Diamond Jenness and the National Museum of Canada: 1930–1947
Diamond Jenness (1886–1969), New Zealand born and Oxford educated, is best known in anthropology for his detailed studies of Canadian Inuit and Indian societies and cultures. He published numerous reports and papers and the ground‐breaking The Indians of Canada (1932), a classic of North American et...
| Published in: | Curator: The Museum Journal |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
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Wiley
1990
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| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2151-6952.1990.tb00991.x https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.2151-6952.1990.tb00991.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.2151-6952.1990.tb00991.x |
| Summary: | Diamond Jenness (1886–1969), New Zealand born and Oxford educated, is best known in anthropology for his detailed studies of Canadian Inuit and Indian societies and cultures. He published numerous reports and papers and the ground‐breaking The Indians of Canada (1932), a classic of North American ethnology. Less well known is his service (1926–1930, 1937–1947) as chief of the Anthropological Division of the National Museum of Canada (NMC), where he made important contributions to furthering Canadian anthropology before the discipline had gained public acceptance or a secure niche in either academia or government. Two facts help to explain why little attention has been paid to Jenness's administrative work and the Division's accomplishments during his tenure. First, his career was overshadowed by that of Edward Sapir, among the century's brightest anthropological lights and Jenness's predecessor as chief (1910–1925). Sapir has been the subject of considerable attention in disciplinary history, including assessments of his formative influence on professional anthropology in Canada during his sojourn at NMC (Cowan et al., 1986; Koerner, 1984). Second, Jenness and his colleagues struggled to maintain the Division's viability at a time when economic depression, government bureaucracy, and world war threatened to reduce professional anthropology to insignificance. Though we are not without tangible proofs of the Division's scientific endeavors during the period, perhaps its more notable accomplishment was surviving the onslaught at all. |
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