UC Davis, An Open Digital Global South

1. Decolonizing Listening Practice in the Ethnomusicological Archive
An Open Digital South – Risks and Rewards
University of California, Davis, May 24-25, 2017
Aaron A. Fox
Center for Ethnomusicology
Columbia University
New York, NY
aaf19@columbia.edu
ethnocenter.org
Inquiries always welcome

2. Acknowledging and Thanking:
The Patwin People on Whose Lands We Meet
The US National Science Foundation
Columbia University
Institutions, elders, and collaborators from the Iñupiaq,
Hopi, Diné, Ts’msyen Communities
Chie Sakakibara (Oberlin College); Trevor Reed (Columbia
University): Robin Gray (UC Santa Cruz)
The conference organizers for inviting me, and you for
listening.

3. In memory of Myrtle Akootchook, lead
dancer, The Barrow Dancers
1936-2017

4. Laura C. Boulton
1899-1980
- Traveled the world collecting music from the early 1930s
through the 1960s
- Made significant collections of Native American and
other indigenous musics, including extensive recordings
of Navajo (1933, 1940) and Inuit (“Eskimo”) songs (1942,
1946)
-- Published numerous commercial recordings and a
fascinating 1968 autobiography (The Music Hunter), but
her career remains remarkably undocumented
- curated her own collection at Columbia Univ. from
1965-1973
- Sold her collection to the University (exact contents of
sale disputed); sale not finalized until early 1970s, with
many issues of ownership and rights never resolved
- Her field recording practice had a “drive by” character,
and she always worked through interpreters and with the
support (and often protection) of powerful colonial or
military figures
- She was reasonably careful to record the names of
singers, though often incorrectly transcribed; she did
work with performers to translate songs and gather
contextual information, reports being close to some
consultants

7. Allison Akootchook Warden
(Aku-Matu), Iñupiaq
Performance Artist and Rapper,
Anchorage and Kaktovic, Alaska.
Performing at “Native Sounds, North
and South,” Oct. 1, 2010, New
York City

8. Warren Matumeak, elder and
renowned expert on Iñupiaq music
and dance, signs a drum for an
admirer, 2008.

9. Aaron with Mae Ahgeak’s kindergarten Iñupiaq language immersion class.

10. Bertha and Mary Lou Leavitt, elders, identifying figures in photographs

14. “…. Collecting institutions’ core commitment to access predicated upon
openness to the public severely limits the possibility of seeing indigenous claims
as alternative types of openness (access differently conceived). Oftentimes in
these situations, indigenous systems of information management are defined as
“cultural values” or “tradition.” In either case, while collecting institutions may
be sympathetic to these “concerns,” they do not see them in the same semantic
light as the assumed universal claims on which their assertions of a uniform
typology for access are based.
Kimberly Christen
“Opening Archives: Respectful Repatriation”
The American Archivist 74 (Spring/Summer 2011)

15. John Berger, Ways of Seeing,
(1972 Penguin Books)

16. Dr. Robin R. R. Gray
Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow
History
University of California, Santa Cruz

18. • Aaron Fox’s recent papers (write for copies):
• 2017 “The Archive of the Archive: The Secret
History of the Laura Boulton Collection.” The
Routledge Cultural Property Reader, Jane
Anderson and Haidy Geismar, editors.
•
2014 “Repatriation as Re-Animation Through
Reciprocity.” The Cambridge History of World
Music: Vol. 1 (North America), P. Bohlman, ed.,
Cambridge University Press

19. Century of Progress Exposition 1933 – “Indian Village”

23. QUYANAQPAK!
Thank You Very Much For Listening!
Write to aaf19@columbia.edu with any inquiries!