« Those Artifacts Have Their Own Language »
In this paper, I consider the relationship between a museum curator and a Plains Cree ceremonialist in reference to anthropological scholarship concerned with state ownership of indigenous sacred and ceremonial materials in museum collections. I argue that indigenous relations with sacred and ceremonial items necessarily sit outside of the categories of ownership on which the state depends, and show that unsettling the assumption that there is a single, pre-existing cosmos draws into question what is at stake in ownership claims. Rather than being concerned with the legal property rights, these claims make apparent that what constitutes ethical relations between museums and indigenous peoples depends on the recognition of different worlds.