Naamiwan's Drum follows the story of a famous Ojibwe medicine man, his gifted grandson, and remarkable water drum. This drum, and forty other artefacts, were given away by a Canadian museum to an American Anishinaabe group that had no family or community connections to the collection. Many years passed before the drum was returned to the family and only about half of the artefacts were ever returned to the museum.

Maureen Matthews takes us through this astonishing set of events from multiple perspectives, exploring community and museum viewpoints, visiting the ceremonial group leader in Wisconsin, and finally looking back from the point of view of the drum. The book contains a powerful Anishinaabe interpretive perspective on repatriation and on anthropology itself. Containing fourteen beautiful colour illustrations, Naamiwan's Drum is a compelling account of repatriation as well as a cautionary tale for museum professionals.

"Naamiwan's Drum is a highly rewarding read. Maureen Matthews tells a very compelling, well-grounded and beautifully written story. This is a subtle, rich and complex first-rate investigation of repatriation that raises concerns about the agency of objects, their makers and users." -- Janet Catherine Berlo, Department of Art and Art History, University of Rochester "Naamiwan's Drum advances our understanding of a number of important topics including repatriation, Anishanaabeg language use, anthropology and material cultural studies." -- Susan Rowley, Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia and Curator of Public Archaeology, Museum of Anthropology "Maureen Matthews' work is a major contribution to the field. It is rare to find someone who can successfully bridge linguistics, anthropological literature, museums and storytelling." -- Gwyneira Isaac, Curator of North American Ethnology in the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution

About the Author
Maureen Matthews is Curator of Ethnology at the Manitoba Museum as well as an adjunct professor at the University of Manitoba.

Reviews

'What this book does excellently is to uncover in subtle ways how objects are actors in the drama of repatriation whether one takes First Nations perspective or not.'

-- Max Carocci * Transmotion Journal vol 4:01:2018 *

'This work will no doubt become a standard by which repatriation and perhaps even cultural and community studies are judged.'

-- Patricia Harms * The Canadian Journal of Native Studies vol 37:02:2017 *


Awards
Winner of Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction awarded by the Manitoba Book Awards 2017 (Canada). Short-listed for Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book awarded by the Manitoba Book Awards 2017 (Canada) and John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer awarded by the Manitoba Book Awards 2017 (Canada) and McNally Robinson Book of the Year awarded by the Manitoba Book Awards 2017 (Canada).



Book Information
ISBN 9781442628267
Author Maureen Matthews
Format Paperback
Page Count 356
Imprint University of Toronto Press
Publisher University of Toronto Press
Weight(grams) 620g
Dimensions(mm) 254mm * 178mm * 23mm