Holly Cusack-McVeigh

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https://hdl.handle.net/1805/25232

RECOVERING THE PAST: A Collaborative Approach to Recovery and Repatriation

Dr. Holly Cusack-McVeigh’s research on the antiquities trade, looting, repatriation and collaborative efforts has generated new knowledge and utilized scholarly evidence to develop a practice that redefines how law enforcement deals with the sensitive area of repatriating Indigenous ancestral remains and cultural heritage worldwide. Dr. Cusack-McVeigh conducts provenience research and serves as a liaison between the US Government and Indigenous groups around the world. Her work is centered in a collaborative approach that encourages regular and ongoing cross disciplinary exchange with Indigenous community members, government agencies, scholars and content experts around the world. Her cross disciplinary translational research aligns with the goals and core values of the IUPUI Anthropology Department and Museum Studies Program. As an educator, her research strongly influences the way in which she teaches her students to be civically engaged through applied learning. Her students receive real-world experience in the anthropological field and learn the importance of strong leadership that integrates a collaborative and inclusive approach to cultural heritage.

In 2017 following an emotional reburial of ancestral remains at South Dakota’s Crow Creek Sioux Reservation, an Arikara elder stated that “many of the elders were hesitant about involving the FBI and University because of our past history with these agencies, but we found these people to be respectful and accommodating.” The Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota concluded his remarks saying “the tribes and non-Natives have come a long way in respectfully learning from each other.”

Dr. Cusack-McVeigh’s work to facilitate meaningful collaborations between community, government and academic institutions in issues of voice and representation is another great example of how IUPUI’s faculty members are TRANSLATING their RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.

