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Richard Cotton was stationed in Terrace, BC in the 1960s.

Rev. George Stallworthy was an LMS (London Missionary Society) missionary born August 16, 1809, at Preston Bissett, near Buckingham, England. He studied at Homerton College and was ordained, October 3, 1833 at Ramsgate, England. Stallworthy was appointed to the Marquesas, and sailed October 27, 1833, arriving in Tahiti on March 23, 1834. On September 11, 1834, Stallworthy left Tahiti with Mr. David Darling (another missionary) to the mission on the Marquesas, arriving at St. Christina on October 6, and settling at Vaitahu. The Marquesas Mission was relinquished in 1841, and Stallworthy left those islands in December 1841, arriving in Tahiti on December 13 and going to Papaoa.

Stallworthy joined the Samoan Mission at Falealisi, Upolu in February 1844. There he married his first wife, Charlotte Burnett Wilson (b. 1817 in Tahiti), the daughter of another LMS missionary Charles Wilson. Charlotte Wilson was already suffering with tuberculosis when she and Stallworthy married, and 18 months later died of it at Upolu on August 2, 1845. She was buried in Samoa. Despite their short marriage, a son, George Burnett Stallworthy, was born in 1844. Charlotte's parents were living near the family in Falealii and raised George Burnett there until 1855, when the ten-year-old was sent back to England to go to school. He later also became a minister.

Stallworthy left Samoa in March of 1846 by the appointment of the directors in order to visit Tahiti and confer with the missionaries there on the distressing circumstances of that mission. On that trip aboard the "John Williams," he met Mary Ann Darling (b. 1819), also the daughter of an LMS missionary. He returned to Samoa at the end of August 1846, and married Mary Ann in Apia, Samoa on October 13, 1847.

As part of a deputation in 1858, Mr. Stallworthy visited the New Hebrides, Loyalty Islands, and Niue, and later Fakaofo, one of the Tokelau group. In January, 1859, Stallworthy moved to Malua to take the place of Dr. George Turner in the seminary there during Turner's absence in England. Stallworthy died at Malua in November 1859, leaving his wife with eight children (along with his first son in England). The family caught the "John Williams" back to Tahiti, later leaving for Sydney in 1860. During this journey, three of the children died of diphtheria (William, Louisa, and Sarah Ann) and were buried on Raiatea. Mary Ann and the remaining children carried on to Sydney, where eventually their health improved, and they carried on to England. Mary Ann (Darling) Stallworthy died in England in 1872.

A descendant, John J. Lewis, wrote a now out-of-print book about Stallworthy's mission called “Wind in the Palms- Mission in the SW Pacific 1817-72- David Darling- George Stallworthy." This book is available in the Museum of Anthropology's library.

Reginald Robinson was born in Stevenage, England. In 1920, he immigrated to Canada. For the next twenty-five years, Robinson was employed in various capacities until Canada became involved in the Second World War and he enlisted in the military. Originally he was stationed in Victoria, BC, but in early 1945 he was shipped to Darwin, Australia, as a member of the secret 1st Canadian Special Wireless Group. While stationed in Darwin, Sergeant Robinson obtained special permission from his commanding officer to photograph the native population, members of the neighboring Aboriginal tribes. During his stay, he also received many artifacts as gifts, which he carefully shipped home to Canada.

After the war, Robinson led an accomplished civilian life. He was the first paid manager of the South Burnaby Credit Union, an active community volunteer, an amateur photographer, and a devoted husband and father.

R.A. Brooks was a Vancouver resident who had a curio shop for a number of years. He died c. 1949 and his collection of stone heads – ‘Brooks heads’ – were offered for sale in his shop by his widow, Mrs. Mabel Orr Brooks. Brooks had apparently collected the stones over a number of years from a mound near the Fraser River

Percy Broughton was a missionary of the Anglican Church who served the Church Missionary Society (predecessor to the Anglican Church in the Arctic) at Lake Harbour [Kimmirut, Baffin Island] from 1911-1912. Prior to this, Broughton attended the theological school Wycliffe College in Toronto, Ontario. Broughton arrived in Lake Harbour in September of 1911. In March of 1912, he was separated from the Inuit crew he was travelling with, and spent two days lost in the Arctic. He eventually managed to find his way to a small community of Inuit who saved his life though he sustained serious injuries due to prolonged exposure in extreme cold temperatures. He left Lake Harbour in August of 1912. Broughton returned to Toronto for surgeries and recuperation, then went to England, New Zealand, and Australia. Broughton died, most likely due to complications from his injuries, in September of 1915.

