Based on a large pool of oral material as well as multiple Smi museum collections, this book examines the connection between Smi identities, duodji, sovereignty and Smi heritage objects in museums.
Traditionally, duodji has been defined as Smi "craft", but in her work Finbog demonstrates how this definition is the result of a historical devaluation caused by multiple colonial strategies. She goes on to redefine the practice of duodji as an important Smi epistemology of aesthetics and muitalusat [stories] centered within a system of relations that are expressed as bonds of kinship.
Drawing on the concepts, paradigms and analytical tools created from this system of knowledge, Finbog engages with multiple processes and expressions of Smi Indigenous identity and sovereignty within the context of museums and cultural heritage institutions. Using the practices, materials, and relations of Smi duodji as a lens, she thus provides new insights into the role of Smi museums as Indigenous institutions, and furthermore how such institutions have come to provide an important component of Smi epistemologies.
By way of multiple conversations as well as museum visits with duojrat, or practitioners of duodji, Finbog also investigates the relation between museums, duodji, and Smi source communities, showing how the formation of these relations have a massive impact on both Smi identities and perceptions of sovereignty. As such, the book provides a far more complex picture and understanding of museum collections, Smi museums as cultural heritage institutions, and the multiple and diverse processes that are initiated in the negotiation of Smi identities and expressions of sovereignty, than has been historically assumed.