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A POISONED PAST AND CONTAMINATED PRESENT: Challenges for Indigenous Communities Bringing their Cultural Heritage Home
(Center for Translating Research Into Practice, IU Indianapolis, 2023-10-12) Cusack-McVeigh, Holly
The 2023 Bantz-Petronio Translating Research into Practice Faculty Award recipient is Holly Cusack-McVeigh, Ph.D. Dr. Cusack-McVeigh is an associate professor of Anthropology and Museum Studies and Public Scholar of Collections and Community Curation in the IU School of Liberal Arts with an appointment in the Native American & Indigenous Studies Program. Her scholarly research is deeply grounded in social justice and centered in an interdisciplinary, community-based collaborative approach to address real-world issues. The goal of her translational research is to forge connections and foster lasting community partnerships that bring about greater cultural understanding and social change in local, national, and international communities. Dr. Cusack-McVeigh and her research team work on toxic museum collections and the repatriation of Indigenous cultural heritage artifacts.
Recovering the Past: A Collaborative Approach to Repatriation and Social Justice
(Center for Translating Research Into Practice, IU Indianapolis, 2021-11-12) Cusack-McVeigh, Holly
In this presentation, Professor Holly Cusack-McVeigh tells the story of an FBI investigation that resulted in its largest single recovery of illegally looted cultural objects - and how she and her students are participating in the repatriation of thousands of these stolen objects.
A Random Walk to Public Scholarship: Exploring Our Convergent Paths | Public
(2014) Holzman, Laura M.; Wood, Elizabeth; Cusack-McVeigh, Holly; Kryder-Reid, Elizabeth; Labode, Modupe; Zimmerman, Larry J
Preface. My First Day in Hooper: A Cautionary Tale for the Anthropologist
(University of Utah Press, 2017) Cusack-McVeigh, Holly
Grounded in existing understandings of Yup’ik cosmology and worldview, this work is the first to look at how a Yup’ik community uses stories of place in social life. On the Bering coast of southwest Alaska, Cusack-McVeigh accompanied storytellers during their daily activities. Hearing many narratives repeatedly over a span of years, she came to understand how stories reflected interactions of people and places. For the Yup’ik people, places are also social actors that react to human actions and emotions. Stories tell how people learn about each other through encounters on the land, and thereby places also learn about people. Places comment on human behavior through the land's responses to specific actions. Stories variously reveal ideas about human associations and relationships between humans and nonhuman beings. Pointing to a systematic correlation between places and narrative elements that has not been previously explored, this volume makes a unique contribution to the literature on place. Winner of the Brian McConnell Book Award from the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research.
Appropriation (?) of the Month: "The Eskimo of Our Imagination"
(Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage, 2015-10-21) Cusack-McVeigh, Holly
The Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage (IPinCH) research project is an international collaboration of over 50 archaeologists, lawyers, anthropologists, museum specialists, ethicists and other specialists, and 25 partnering organizations (including, among others, Parks Canada, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the Champagne and Aishihik First Nation, and the Barunga Community Management Board, an Aboriginal organization from Australia) building a foundation to facilitate fair and equitable exchanges of knowledge relating to archaeology and cultural heritage. The project is concerned with the theoretical, ethical, and practical implications of using knowledge about the past, and how these may affect communities, researchers, and other stakeholders. Based at the Archaeology Department of Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, the project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Project team members and partner organizations can be found in Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Germany, Switzerland and South Africa. A number of partner organizations are indigenous communities. Research will follow a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach. The IPinCH project provides a foundation of research, knowledge and resources to assist scholars, academic institutions, descendant communities, policy makers, and many other stakeholders in negotiating more equitable and successful terms of research and policies through an agenda of community-based field research and topical exploration of intellectual property issues.
Learning to Listen: Community Collaboration in an Alaska Native Village
(Collaborative Anthropologies, 2016) Cusack-McVeigh, Holly
Eight anthropology and museum studies graduate and undergraduate students from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, who were participating in a summer field school, had traveled some four thousand miles to the Sugpiaq/Alutiiq coastal village of Nanwalek, Alaska, to participate in a three-week-long community-based collaborative project. His encouragement to go with the flow in an unfamiliar cultural setting could never match their experience of uncertainty. After a while and much to their relief, they were greeted at the airport by their hosts -- only to learn that the trail up the mountain to their cabins had been inaccessible all week due to melting snow in the mountains and the resultant mud. Before leaving Indianapolis he had met with the students to give them a brief introduction to the culture and history of the region. Having previously worked in the community on multiple environmental and cultural heritage projects with several different families and individual community members, he had already established rapport.
In Alaska, it's always been Denali
(The Conversation, 2015-09-04) Cusack-McVeigh, Holly
For millennia, the Koyukon Athabascan have called the 20,000-foot mountain “the tall one.”
The Giant Footprints: A Lived Sense of Story and Place
(University Press of Colorado, 2008) Cusack-McVeigh, Holly
Community-Based Archaeology: Research with, by, and for Indigenous and Local Communities (review)
(Great Plains Research, 2014) Cusack-McVeigh, Holly
Community-Based Archaeology lays a foundation for future anthropological and archaeological research, and thus should be required reading for any student considering a career in archaeology or cultural anthropology. [...]it may serve as a model for tribal communities, people in museology, academicians, and those in other natural and social sciences.
New Paths to Social Justice and Recovering the Past
(Taylor & Francis, 2016) Cusack-McVeigh, Holly; Anthropology, School of Liberal Arts
On April 1, 2014, after months of investigative work and intensive planning, FBI agents knocked on the door of a private collector in rural Indiana. This was the start of a complex, multi-year investigation that resulted in the recovery of several thousand objects of cultural heritage. The collection, noted by scholars and agents alike for its “astounding global and temporal scope,” included material culture from places as diverse as Colombia, China, Peru, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Italy, Canada and the United States. What is most relevant, however, is the way the FBI has handled the case and why it may prove to be a replicable model. This article examines this unique, collaborative approach and its implications for future cases worldwide. It also highlights the moral issues surrounding cultural heritage protection and the shared sense of responsibility that this investigation engendered among stakeholders.

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