INTRODUCTION
It is an honor to be with you here today for the meeting of the Canadian Museum Association and a special treat for me to return to St. John’s. In the brief time I have, I’d like to quickly offer a historical and contemporary perspective on how the Smithsonian Institution has approached intangible cultural heritage (ICH)—a key theme of this meeting. I’ll give you my own opinion about the UNESCO ICH convention—especially given that this international treaty has now been ratified by some 130 nations, but not Canada and the United States.
The Smithsonian Institution is the largest and one of the oldest museum complexes in the world and has a long history of dealing with what we today call “intangible cultural heritage,” but has previously been termed “customs” or “traditions,” “living culture,” “oral tradition,” “folklife,”
“ethnographic practice,” “expressive culture,” or “way of life.”
COLLECTING CULTURAL HERITAGE
When it was founded in 1846, its leader, Secretary Joseph Henry saw the Smithsonian’s role with regard to culture as documenting the languages, traditions and customs of American
Indians because he, like many others, thought they would disappear. Indeed, he believed that much of the American Indian past had already disappeared and had to be reclaimed by scholarly study. Hence the Smithsonian published Ephraim Squire and Edwin Davis’ study of
North America’s mound builders, trying to answer questions about the continent’s pre-history and the knowledge of its inhabitants. The Smithsonian sent expeditions to Alaska to look at the supposed migration of peoples from northeast Asia across the Behring Straits, and it sponsored seminal work by Lewis Henry Morgan, using kinship terminology as a window on the organization of native American societies and links to those of Asia.

In its first several decades, the Smithsonian collected large numbers of human remains and artifacts. It acquired the paintings of John Mix Stanley and Charles Bird King, documenting
American Indian life prior to the popular advent of photography. It later added those of George
Catlin, arranged as it was as an “ethnological catalog.” Under the leadership of John Wesley
Powell, the Smithsonian’s Bureau of American Ethnology documented American Indian languages, again with the idea that they would no longer be spoken. Anthropologists collected dances, rituals, styles of adornment and other intangible practices as documented in drawings and photography; they documented for posterity stories and songs with the new technology of
Edison’s cylinder recording machine.
DISPLAYING THE HERITAGE OF OTHERS
In the 1880s and especially the 1890s, it became popular to exhibit American Indians at expositions. Henry’s successor at the Smithsonian, Spencer Baird wanted to bring American
Indians to the Smithsonian’s new U.S. National Museum to demonstrate their living culture.
Congress was aghast and refused to foot the bill. The U.S. government had policies not to preserve or safeguard American Indian lifeways, but rather to extinguish them. The federal and state governments sought to literally discount Indians in the Census and public records, to move them from traditional lands, to discourage native language use, religion and customary practice. Government, and even widespread public morality—a firm belief in the inferiority of
Native American cultures matched the pseudo-historical ideological belief in the inevitability of their demise.
Displays of living culture by American Indians were though of intellectual interest and curiosity, and provided some means of entertainment and education. Buffalo Bill Cody organized a Wild
West show with cowboys and Indians, which purported to show the character and customs of native people, often as the bad guys, but also as well as skilled riders and warriors replete with family life. The most famous displays and demonstrations of the era occurred at the Colombian
Exposition in Chicago, and strove for a more educational effect. Franz Boas, the “father of
American anthropology” worked for the Smithsonian, the Exposition, and later the Natural
History Museum in New York. While at first he had great hopes in the public display and educational function of having living Indians demonstrate their culture, he gave up, turned off by the insensitivity, hucksterism and context in which they were presented. Possibly as a corrective, museums at the turn of the century—notably the Smithsonian and the Museum of
Natural History in New York adapted the diorama, to show scenes of “living” culture—native people hunting, cooking, crafting and celebrating. Ironically, these tableaux of encased and frozen manikins were called “life groups.”