No biographical information available.

Pam Brown was a curator in the Pacific Northwest Department of the UBC Museum of Anthropology (MOA), where she was responsible for the Heiltsuk, Wuikinuxv, Tahltan, Ktunaxa, Tsilhqot'in, and Tlingit collections. She has curated and co-curated a number of exhibits at MOA including ‘Mehodihi: Well-Known Traditions of Tahltan People’ (2003) and ‘Telling Our Stories, A Profile of Tahltan/Tlingit Artist Dempsey Bob’ (2001). She has worked closely with the Heiltsuk community on many projects and has contributed to the creation of a number of MOA sourcebooks, including ‘The Honor of One is the Honor of All’ (1996-2005) and ‘My Ancestors Are Still Dancing’ (2003).

Brown graduated with a Master of Arts degree from the University of British Columbia in 1994, having written a thesis and curated an exhibit at MOA entitled ‘Cannery Days: A Chapter In The Lives of the Heiltsuk,’ about the lives of Heiltsuk men and women in the BC fish processing industry. In 1994-1995 she was involved with the design and implementation of the Aboriginal Museum Internship Program (AMIP) and the Aboriginal Cultural Stewardship Program (ACSP) at MOA, two programs which provided native participants with practical training in how to develop low-cost, effective displays and resource materials on cultural subjects for their communities. In 1999, Brown coordinated a ‘Repatriation Forum’ which brought 180 First Nations members and museum professionals to UBC’s First Nations House of Learning to discuss the shared experiences of repatriation between First Nations in B.C. and tribes from the USA. Since 1999, Brown has also acted as supervisor of the Native Youth Programme.

Brown retired from MOA in the summer of 2020.

Nuno Porto is originally from Portugal. He was trained has a social anthropologist. He did long term fieldwork in Central Portugal in the early 1990s, studying the relationships between literacy skills acquisition and gendered cultural knowledges. The coexistence of literate and oral rationalities in rural Portugal fueled interests in visual culture and on how religious experience is mediated by visual and material culture. The universe of visual theory and material culture studies was to become the center of his subsequent work related to museums. His PhD dissertation explored the articulation of colonialism, science, and museum culture, and how these merged in the co-development of the Dundo Museum in Northeast of Angola and of its proprietor, the Diamonds Company of Angola. This dissertation received the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation award for the Social and Human Sciences Thesis and was published by the same foundation in 2009.

Between 2006 and 2012 he integrated the Commission for the Re-opening of the Dundo Museum, led by the Ministry of Culture of Angola that successfully concluded its works in 2012. During this period he also led a team that developed and implemented the website on the archival materials of the Diamonds Company of Angola held at the University of Coimbra, www.diamangdigital.net. He was also a member of the research team for the project ‘Bearing Waters’ led by Lisbon sculptor Virginia Fróis, on the renewal of traditional Cape Verdean women ceramics.

Between 1991 and 2011 he taught at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, on subjects related to theory in social anthropology, material culture, critical museology, visual culture, photography and African studies. His work has been published in four different languages in eight different countries. He coordinated the Graduate Program in Social and Cultural Anthropology between 2006 and 2011, and also taught in the Graduate Program on Design and Multimedia. He acted as director of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Coimbra between 2002 and 2006, where his team developed a series of temporary exhibitions based on the notion of ethnographic installation.

In 2013 he was Invited Professor at the Post Graduate Program in Social Memory at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro - UNIRIO, in Brazil.

Porto currently serves as curator for Africa and South America at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Museum of Anthropology. He has been at UBC since 2012.

Noah Shakspeare was a photographer, politician, labourer, activist, and civil servant. He was born on January 26, 1839 in Brierley Hill, England, son of Noah Shakespeare and Hannah Matthews. He married Eliza Jane Pearson on December 26, 1859, and they had seven children, of whom three sons and one daughter survived infancy. He and his family moved to Victoria, where he took up a career as a photographer from 1864 to the 1870s. He was elected and served as mayor of Victoria, B. C. in 1882 - 1888. He died on May 13, 1921 in Victoria.

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.

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.

Associate Director of Museum of Anthropology

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.

No biographical information available.