Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Washinton, DC (Apr 24/00) - A growing number of First Nations people are looking to past scientific endeavours as a way to rediscover their history.

The director of the Arctic Studies Centre of the Smithsonian Institute says a recent visit by a group of Gwich'in elders (News/North, April 17) are representative of a growing trend.

Stephen Loring, museum anthropologist with the Arctic Studies Centre, enjoyed meeting the Gwich'in elders and was pleased they enjoyed the collection.

"I think the women were very pleased and delighted to see these materials because they are not that well-known," Loring said.

The Smithsonian is starting to see more and more First Nations peoples come to Washington to share in the wealth of the past, Loring said.

"A decade ago we would have seen one native visitor to 10 scientists and I would say that's definitely reversed now," Loring said. "We recognize that scientists can usually get a grant to travel to where they want to do their research, but it's hard for native people -- particularly if they are not on the science agenda."

Loring said the collection is from a period of when science was relatively new to the continent, and so was the Smithsonian.

"The secretary of the Smithsonian in the 1860s and 1870s was really interested in what we call natural history."

The secretary recruited collectors to span the continent in search of almost everything, Loring said, including samples of geology, birds, fishes, plants and animals.

"There was this heyday of scientific activity that sent these researchers all over the world but more significantly in North America to get the whole range of natural history specimens; rock samples, bugs, plants, animals -- the whole thing," he said.

"Secretary Baird contacted the Hudson's Bay Company factors in Arctic Canada to make some collections for him. And that included Indian and Inuvialuit materials," he said.

The Gwich'in materials were unique Loring said, because of their early acquisition from around the 1840s to the 1860s.

"They're very interesting because they pre-date most of the collecting fervour of the 1880s and 1890s," he said. "There are earlier things scattered here and there that a Hudson's Bay Company person might have brought back to Edinburgh or Ottawa, but what's interesting about these things is that they were the first ones that came back with documentation."

While the Smithsonian does have more elaborate pieces in the collection, Loring said the clothing is, for the most part, just regular dress.

"A lot of it is just day-to-day stuff," Loring said of the pieces. "It's not a totem pole, it's not a shaman's outfit, it's just the stuff that people were wearing.

"We would think nothing of throwing away a pair of blue jeans, so it was relatively easy to acquire these things," Loring said. "Over time, they have been transformed from the day-to-day things into these treasures that have tremendous historical and cultural significance just by the virtue of having survived this long."

He said the museum's collection also includes Gwich'in cooking utensils, hunting paraphernalia, cradles, moccasins and snowshoes.

The clothing the women were interested in replicating has specific design and adornment unique to the Gwich'in, Loring said.

"It has very fancy beadwork, but also very fancy quillwork," he said. "In the old days, before people had regular access to lots of beads, they would decorate their clothing with these panels of dyed porcupine quills that are just beautifully woven into these intricate patterns.

"They have more of a coastal look about it," he said. "The quillwork and the beadwork are very distinctive."

Specific to the articles were the red markings found on seams and around areas of the clothing, which Loring said had spiritual significance to the wearer.

"There are a lot of markings made with iron hematite -- red ochre," Loring said. "These markings were made on the joint places, like the ankles, knees and wrists.

"There has been, in the past, a very intricate knowledge that dealt with protection and spirit power that perhaps has been lost -- but maybe not," he wondered.