Although NEC (formerly Native Education Centre) had existed since 1967, it was in 1979 that the society was formed to assume control and broaden the scope of education to include academic post-secondary courses. The school moved into its current facilities in 1985, a building featuring architectural features of a traditional Pacific Coast longhouse.
Nadia Abu-Zahra was appointed an anthropologist in the Anthropology/Sociology Department of the University of British Columbia by Director Cyril Belshaw in the late 1960s or early 1970s. She graduated from Oxford with a PhD in social anthropology, and later lived and taught at Oxford.
Blanca Muratorio is a Professor Emeritus in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Originally from Argentina, Blanca Muratorio received her Ph.D. at U.C.-Berkeley in 1972 and later moved to Vancouver to join the faculty of Anthropology at UBC. Her ethnographic area of focus is Latin America. Her research interests include Anthropology and History, visual anthropology, oral histories, Amazonian societies, women in the Third World, religion and ethnicity. Her publications include “The Life and Times of Grandfather Alonso, Culture and History in the Upper Amazon”, “Protestantism and Capitalism Revisited, in the Rural Highlands of Ecuador”, “Protestantism, Ethnicity, and Class in Chimborazo”, “Indigenous Women’s Identities and the Politics of Cultural Reproduction in the Ecuadorian Amazon”, “Rucuyaca Alonso y la Historia Social y económica del Alto Napo: 1850-1950.” Now retired, she recently returned to live in Argentina with her husband Ricardo.
Ricardo Muratorio is a Professor Emeritus in Sociology at the University of British Columbia. Originally from Argentina, Ricardo Muratorio received his MA at U.C.-Berkeley in the 1970s and later moved to Vancouver to join the faculty of the Anthropology-Sociology Department at UBC. He is now retired, and recently returned to live in Argentina with his wife Blanca. Ricardo Muratorio has published a number of works including “A Feast of Color, Corpus Christi Dance Costumes of Ecuador: From the Olga Fisch Collection” in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institute.
In 2010, Blanca Muratorio donated over 200 objects to the Museum of Anthropology’s Multiversity Gallery.
Chief Mungo Martin or Nakapenkem (lit. Potlatch chief "ten times over"), Datsa (lit. "grandfather"), was an important figure in Northwest Coast style art, specifically that of the Kwakwaka'wakw Aboriginal people who live in the area of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. He was a major contributor to Kwakwaka'wakw art, especially in the realm of wood sculpture and painting. He was also known as a singer and songwriter.
Mungo Martin was an important figure in the early history of the Museum of Anthropology. In 1950 and 1951 he worked for the University of British Columbia restoring and carving totem poles. These later stood in Totem Park at UBC and some were later moved into the great hall in the Museum of Anthropology. After this time he is best known for his work at Thunderbird Park in Victoria, where he helped to carve many of the totem poles and house posts that now stand in the park. He worked with several artists who became well-known including Bill Reid, Doug Cranmer, and Henry Hunt.
Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada
The Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada (MSCC) was created in September 1902 by the General Synod. The MSCC formed by combining the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, the Canadian Church Missionary Society, and the Woman’s Auxiliary. Its aim was to include all members of the Church into domestic and foreign missions. Internationally, it sponsored missions in Japan, China, India, Palestine, and Egypt. In Canada, the MSCC participated in assisting missionary dioceses, the Columbia Coast Mission, Church Camp Missions, Jewish Missions, Japanese Missions, Immigration chaplaincies, and Residential Schools, as well as working with First Nations and Inuit and with immigrants and settlers. The MSCC ceased operations in the late 1960s, although its Board of Management still produces financial statements related with ongoing MSCC legacies and trusts.
Dr. Miriam Lisa Clavir was the Senior Conservator of the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia and Associate of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of British Columbia from 1980 to 2004. In 1969, she obtained her bachelor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, Ontario, in 1976 her masters in Art Conservation at Queen’s University, Kingston Ontario, and in 1998 her doctorate in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester. In addition, Miriam Clavir was received as a Member of the Canadian Association of Professional Conservators in 1987 and as a Professional Associate of the American Institute for Conservation in 1993.
Prior to employment at the University of British Columbia, Clavir was an assistant conservator at Parks Canada, National Historic Sites Service, Quebec Region from 1976 to 1980, a conservation assistant for Parks Canada from 1973 to 1976, and an assistant for the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto in the Archaeology and Conservation Department from 1969 to 1972.
