Mediating knowledges : origins of a Zuni tribal museum /

This critical ethnography is based on in-depth fieldwork conducted between 1997 and the present at the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center at Zuni Pueblo. Anthropologist Isaac (Arizona State Univ.) uses knowledge systems theory combined with interviews, arrival records, and participant observations to examine how the Zuni conceived and developed a museum to construct a culturally relevant public institution to maintain their heritage for future generations, while examining how cultural knowledge is generated, transmitted, mediated, and presented within the contexts of Zuni and Anglo-American values of history and culture. Traditionally, Zuni history and cultural knowledge is acquired orally and by initiation into religious societies. In contrast, the museum, originally founded on Anglo-American museum practices, circulates knowledge beyond the control of its original sources, Zuni priests. Isaac details how museum staff developed specific mediating strategies to use, maintain, and control cultural knowledge within both Zuni society and the non-Zuni world. Essentially, the work is about the struggles and contradictions the Zuni face in seeking cultural sovereignty through the redistribution of knowledge use and control. Ethnologists, museum, and heritage professionals will find an insightful ethnography filled with issues for contemplation and debate. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. G. R. Campbell University of Montana