Strands which refuse to be braided: hair samples from Beatrice Blackwood’s Collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum

Journal article

This article concerns hair samples collected in 1925 in the Ojibwe community of Red Lake, Minnesota, USA, now in the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. It outlines the process of consultation with community members and of the discovery of the historical context and meanings surrounding the hair. These meanings are emotive because of the conjuncture of Ojibwe beliefs about hair with the history of the cutting and analysis of hair by Whites as part of attempts to control Ojibwe people in various ways. The article also explores the implications of current theory about material culture which sees artefacts as points of contact between peoples, and which focuses on tracing the movements and shifting meanings of artefacts as a way of understanding the relations between the peoples involved.

Authors: Peers, L

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Sage
• Journal: Journal of Material Culture
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 75-96
• Publication date: 2003-03-01
• DOI: 10.1177/1359183503008001763
• EISSN: 1460-3586
• ISSN: 1359-1835
• Language: English
• Keywords: hair; source communities; museum anthropology
• Subjects: Material anthropology; Indigenous peoples