Drawing on Museums: Early Visual Fieldnotes by Franz Boas and the Indigenous Recuperation of the Archive

In the first decade of his Northwest Coast fieldwork (1886–1897), Franz Boas made and commissioned a series of research drawings of Kwakw a k a ’wakw (Kwakiutl) objects held by museums in Berlin and elsewhere. Using them as elicitation tools, Boas added primary fieldnotes (in German, English, and Kwak'wala) directly onto them, providing a basis for his earliest publications on anthropological theory and methods as well as Kwakw a k a ’wakw art, song, and ceremony. Until recently, however, these visual fieldnotes—long relegated to the archive—have been severed from both the museum collections and Boas's foundational ethnographic research. In this essay, I discuss the drawings in the context of current collaborative efforts to document historic ethnographic materials with the Kwakw a k a ’wakw, who are recuperating such anthropological and archival resources in support of current cultural production and ceremonial revitalization. [ ethnographic methods, museums, history of anthropology, Franz Boas, Kwakw a k a ’wakw ]