At the Smithsonian, and in museums around the U.S., North America, and the world, museums adapted similar techniques and similar ways of featuring and freezing the living cultures of the world’s peoples in the ensuing decades. Museum curators tended to like their cultures dead and stuff and under glass.
RESPECTING LIVING CULTURAL HERITAGE

Fast forward to the 1960s when S. Dillon Ripley became Secretary of the Smithsonian. His assessment of its museums at the time—“dusty;” “a place you’d go to after a heavy Sunday dinner.” He looked over the National Mall of the United States in Washington, D.C. and pronounced it “Forest Lawn on the Potomac”—a dead space in the heart of a vibrant nation.
Famously, Ripley said, “take the instruments out of their cases and let them sing!” His idea was to enliven the museums and the Mall with demonstrations of music, and word, work and performance so that people would realize that all of the artifacts and artworks in the museum were made and used by living human beings. These were meaningful objects—ones of work, worship and wonder in the daily lives of real people, and should be displayed and understood in that way. The Smithsonian initiated a Folklife Festival in 1967 that brought hundreds and subsequently tens of thousands of people from every region of the U.S. and from more than
100 countries around the globe to the Mall every summer to demonstrate their living cultural traditions. This included music, song, dance, spoken word and story telling, poetry and epic narrative, craftsmanship and artistry of all sorts, from carving and weaving to sewing and the cutting of metal. Farmers, hunters, gatherers, manufacturers and others came to the Festival to demonstrate their livelihoods. Builders of Transylvanian churches, adobe gates of Djenne and the skyscrapers of New York demonstrated their skills. Cooks, practitioners of folk medicine, astronomers and astrologers have all shown their arts. Bearers of cultural traditions, as they are called, have come to the Festival from countries along the Silk Road, and from the diasporic community of Tibetans, from the rainforests of Indonesia and neighborhoods of Los Angeles, from Great Plains of North America, and mosques of Turkey.
Innovatively, the background field research for the Festival came to be increasingly done by
Smithsonian curators in tandem with local scholars and even lay people from the cultural community who identify the themes, traditions, and people to feature. Unlike the expositions of the previous century, the Festival foregrounds the voices of the people—it is they who primarily speak, explain, demonstrate and provide an understanding of what they do and why.
While there is curation and roles certain for experts and scholars, it is a far more participatory type of research, production and presentation that previously found in the museum, or even the academy.
The idea of featuring living cultural heritage or folklife on the Mall drew some gasps at first—as if national monuments, memorials and museums would be despoiled by the messy, often lower class, sometimes marginalized members of society. Yet the public voted with its feet—and with the Festival drawing huge crowds--about one million visitors annually during its two week run around the Fourth of July holiday. Those living demonstrations, at first viewed quite skeptically by many fellow Smithsonian curators, have caught on, and now animate the public and educational programs of almost all the museums. Having living artists demonstrating their work, having historical figures discussing their role, having practitioners show their skill with artifacts is now a mainstay of many museum programs.
In 1999, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival provided the backdrop for a conference organized by the Smithsonian and UNESCO to consider the latter’s formal Recommendation concerning traditional culture. A group of cultural scholars, officials, and practitioners from some 40

nations met for a week, and conducted an assessment of how living cultures were faring in the world at a time of increasing globalization. Examining various international laws and treaties in place, the group called for the development of a formal convention. It took four years, numerous meetings, and a good deal of work by many experts—Canada’s Jerry Pocius among others was involved. In 2003, that Convention was adopted by UNESCO and has subsequently been ratified by 130 nations. Along the way, living cultural heritage, folklore, oral tradition, and so on came to be called “intangible cultural heritage”—following Japanese usage.
I will speak more about the Convention in a moment.
