Objects as Curricula: rethinking the capacities and affects of Blackfoot material artefacts

The late Frank Weasel Head, a Blackfoot Elder, observed of Blackfoot artefacts held in museum collections worldwide that these were not merely objects, but curricula. This paper will discuss the Mootookakio’ssin/Distant Awareness project, which brings together Indigenous and Non-Indigenous artists, museum professionals, archaeologists and anthropologists, led by Blackfoot ceremonial leaders, which has made digital captures of Blackfoot items in UK museum collections (Clark et. al. 2022; Minkin et. al. 2022). This paper asks what capacities were supported and permitted by the process of digital imaging, and what is the effect of considering material artefacts as curricula?

Over the last twenty years or more, material culture studies have become an intellectual battleground, with competing accounts of the proper way to study material artefacts debated; from symmetrical archaeology and object oriented ontology, to new materialism. All of these accounts have been influenced by metaphysics, while some of them have also been influenced by, often unacknowledged, Indigenous accounts (see e.g., Todd 2016). Rather than merely giving Indigenous accounts lip service, this paper asks what happens when we take Indigenous philosophies seriously? How does this guide our practices and interpretations? What capacities do digital models have to teach us?

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