During her employment at the Museum of Anthropology, Miriam Clavir was involved in the following committees: Ellen Neel’s Thunderbird Pole Committee (2001 to 2004), Aboriginal Relations and Repatriation Committee, (Chair 1996 to 2004); Exhibits Committee (Chair 1997 and 1998); Collections Committee (to 2004); Executive Committee (1995 to 1996), and; Acquisitions Committee (to 2004). In 1982 she chaired the conference “Doing Yourself In? The Artist as Casualty.”
As the head of the Conservation area, Clavir’s responsibilities and functions included:
• Managing the conservation function, including the lab at MOA;
• Initiating and implementing processes, policies and actions to ensure that the collections housed in MOA do not deteriorate;
• Responsibility for teaching museum conservation at UBC, including credit courses, directed studies, and supervising interns and students;
• Ensuring that conservation practices at MOA are sensitive to the concerns of First Nations communities and other groups;
• Performing MOA managerial work not directly associated with conservation (such as chair or a member of committees and/or manages selected MOA projects);
• Responsibility for planning and prioritizing future conservation needs at MOA, with the assistance of other conservation staff;
• Examining objects in MOA travelling exhibits and loans to ensure that artefacts are stable and travel would not endanger their condition;
• Acting as liaison conservator with receiving institutions for MOA objects on loan;
• Supervising and advising staff, students, and Volunteer Associates on conservation questions and issues;
• Providing services to the public on questions in conservation directed to MOA; and,
• Conducting research necessary to support the functions and responsibilities of the Conservation Area and for meeting requirements set in the mandate of the Museum.
As an instructor, Dr. Miriam Clavir taught the following courses: Anthropology 451: The Conservation of Inorganic Materials; Anthropology 452: The Conservation of Organic Materials; Anthropology 43 1: (1991-1992); Classics 440: Field school (1987); Archival Studies 610: (1983-1988). In addition, she was an instructor for the Continuing Education Department at the University of British Columbia (1986, 1983, 1981). She also supervised conservation interns from 1989 to 1997. Miriam Clavir was also the principal instructor and course organizer for “Collections Care”, University of Victoria Course #HA488D taught at the UBC Museum of Anthropology for the Aboriginal Cultural Stewardship Program. Furthermore, she taught Mus.482 (Conservation) at the Burke Museum, University of Washington, Seattle (1999, 2000, 2002).
In 1999, Clavir took a leave of absence from the Museum to publish a book based on her Ph.D. thesis, “Preserving What Is Valued: Museums, Conservation, and First Nations,” (2002) which won the 2002 Outstanding Achievement Award in the Conservation Category from the Canadian Museums Association. The book discusses the profession and ethics of museum conservation, and how conservation ideas and practices contrast with the values and concerns of First Nations.
She is also credited with numerous independent journal articles. Among these: “Museum Changes to First Nations Objects, and their Physical and Conceptual Reversibility” (1999); “The Future of Ethnographic Conservation: A Canadian Perspective” (2001) and “Heritage Preservation: Museum Conservation and First Nations Perspectives” (2003).
Miriam Clavir retired as Senior Conservator at the Museum of Anthropology in 2004.
Minn Sjolseth was born on November 4, 1919 in Oksendahl, Norway. Sjolseth started to draw and paint in early childhood, and began her formal artistic training in Norway and in Germany where she studied the Old Masters. In 1953, Sjolseth emigrated to Canada and continued her studies at the Regina School of Fine Arts with Kenneth Lockheed. She also studied graphic art at San Miguel de Allende Art Institute in Mexico.
Sjolseth settled in Vancouver, BC in 1957, where she opened a commercial gallery and began her career as a portrait artist. During this time, she also had two children, Laila and Fred Johnsen. In 1967 she closed the gallery and focused her artistic practice on documenting Indigenous peoples and their cultural productions in a realist tradition. In 1968, Sjolseth married the photographer and journalist Anthony Carter. Out of their travels to First Nations communities along the coast of British Columbia and Alaska throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Sjolseth produced a number of landscape and portrait paintings as part of her "North West Coast Native" series, while Carter undertook work for his books. In 2009, the Kamloops Art Gallery held an exhibition entitled "Somewhere Between" which explored Minn Sjolseth's and Anthony Carter's artistic partnership during this period.
