In a cavernous Smithsonian Institution workshop, a team of imaging experts laser scans a small, hand-carved cedar hat. It was crafted more than 140 years ago from a solid piece of wood and depicts a bear with large copper eyes. In a few hours, the experts will have a videoconference with members of the Haida Nation in British Columbia to go over the progress they’ve made on their collaborative goal: creating a digital three-dimensional model of this clan crest hat, an object of significant cultural importance for the Haida.
The project is the latest in a series of similar partnerships between the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and Indigenous North American groups. Eric Hollinger, tribal liaison at NMNH’s repatriation office, says such groups are increasingly turning to 3-D technology to document and even replicate their cultural objects. “We want to be clear this is not in lieu of repatriation,” the legally mandated return of eligible original objects and Indigenous human remains from museums, Hollinger says. Instead the goal of this work is to help safeguard the legacy of fragile items by creating digital models for preservation and education, as well as physical replicas that can be displayed or even used in ceremonies when originals cannot.
These collaborations started in 2007, when the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, the Delaware Nation and the Delaware Tribe of Indians asked NMNH to 3-D print copies of a 17th-century pewter tobacco pipe that the museum was preparing to repatriate. Because cultural strictures required the reburial of the original pipe—a funerary object—tribal officials requested three replicas that could be used to educate people about the pipe’s history and the repatriation. Hollinger worked with the Smithsonian’s Digitization Program Office (DPO) to 3-D print the pipe replicas with silica. Although NMNH had been using 3-D…