In the meantime, the Smithsonian’s emphasis on living cultural heritage reached its apotheosis with the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian. This was a far cry in ideology, style and context from the treatments of Native Americans 150 years before. The museum itself grew out of consultations between Smithsonian staff and Native American community leaders and groups. Its scholars and curators were both Native and non-Native. Its voice and perspective decidedly that of American Indians. On September 21, 2004 we opened that museum with a procession of some 25,000 Native peoples from across the hemisphere—Inuit from the north processing down the Mall with the Suya of the Amazon rainforest, Hopi and
Navajo, Seminole and Cree—more than 600 tribes in all. Shown on live television around the world, with guests including the diplomatic corps, Congress and world leaders, the opening featured the living cultural heritage of Native peoples—song, dance, story, food, artistry and craftsmanship, celebration and adornment, knowledge and wisdom. And though people spoke in many languages, they said the same thing in the clearest possible way—“we are still here.”
The inevitability of their disappearance was put firmly to rest; Joseph Henry proved wrong.
To be sure, the museum is challenged, still, with translating the exuberance of that opening day and week into its daily practice. Animating the museum and showing living culture means having within it cultural practitioners offering talented performances, artistic demonstrations, culinary delights, and a myriad of other activities. It is not easy to do and to sustain.
Nonetheless, if museums are to be centers for displaying and conserving intangible cultural heritage, do it they must. The National Museum of the American Indian has in its charter not only the responsibility to document and display Native culture, but also a responsibility for its encouragement and perpetuation.
This is strikingly consistent with the UNESCO ICH convention which actually calls upon statesparties, that is the nations who are signatories, to take all necessary measures to safeguard intangible cultural heritage within its borders, and to help others do so. This is a very big task if we are to take it seriously.
ASSURING CULTURAL HERITAGE LIVES
So let me turn for a moment to Haiti, where the living cultural heritage is of world significance and so very important to the people of Haiti, and where the responsibility of museums is tested.

As you know, the devastation from the January 12 earthquake was overwhelming in terms of lives lost, homes destroyed and people displaced. The immediate and indeed continuing need for health care, food, water and shelter is overwhelming and drew the attention and empathy of people around the world. Haitian culture also suffered a severe blow. Museums, archives, galleries, libraries, theaters, studios and artisanal workshops and markets were destroyed.
Haiti’s material culture—art work, artifacts, architectural features, archives, recordings, film, video, photographs, books and manuscripts lay in the rubble. Living artists were killed; instruments, tools and costumes lost, infrastructure for cultural life disabled. Yet it was Haiti’s living cultural heritage, inspired by the meanings of its monuments, collections, sites, and practices that sustained the Haitian people through their long hellish night. They sang. They worshipped. They drew on a long history of resilience in the face of overwhelming challenges to endure. They used their arts of survival to persevere. Musicians did benefits to bring in funds.
Artists pulled metal out of rubble to fashion into artistic creations. Vendors set up makeshift stands for UN troops and aid workers. Painters started to paint the earthquake, creating a documentary record of its effect upon their community that will stir the soul of those in the future who view them.
In another era, the Smithsonian might have bemoaned the tragic loss of the cultural past and diminution of the living tradition, but not done much about it—writing it off as inevitable in the face of an overwhelming natural disaster. Not so today. We’ve been inspired by Haitians who have gone into the rubble to retrieve cultural materials because they understand it as inspiration for Haiti’s living culture. We are organizing American and international teams of conservators to help pull Haiti’s material culture out of the rubble, providing specialized equipment, expertise and training. We are working with our Haitian cultural colleagues and officials to set up a cultural recovery center in a rented compound in Port-au-Prince. We will help safeguard rescued material heritage and hopefully enable Haitians to restore it over the long term by providing training in the restoration arts and sciences. We are mobilizing a number of like-minded organizations and the donors to support the effort, making the case that humanitarian aid includes support of on-going cultural vitality. We are working with others to document Haiti’s living traditions and providing support to living cultural practitioners. Several musical groups and artisans will appear at this summer’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival. We’ve bought tens of thousands of dollars of Haitian art and craft to sell and the Festival, returning funds to Haitians and encouraging the cultural economy. We have sent and encouraged others to send artists’ care packages to Haiti—paints, brushes, canvases, so that artists can do their creative work and benefit financially from their cultural produce. We are planning several exhibitions and other programs that will foreground Haiti’s cultural scholars, officials, practitioners so they can revitalize their culture.
