Scope and Contents: This collection consists of twenty-one audiovisual recordings of interviews conducted by University College London doctoral candidate in Anthropology, Fiona McDonald, during her tenure as a Sealaska Heritage Institute Visiting Scholar from June to November 2010. McDonald’s academic research project in 2010 was entitled “Charting Material Memories: an Ethnography of Visual and Material Responses to Woollen Trade Blankets in the Pacific Northwest of North America and Aotearoa/New Zealand.” The project’s emphasis was grounded material anthropology with research focusing on the cultural significance of button robes/blankets in the Southeast Native Alaskan cultures and the Maori culture of New Zealand.
While a Sealaska Visiting Scholar McDonald interviewed primarily Tlingit individuals who make, wear, or possess Tlingit button robes. The interviewees provided information concerning the importance of button robes as At.oow, worn as regalia at a ku.éex, or potlatch, and at cultural events or celebrations. The interviewees also provide a history of how the robes generally, or specifically, came into being, such as who made their robe, for what purpose and the process by which the robes are made a cultural piece. A dialog on what constitutes these robes as cultural objects or art is partially addressed in the interviews.
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