Due to unforeseen circumstances, the museum is closed today. We regret any inconvenience.
Closed Today
Due to unforeseen circumstances, the museum is closed today. We regret any inconvenience.
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Learn MoreAugust 10 - December 23, 2022
In Northwest Ambulatory
August 10 - December 23, 2022
In Northwest Ambulatory
This installation reconstructs the differing institutional journeys taken by two pairs of moccasins, made by unrecorded Native artisans of the Great Plains, after their arrival in Oberlin. Both were once part of a campus natural history museum focused on fossils, minerals, and other specimens. But in 1957 one pair was accessioned into the AMAM and the other was left, with hundreds of other ethnographic items, without formal institutional oversight. Tracing the moccasins' histories here centers Indigenous cultural items at Oberlin: the complicated histories of how Oberlin came to possess them and how we as a campus community can grapple with their future stewardship.
Curator of Academic Programs
Associate Professor of Anthropology
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