For Our Future Generations: Bringing Karuk Baskets Back Home

Folklore Roundtable 2018

Professor Carolyn Smith Lecture
Wednesday October 17, 2018
4:30 PM
221 Kroeber Hall, Gifford Room
UC Berkeley

"This presentation explores Karuk Tribe efforts of bringing baskets back home through repatriation. I focus on the historical and contemporary narratives of Karuk engagements with museums and anthropologists, which have shaped the western definitions of Karuk baskets. Countering the categories of "utilitarian/ceremonial" vs. "made for trade" baskets, I illustrate how baskets are considered social beings—belongings—that “cry out” to be back where they came from. Finally, I describe what it means to weave pikyav (to-fix-it) and how this responsibility energizes Karuk dedication to bring baskets and other belongings back home."

Carolyn Smith (Karuk) is a Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California,
Berkeley in the Department of Ethnic Studies, where she is continuing her research on the
interconnections of the ontology of basketry, museum practice, and repatriation.

Sponsored by the Berkeley Folklore Graduate Program
ucbfolklore@berkeley.edu