Cara Krmpotich

Professor Krmpotich partners with the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, Profs Lynne Howarth and Heather Howard, a team of student researchers and a group of Cree and Anishinaabe seniors on a program called “Memory, Meaning-Making and Collections.” The program provides support to urban aboriginal seniors pursuing their interests in material heritage and cultural histories through artifact handling, heritage site and museum visits, talking circles and crafting opportunities. During its first two years, the program received funding from SSHRC and Canadian Heritage.

With Silvia Forni of the Royal Ontario Museum, and Ciraj Rassool of the University of the Western Cape, she leads a research group spanning Toronto and Cape Town, South Africa that explores the life cycle of political activism in museums. The group includes students, faculty, museum staff and cultural sector staff whose research interests include museums in Nagaland, human rights museology, indigenous museology, food in museums, immigration and multiculturalism, African art histories, and museums as sites of/for political action, among many others.

Professor Krmpotich continues to draw upon and value the relationship with the Haida Repatriation Committee that grew from her doctoral and post-doctoral research. That relationship continues in the form of co-authored publications and presentations on the meanings and values of Haida repatriation, and the place of museums in supporting repatriation.

Museum Studies (MMSt)

museum and indigenous relations; repatriation; collections management; memory; material culture; kinship

Cara Krmpotich. The Force Of Family: Repatriation, Kinship and Memory on Haida Gwaii. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014.

—, Laura Peers, Members of the Haida Repatriation Committee, Staff of the Pitt Rivers Museum and Staff of the British Museum. This Is Our Life: Haida Material Heritage and Changing Museum Practice. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013.

Krmpotich, Cara and Alexander Somerville. “Affective Presence: the Metonymical Catalogue.” Museum Anthropology 39.2 (2016): 178-191.

—, Heather Howard and Emma Knight. “From Collection to Community to Collections Again: Urban Indigenous Women, Material Culture and Belonging.” Journal of Material Culture 21.3 (2016): 343-365.

—. “Teaching Collections Management Anthropologically.” Museum Anthropology 38.2 (2015): 112-122.

—. 2012. “Post-Colonial or Pre-Colonial: Indigenous Values and Repatriation.” In Anthropologists, Indigenous Scholars and the Research Encounter, J Hendry and L Fitnor, eds. London, New York: Routledge, 2012: 162-170.

Filipucci, Paola, John Harries, Joost Fontein and Cara Krmpotich. “Encountering The Past: Unearthing Remnants Of Humans In Archaeology And Anthropology.” In Archaeology and Anthropology: Past, Present and Future, D. Shankland, ed. New York, Oxford: Berg, 2012: 197-217.

Doctoral Sandrena Raymond, in progress. “The Vibrant Matter of the Artist- House-Collection Assemblage.”

Hillary Walker Gaugin, in progress. “Curating a Personality: Henry Davis Sleeper and the Material Culture within Beauport House.”

Hannah Turner, 2015. “Information Infrastructures in the Museum: Documenting, Digitizing and Practicing Ethnographic Objects in the Smithsonian’s Department of Anthropology.” SSHRC Doctoral and Post-Doctoral Award Recipient.

Committee Member:

Heather Read, 2014. “Earthenwhere: Intersections Between Place and Pottery in the Lives of Newfoundland and Southern New Zealand Ceramic Artists.” OISE. SSHRC Doctoral Award Recipient.

Lindsay Small, in progress. Master of Museum Studies. “Space Museums: Technical and Cultural Considerations.”

Emily Meikle, 2016. Master of Museum Studies. “Artifacts on Air: Cultural coherence and remote access in Indigenous collections.”

Mary Simonds, 2016. Master of Museum Studies. “Becoming Antiquities: How Museum Artifacts Gain Educational and Heritage Value.” SSHRC CGS Recipient.

Maryanne Small, 2016. Master of Information, U of T. “Examining Relationships Between Heritage Management and Heritage Information within Enoch Turner Schoolhouse.”

Olivia Sellier, 2015. Master of Environmental Science, York U. “Building Capacity for Collaboration, Bridging Nature and Culture at the Canadian Museum of Nature.” [co-supervisor]

Emma Knight, 2013. U of T. “The Kwakwaka’wakw Potlatch Collection and Its Many Social Contexts: Constructing A Collection’s Object Biography.” SSHRC CGS Recipient.

Gabby Resch, 2013. Master of Information, U of T. “Vision-based Augmented Reality for Formal and Informal Science Learning.”

MSL 1150        Collection Management

MSL 2360        Museums and Indigenous Relations

MSL 2370        Museums and Cultural Heritage: Context and Critical Issues

ANT 372          Cultural Property

VIC 225            A History of the World in Objects

Associate, Victoria College