The Native Collector

Abstract

Louis Situwuka Shotridge (c1882-1937), a high-born Tlingit from Kluckwan, Alaska, collected Northwest Coast Native artifacts for the University of Pennsylvania Museum at Philadelphia for a period of 17 years. As proxy for both Nativeness and white cultural institutions, Shotridge enacted performances which were variously commensurable with, and `othered' from, each other. Compelled to mimic a subjectivity located within an imaginary semiotic of Ancient Tradition, Shotridge's performances of Nativeness benefited the Museum's epistemological authorities, at the same time as they facilitated their success in the anthropological trade. And yet Shotridge also succeeded in arrogating to himself - through the roles of collector, assistant curator and field ethnographer - cultural capital which approximated that of elite Anglo-Americans. Through an analysis of his letters, field notes, selected newspaper accounts and other biographical information, this paper explores the conflicting and collusive relations involved in Shotridge's role of `Native collector'.