Collection: Directories and Documents > Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection

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Title: Abalone Tales by Les Field Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection # of Pages: 6 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2024-09-03 15:38:39 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 03:11:35 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 03:11:35

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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destroyed—or a romantic antiquarian nostalgia for a pristine Ohlone past,JAll cultural identities change, transform, and mutate over time, and all cultural identities are historically constructed. Yet in the case of .. [California Native peoples, such as the Ohlones, the two hands of anthropological practice and federal policy working together greatly complicate attempts to understand pre-contact identities. In that light, and given the widespread use of abalone-shell iconography, the identities of those who created the necklaces in von Langsdorffs engraving become ever more elusive. But let us entertain another possibility based on Bates's analysis and the historical time depth provided by Gifford—that is, that the existence of shared materials, iconographies, and symbols by many peoples across a wide area of what is now California resonates with other such sharings across the continent. Pottery techniques, materials, and iconographies, not to mention architectural forms and design, have historically been shared, and are still shared, among peoples who speak vastly different languages, such as the peoples who are known collectively as “the Pueblos.” A broadly configured material culture related to hunting and processing buffalo was historically shared among the “Plains Indians,” a heterogeneous mix of peoples who spoke many different languages. One could cite other relevant examples, such as “Pacific Northwest art” and, closer at hand in California, categories of material culture such as “Pomo basketry,” across linguistic and geographic boundaries. The point is that these categories of shared culture, as elucidated by anthropologists, federal and state governments, popular media, and, indeed, Native peoples themselves, are not considered inimical to the tribal sovereignty of the many particular peoples who find themselves classified under each different category, such as “Pueblo” or “Plains.” There are in each case specific histories of treaty-making and conflict that shape the acknowledgment status of each tribe, such that these shared artistic and material heritages do not affect or hinge on that status. The need for or claim toa particular patrimony, such as the von Langsdorff necklaces, becomes especially important for unacknowledged tribes, such as the Muwekma Ohlone, on whom the onus of showing a continuous and specific history is laid to obtain official status. I came to that realization after talking to friends among the Gay Head Wampanoag (Massachusetts), whose tribe had achieved federal recognition at the same time its cousins at Mashpee 36 Artifact, Narrative, Genocide had not. Our conversations focused on the role the Gay Headers’ rich material culture and better-documented oral traditions had played in their successful petition. But the ways these factors play into federal acknowledgment are hardly a secret in Indian country. If the issue of continuous patrimony is put into the context of broadly shared material cultures across the continent, it might be possible to understand sovereignty as the necessary condition for substantiating heritage and patrimony rather than burdening unacknowledged tribes with identifying a patrimony as a way of legitimating their history, and thus their case for sovereignty. In this case, ruptures in the continuity of material culture, and the loss of knowledge about cultural patrimony such as those I have discussed with respect to old abalone necklaces, are not threatening. Rather, they highlight the opportunities for research and interpretation recognized status would afford a people such as the Muwekma Ohlone. To argue this point in the face of BAR/BIA regulations and review processes clearly would be an uphill battle. It would be better to confront these issues directly, however, rather than let the silences undermine acknowledgment cases, as I believe they have done, at least, with the Muwekma and other unrecognized tribes in California. But such opportunities themselves await a discussion of other problems that attend the interpretation of objects made by Native peoples. Animation, Sentience, Agency An additional complicating factor to this story became clear to me as I looked at more and more abalone necklaces and talked about them with Native people up and down the California coast. About this “wrinkle” I cannot write in any sort of authoritative way. Although I can perceive that profound discontinuities between Native and non-Native views of and beliefs about objects such as abalone necklaces exist, about the former I do not and cannot have an insider view. My emphasis on the primacy of the Native view in these matters derives from my own grappling not only with the meanings of Native sovereignty over representation (see Field 2003), but also with the recognition of the inadequacy of many scholarly approaches to sacred objects and places and their tendency to silence Native interpretations. The growing field of ethnoaesthetics offers interpretation of objects that does Muwekma Ohlone Cultural Patrimony 37