used in spiritual ceremonies. The exact kind of stereotype I just told you. Of course, while those are generally accurate, there's often little room for nuance or deviation or for looking at maybe more hidden histories embedded within the object. I'm proud of her when she went full into analyzing caribou teeth and she realized that caribou teeth can tell us something about climate change. So, with the help of Dr. Golden here in Winston-Salem, he's retired now, unfortunately, but he was my dentist and he was a big hunter and he would often go to Alaska to fish and hunt. I happened to, in the midst of, you know, getting my teeth cleaned. I happened to tell him about my student's project and about how she had all these caribou teeth. He was enamored and wanted to help out in any way he could. So, a week later, there we were with the belt in the dental chair getting x-rayed. Our students x-rayed every single set of these teeth looking for, what are they called? Oh, no. There's small breaks in the enamel. Enamel hypoplasia. There it is. Enamel hypoplasia, these small lines, ridges in the teeth that only appear under x-ray that show weaknesses in the enamel. But that weakness is not an injury. Rather, that weakness is because of the development of the caribou when they were very young. Enamel hypoplasias occur during periods of nutritional stress. When the animals aren't getting enough to eat, their body stops making this protective enamel on their teeth. And it has to be when they're very young, when these teeth are still developing. Sometimes even in utero. So, what we see then is in here in this belt to make literal the metaphor of an archive. We have an archive in this belt of 202 unique individuals that were all taken from roughly a 10-year period, likely in the late 19th or early 20th century. And through that immense sample, 202 individuals is a great sample in biological studies. We can look at evidence of enamel hypoplasia in individuals and compare that then to modern caribou herds, who scientists are also measuring their enamel hypoplasia as a means of measuring nutritional stress among these animals as it might relate to climate change. This is pretty important because scientists have recognized that caribou herds are suffering. Now, there is seemingly, seemingly, like I said, large incidences of enamel hypoplasia in contemporary modern herds. But what do we compare that against? Up until this point, there had been no historical control to compare modern caribou herds to. But now we have a 100-year-old sample here. And guess what? 100 years ago, one incident of enamel hypoplasia in one individual. This was a very, very healthy herd. It seems like something has changed in the past 100 years that is causing nutritional stress on caribou. And it's important to label it as climate change, because climate change deniers in Alaska have stated that maybe caribou herd health is not related to climate change. Maybe it's related to overhunting by Indigenous people. That's actually been put forward as a reason for caribou herd destruction, is mismanagement by Indigenous people. But here we have evidence of amazing hunting prowess. One individual taking 200 caribou, and not even over the course of their life. This would have been maybe over the span of like five to 10 years. And we can see there that these herds are healthy. There is no nutritional stress happening here. This is not because of overhunting. You know, this isn't hunting related at all. Yupik people have been hunting caribou since probably there were Yupik people to hunt them. And it seems then that the cause of any kind of enamel hypoplasia is occurring in the present must have generated from something that changed over the past 100 years. What could that have been? All right, so I'm going to leave it there rather than keep soap boxing about climate change. And I want to thank Eric again for introducing me and especially thank you to Orika and Grant for having me talk to everyone today. Thank you so much. Thank you Andrew Fabulous. And we got a lot of questions and I was really impressed with the skill with which you were answering the Q&A on the fly. There's a lot of other love comments there that will save for you. Fabulous presentation. It's kind of fun when somebody is excited about their work. And I think you showed that today and I appreciate that.