Dani's Day Seven Reflections

June 15th, 2016

NAGPRA/Collections/Keepers Presentation at the Penn Museum

10am-12pm

Physical Anthropologists are strange. I was not a fan of some of the ways Janet was referring to once living people. Her ability to dehumanize them was definitely off-putting, especially from a cultural anthropologist perspective where we are most interested in a person's/peoples' stories. I did enjoy the brief description of the public classrooms that Penn will be hosting in the fall surrounding race and physical anthropology. I think, if done correctly, public classrooms could be an effedctive way museums could better translate their materials for public consumption. Learning about NAGPRA was pretty interesting. I was a little turned off my the Act's ability to decline claims made by Native American groups if they're lacking specific documentation. If we think back to the time that many of these artifacts were taken, I can imagine it being pretty difficult to find documentation that something belongs to you or your community. I was also disturbed by the fact that none of these rules apply to private collections. I'm interested in seeing how Native American groups push to make the Act more comprehensive.


The tour of the storage rooms was mostly interesting because the "agreement" between Penn and PMA was brought up.

Travel/Lunch

1:30pm- 3pm

I returned to my apartment to eat

Journal

3pm-4:30pm

I caught up on my journals.