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IROQUOIS 71 broadly chronological framework spanning centuries, contemporary paintings, sculptures, and installations supply a poignant running commentary on the past as seen from an Iroquois present. The story of the Iroquois as told in this exhibition is not a romantic footnote to American history but rather a chapter from the history of globalization and its associated phenomena. These include global streams of migration making indigenous peoples strangers in their own land; the competitive exchange of goods and ideas governed by distant markets and ideological concerns but affecting local populations and their ways of life; and the clash of widely different views about how the world is and should be organized. Iroquois origins are primarily represented in the show in terms of the well-known myth of Sky Woman, who was thrust from heaven and landed on “Turtle Island.” By the eighteenth century at the latest, it was necessary for the Iroquois to adapt this myth to account for the previously unknown White and Black people, just as Europeans were frantically paging through the Bible to find evidence for the Adamic descent of the indigenous peoples encountered in the Americas. To deal with such differences in worldview and lifestyle, contemporary Iroquois refer to the “two-row” wampum belt: Just as the two purple lines of the belt run parallel on the white background, the Iroquois and the non-Iroquois should be walking on “different but mutually respectful” paths. This introduction is followed by a section titled “Foundations of Existence,” which focuses on subsistence activities and the Iroquois’ dealings both with other members of their communities and with the powerful nonhuman beings of this world. The prevailing division of labor by gender resulted in the articulation of distinctive female and male spheres that were FIG. 10: Horse effigy comb. Seneca, Victor, Ontario County, New York. C. 1670–1687. Moose or elk antler. H: 10.8 cm. Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY, cat. no. T0024 (Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Collection). FIG. 11: Wampum belt. Iroquois(?), before 1656. White and purple shell beads, vegetable fibers. 41.2 x 4.2 cm. Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, cat. no. 1886.1.833 (Ashmolean Museum collection, formerly John Tradescant Collection). FIG. 12: Imitation wampum pouch. Iroquois (attributed). Second half of 18th century. Glass beads (imitation wampum), leather, metal, deer hair. H (with strap): 84 cm. Kunstkamera—Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, cat. no. 1901-6.


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