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Vessel Era (Schooner)

Date1/12/1902

MediumSilver Gelatin Print

Dimensions3 3/4 × 4 3/4 in. (9.5 × 12.1 cm)

Object number1980.37.87

Institutional Credit LineCourtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum

DescriptionGroup in the schooner Era's makeshift "studio," Inuit Nunangat (Hudson Bay)Label TextGeorge Comer (1855–1938) was a whaling and sealing ship master who sailed vessels from New London, Connecticut, and New Bedford to the Antarctic three times and the Arctic fourteen times between 1875 and 1919. Comer was tapped by the American Museum of Natural History to document the flora and fauna of the region, as well as Indigenous cultures. Trained by the US anthropologist Franz Boas, he took notes on Native life—especially across the Hudson Bay in Inuit Nunangat—photographed the region and its people, and collected artifacts and plant and animal specimens, which he then donated to the American Museum of Natural History of New York. He made over three hundred plaster casts of Native Alaskan faces, collected the skins of Arctic animals and birds, gathered geological specimens, bird’s eggs, and other interesting specimens, and recorded geographical and topographical information. For his efforts, he was made a fellow of the council of the American Geographical Society, demonstrating how power and prestige were tied to exploration and exploitation.

Like many whalers and Arctic explorers, Comer fathered children with at least two Native women and had what some referred to as a “Native wife.” Niviatsianaq was an Aivilik woman who traveled with Comer in the early 1900s. We can never know the dynamics that defined such relationships. Relationships between Euro-American men and Native women were complicated by different cultural expectations about sex and gender, perceptions of power and trade, and individual struggles under settler colonialism. These perpetuated heteropatriarchal values and race-based sexism that supported the sexualization of Native women as “available.” One photograph in the collection from 1886 pictures Qayisaaq and her unknown child on a whaleship (fig. 1.19). Qayisaaq was kidnapped and taken north on a whaleship, where she gave birth to a child in Barrow and then was taken to Point Hope. The history of victimization of Native women remains salient, most notably in the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls movement, which uses a red handprint over the mouth to symbolize the silencing of Native women and inaction of authorities to address the crisis.

The museum holds approximately two hundred photographs taken by Comer during whaling voyages to the Hudson Bay between 1900 and 1905, when Comer was master of the Era. Images of a man building a snow house in Inuit Nunangat demonstrate an interest in Indigenous life. A large group are frontal standing portraits of individuals in a makeshift studio on the Schooner Era, Inuit Nunangat (Hudson Bay). These should be understood within the context of contemporaneous ethnographic photography (like Edward Curtis) and under the umbrella of settler colonialism and cultural extraction. Others picture sensitive cultural practices and knowledge that should not be made available to the public. Some depict religious practices and show shaman dressed in regalia. As many scholars have shown photography, especially in the context of “scientific” or documentary projects like Comer’s, were deeply extractive and predicated on power imbalances and a subject-object relationship that often undermined the humanity of the subjects pictured.ProvenanceThese photographs picture people across Inuit Nunaat taken during periods of intense colonial pressure and extractive, violent encounter (violence in many forms). NBWM is considering how we should address culturally sensitive materials like these in the collection. Our work in reckoning with these collections (and others like them), their histories and legacies with descendant communities, and our responsibilities toward researchers is ongoing. We strive to fulfill our responsibility, to be sensitive to content, traditional knowledge, and our role as stewards of these items, while ensuring that their use does not perpetuate colonial patterns of oppression. If you have a comment, please contact: curatorial@whalingmuseum.org

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