“Shaataahaa!” is an Anishinaabe greeting used when you see, with excitement, someone you have not seen for a long time.
Emerging from personal experiences in collections and conversations circulating among Indigenous scholars and artists “doing” collections research, this project proposes focused pilot projects for faculty and students at three sites to center Indigenous ways of communicating with and learning from “person-objects” through deep engagement/study, linking practices to language, and doing/making.
In the spring of 2018, three courses will be taught simultaneously at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, the University of Winnipeg and the Manitoba Museum, and the University of Pennsylvania. During this time, students from each site will exchange and share experiences related to their course work and findings. The courses will focus on fostering enhanced relationships between Indigenous artists, scholars and indigenous museum collections in regards to reclamation of artistic knowledge, identifying material traces of sovereignty and building relationships between museums and communities. The courses developed at each site will assist students and project collaborators in exploring pedagogical approaches to facilitate learning from person-objects (visual listening), sensory engagement (sight, touch and smell), knowledge transfer, and exploring Indigenous informed practices and protocols to collections based research.
Jessie Ryker-Crawford 
Shaataahaa planning group at the GRASAC PDG Gathering (Six Nations 2016) 
Sherry Farrell Racette
Team Members:
- Sherry Farrell Racette, Professor at the University of Regina
- Maureen Matthews, Curator at the Manitoba Museum
- Marge Bruchac, Professor at the University of Philadelphia
- Jessie Ryker-Crawford, Associate Professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts
- Mary Deleary, Visiting Professor and Gallery Coordinator at the Institute of American Indian Arts