Harvard Archaeology Program Seminar Series Spring 2018 Schedule

Zoe Eddy, Harvard University

In Hokkaido Japan, the kibori kuma (wood-carved bear) is ubiquitous as both a purchasable object and cultural icon. Subway kiosks, department stores, tourist outlets, and museum gift shops all sell variations on the bear. Tourists may or may not realize, however, that the kibori kuma originates in Indigenous Ainu culture. The wooden handicraft served as a response to 19th century Meiji colonization of the Ainu: Ainu communities, violently forced out of long-held cultural lifeways, developed an industry of tourist goods to supplement local incomes.

This talk traces the history of the kibori kuma as an object. Based on fieldwork conducted in the consumer markets of Sapporo, Japan, I investigate the object’s Indigenous origin and gradual transformation into a mainstay of the Hokkaido tourist aesthetic. Using this research, I hope to introduce larger questions about settler colonialism and the appropriation of Indigenous images. What does it mean for a colonizing population to co-opt an Indigenous image within its own production of regional identity? How can objects, and multivocal, critical analyses of these objects, help us better understand the commoditization of Indigeneity?