Collins, Jayme. “The Place of Objects.” Archival Ecologies, season 1, episode 3, 30 May 2024. 48:17.
Archival Ecologies investigates how fires, floods, mold blooms, and other ecological events are affecting cultural collections and the artifacts and memories they preserve.
During the 2021 summer heatwave in the Pacific Northwest, the historic town of Lytton, BC, and nearby First Nations reserves suffered a catastrophic wildfire that took local archives, museums, and cultural collections with it. In this first season of Archival Ecologies, we’ll tell the stories of those collections and the communities who have stewarded them.
The podcast is created and hosted by Jayme Collins with research, writing, and production support from Jamie Rodriguez, Kavya Kamath, and Molly Taylor. Music by Hamilton Poe. Sincere thanks to Kouvenda Media for their partnership on this project. A production of Blue Lab with support from Princeton University.
Nlaka’pamux knowledge keeper John Haugen describes baskets the Lytton First Nation Community lost during the 2021 wildfire and discusses the role of basketry in the community. The meaning and the making of baskets in the community draws together food systems, local ecological knowledge, colonial land and resource use disruptions, and the circulation of baskets and other First Nations cultural material during colonization, when baskets circulated as economic goods and as cultural artifacts destined for museums across the globe. For John, the recovery of baskets in the community hinges on the repatriation of baskets and on the creation of a local community center for showing baskets and teaching basket making knowledge, fostering a new generation of basket makers in the community.
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