This is an example of how a museum can take responsibility for “safeguarding intangible cultural heritage” by helping maintain or restore its vitality among those who are its practitioners. ICH preserved by the museum is not safeguarded if it dies outside its walls.
CONCLUSION: THE UNESCO ICH CONVENTION

I trust that through using the Smithsonian, I’ve illustrated the development of a museum perspective on living culture. In the early days of the Smithsonian it was collecting and documenting the remnants of living cultures that were assumed to be inevitably dying off. Then it became a means of showing traditions within a framework defined by scholars and curators.
From the period of the Folklife Festival and certainly with the National Museum of the
American Indian it is more of a matter of demonstrating respect, sharing between Institution and people a responsibility and voice for research and public representation. Now, with Haiti, it is a responsibility to help Haitians recover their culture in situ, so they can continue its practice.
So, given this history of museum evolution, let me turn to the ICH convention. You’ve already heard what the convention says and purports to do. I participated in the many intergovernmental meetings of experts to draft it. I’ve published quite a bit about the convention, have my criticisms, but nonetheless support it. The convention can do much good if it is taken for what it says. It encourages respect for cultural diversity. It is especially oriented toward encouraging grassroots, community participation in the documentation and safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage. It seeks practical, robust, creative social outcomes whereby living cultural heritage is integrated with and contributes to education and economic development. Ultimately, it says that a culture is safeguarded if it remains vital, and in the hands of its practitioners.
My criticism focus largely on how the convention is being operationalized and applied—what it really does, who does it, and who benefits. In many cases, the whole of the convention is being reduced to a documentation or collection exercise—the formulation of national lists of intangible cultural heritage. Documentation is only one of the means by which we identify intangible cultural heritage, but it is no substitute for actually encouraging the practice of a tradition. Indeed, having lists in the archive of a nation’s capital does nothing for the practitioners of a tradition, nor for its continued survival and vitality. Secondly, we are seeing more resources and efforts going into creation of national bureaucracies to administer the treaty that we are into the efforts to actually work with cultural communities to ensure viability. In some cases, these bureaucracies are officializing traditional practice, and using the convention as a means of exerting state control over a tradition and its practitioners. This is terrible, for I can foresee traditions somehow surviving despite misguided state attempts to
“safeguard” them. Overall, as the convention has been operationalized these past several years, the emphasis seems to be on national and international recognition. If the treaty merely becomes a means of bestowing prestige on nations, it will have failed. Finally, among some countries, there has been the attempt to use the convention to assert state responsibility and hence stewardship of traditional practices. This can result in national governments asserting cultural property rights over the cultural produce of their citizens. This would be an awful irony, since in many cases traditions have persisted in opposition to or despite the state.
Currently, the United States Government is reconsidering its position on the convention based upon the opinions of the various federal cultural agencies in the U.S. as well as members and former members of its UNESCO national commission, me included. I think the convention has

within it the conceptualization and tools to be an effective means of actually helping cultural communities to build on their heritage as a means of finding meaning, building respect, and benefiting from their creative efforts—and I believe U.S. participation in operationalizing the treaty can help avoid some of the pitfalls and the more insidious applications of the convention.
Canada’s participation too can help in this regard, as Canadian institutions have tremendous experience working with and close to communities in a democratic and respectful way to assure positive and beneficial impacts of cultural work. Finally, as befitting this meeting of the
Canadian Museum Association, there is the role of museums to consider. Working to truly safeguard intangible cultural heritage can enable museums to see and demonstrate their role, not as ends in themselves, but as means for ensuring the ongoing cultural vitality of particular societies and human society as a whole. I think this is a good place for museums to be.
Thank you.