In the Archives with Shan Goshorn
Gina Rappaport and Heather A. Shannon
The contemporary historian has to establish the value of the study of the past, not as an end in itself, but as a way of providing perspectives on the present that contribute to the solution of problems peculiar to our own time.1
On October 22, 2013, Shan Goshorn emailed a number of Smithsonian Institution employees to thank them for facilitating her research during the first part of her Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (SARF). We were among the recipients: Gina, the photo archivist at the National Anthropological Archives (NAA), and Heather, then the photo archivist at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) Archive Center. Shan returned to Tulsa, she wrote, with her “brain so full of information and ideas” that she had only just settled in to make baskets “motivated by [her] research” at the Smithsonian. She looked forward to returning to Washington, DC, to complete her fellowship and to show the new work to the Smithsonian archives and collections staff who had gone “out of the[ir] way to inspire” her research. She signed off: “In the belief of who we are, Shan.”2 In the belief of who we are. These words, so generously written, included rather than implicated us in a difficult shared history, and they made us part of Shan’s remedy—her solution—to the problems peculiar to our own time. She invited us to consider and feel with her the history, represented by archival records, of violence and oppression perpetrated against indigenous Americans. These same records, Shan made clear, also offered evidence of Native resistance, determination, and resilience. Shan gathered facts and information from a perspective fully alive to the implications of archival data. We watched her engage with the materials in the NAA and the NMAI archives on intellectual, emotional, and critical levels. These responses confirmed our own convictions that archival practice with respect to indigenous peoples is not just inadequate—it is problematic. Like the historian, Shan uses primary sources to reconstruct the past; however, the histories Shan tells are experienced rather than read. Resisting the Mission; Filling the Silence, a series of seven pairs of baskets (fig. 1), embodies Shan’s ability to reconfigure archives and their narrative potentials into a history to be experienced by the viewer. John Choate’s before-and-after photographs of Carlisle Indian School students serve as the source imagery of the baskets (figs. 2, 3). Richard Pratt, founder and superintendent of the school, commissioned the photographs to demonstrate the success of the institution’s mission to assimilate and acculturate Native children. The baskets confront us with the human cost—past and present—of Pratt’s notorious undertaking. The baskets also reveal to us the ways in which archival practices mediate access to collections and shape interpretation. Archival protocols, for example, dictate that researchers keep collection materials flat on the table, giving the researcher little choice but to understand
OPPOSITE
1. Shan Goshorn, Four Pueblo Children (Before/ After). One of seven pairs of baskets from Resisting the Mission; Filling the Silence, 2017. Archival inks, acrylic paint on paper, polyester sinew. Artist’s collection. A B OV E TO P
2. John N. Choate, Four Pueblo Children (Tsai au-tit-sa, Mary Ealy; Jan-i-uh-tit sa, Jennie Hammaker, Teai-e-seu-lu-ti-wa; Frank Cushing; Tra-wa-ea-tsa-lun-kia, Taylor Ealy) From Zuni, NM upon their arrival at Carlisle, ca. 1880. Albumen print. Cumberland County Historical Society, Carlisle, PA, PA-CH1-044a. A B OV E B OT TO M
3. John N. Choate, Four Pueblo Children (Teai-e-se-ulu-ti-wa, Frank Cushing; Tra-wa-ea-tsa-lun-kia, Taylor Ealy; Tsai au-tit-sa, Mary Ealy; Jan-i-uh-tit sa, Jennie Hammaker) From Zuni, NM, after several months at Carlisle, ca. 1880. Albumen print. Cumberland County Historical Society, Carlisle, PA, PA-CH1-033a.
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