In 1974, Sjolseth had the opportunity to travel to Arctic Norway and work with the reindeer-herding Lapps (also known as Sami people) to create a series of paintings called "Reflection of Lapland" which was shown at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, among other institutions. In July 1977, she was selected as the only professional artist to be a member of the media accredited to the visit of H.R.H The Prince of Wales to Southern Alberta to commemorate the Centennial of the signing of Treaty 7. Sjolseth's work has been exhibited in juried group shows in Canada and the United States, as well as international solo exhibitions. Her paintings are in several international collections, including the collections of the Crown Prince Harald of Norway.
Sjolseth and Carter moved to the Kamloops area of British Columbia in 1980, first living at Pinantan Lake and later at Lac Le Jeune. She continued painting, creating the "British Columbia Interior" series, while also pursuing cross-country marathon skiing competitively.
Sjolseth died suddenly in a car accident in Lac Le Jeune on November 7th, 1995.
Thomas Laurie and Mildred Laurie were a married couple who managed the B.C. Packers general store in Alert Bay for many years. Their daughters Leslie and Cathie attended the first local integrated school there in the 1950s, and their son Tom was born in Alert Bay in 1962. After leaving Alert Bay in 1964 the family moved to Powell River, where Thomas and Mildred ran the Columbia Store, and then to Ocean Falls, where they managed the mill store. The Lauries later relocated to Kitimat and then to Prince George, where they ran a motel for 22 years.
Michael McLean Ames was born in Vancouver in 1933. He graduated from UBC with a B.A. in Anthropology in 1956, and from Harvard University with a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology in 1961. Ames also studied at the University of Michigan, University of London, and the University of Chicago between 1957 and 1962. He taught at McMaster University from 1962 to 1964, and in 1964 he began working at the University of British Columbia (UBC) as an assistant professor, followed by an associate professorship in 1966 and full professorship in 1970. In 1974 he became Director of the UBC Museum of Anthropology (MOA). From 1974 to 1976 Ames was president of the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute which was established in 1968 with funding from the Indian Government to promote Indian studies in Canada. Ames retired from MOA in 1997, and received professor emeritus status in 1998. He remained involved with the Anthropology department at UBC, co-teaching undergraduate courses such as Humanities 101 on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, chairing the Dean of Arts First Nations Language Programme advisory committee, and helping to institute the Musqueam 101 seminar at Musqueam. In July 2002, Ames returned to MOA as Acting Director until 2004. Michael Ames passed away in February, 2006.
Ames received the Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1970, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1979, and a Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology in 1996. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 1998. Ames also received the UBC Alumni Award of Distinction in 2005.
Ames published an extensive number of articles and books on a range of subjects including South Asian anthropology, First Nations issues, and museology.
Dr. J.E. Michael Kew was born in Quesnel, British Columbia in 1932. Kew received his B.A. at the University of British Columbia in 1955 and was appointed the Assistant Curator of Anthropology at the Provincial Museum in Victoria from 1956-1959. Following a four-year period in Saskatchewan, where he was employed as a Community Development Officer at the Department of Natural Resources and a Research Assistant in Anthropology at the University of Saskatchewan, Kew returned to the University of British Columbia in 1965 as Instructor of Anthropology. During his appointment as Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Kew obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Washington, Seattle in 1970.
As part of his curatorial responsibilities at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA), Dr. Kew curated a special exhibition of Central Coast Salish art objects in 1980 entitled Visions of Power, Symbols of Wealth: Central Coast Salish Sculpture and Engraving. In preparation for the exhibition, Dr. Kew was funded by a grant from SSHRC in 1979 to visit North American museums housing Central Coast Salish sculptural objects. The objective of his travels was to create a collection of images and documentation of the sculptures found in the various museums. The majority of the objects exhibited in Visions of Power, Symbols of Wealth came from the collections of the former National Museum of Canada and the Museum of the American Indian. The collections of the British Columbia Provincial Museum, Royal Ontario Museum, American Museum of Natural History, Field Museum of Natural History, Brooklyn Art Museum, Thomas Burke Memorial Washing State Museum and the British Museum are also represented.
At the Museum of Anthropology, Michael Kew worked as Curator of Ethnology from 1977 to 1979. He curated a MOA exhibit on central Coast Salish three-dimensional art ca. 1993-1997. He also served as chair of the Ways and Means Committee beginning in 1993 when the committee was established.