GRASAC is excited to share the news that the 2024 Council for Museum Anthropology (CMA) Michael M. Ames Prize for Innovative Museum Anthropology is awarded to the exhibition project Mnaajtood ge Mnaadendaan: Miigwewinan Michi Saagiig Kwewag Miinegoowin Gimaans Zhaganaash Aki 1860 / To Honour and Respect: Gifts from the Michi Saagiig Women to the Prince of Wales, 1860. The project researches and displays baskets made by women at what is now Hiawatha First Nation in Ontario and gifted to the Prince of Wales in 1860. The exhibition enables Michi Saagiig community members to reconnect with their ancestors and visit their creations.
Congratulations to the co-curators Lori Beavis and Laura Peers as well as the Hiawatha First Nation community and Planning Circle members who have made the project possible.
Images courtesy of Lori Beavis.
Statement from Co-Curator Lori Beavis
This award means so much to Laura Peers and I, and to the To Honour and Respect team. We are very appreciative of the work that the group did in bringing this exhibition together. We need to thank our Planning Circle: Chief Laurie Carr, Sandra Moore, Kim Muskratt, Veronica King-Jamieson, Chadwick Cowie, Susan Neale, Kim Muskrat, Tom Cowie, and Susan Neale from the Peterborough Museum and Archives. Chi Miigwech to Royal Collection Trust, Peterborough Museum & Archives and our funders for making this work possible! The To Honour and Respect exhibition project began in 2016 when I visited the Swiss Cottage Museum on the Isle of Wight, led there by an article by Ruth Phillips. Ruth had written about quillwork baskets created and given as gifts by the women at Rice Lake village, now Hiawatha First Nation, to the Prince of Wales on the first royal tour of what is now called Canada in 1860. The project became a reality when, through the auspices of Cara Krmpotich and GRASAC, Laura Peers and I began working together in 2018.