Jensen Arctic Museum

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Jensen Arctic Museum
Jensen Arctic Museum 2 - Western Oregon University - Monmouth Oregon.jpg
Jensen Arctic Museum
Established1985
Location Monmouth, Oregon, United States
Coordinates 44°51′08″N123°14′33″W / 44.85215°N 123.24245°W / 44.85215; -123.24245
TypeArctic
Visitors4,000 (2006–07) [1]
CuratorRoben Jack [2]
Website website

The Paul H. Jensen Arctic Museum was a museum focused on the culture and environment of the Arctic in Monmouth in the U.S. state of Oregon. Located on the campus of Western Oregon University (WOU), the museum opened in 1985 with 3,000 artifacts collected by its late founder and namesake. The museum housed 5,000 artifacts and had exhibits on the wildlife of the Arctic along with displays that demonstrate the culture of the Inuit and Eskimo peoples of Alaska. The museum was one of only two museums focused on life in the Arctic located in the lower 48 states, [3] and the only one on the West Coast. [4] In 2013, WOU announced that the Jensen Museum would close its doors and the collections would move to the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History (MNCH) at the University of Oregon in Eugene, which also has substantial Arctic collections.

Contents

History

Jensen Arctic Museum was founded in June 1985 by Paul Jensen with artifacts he collected from Alaska. [5] The artifacts were collected over 25 years while he was a researcher and teacher, with most items in the collection coming from gifts from native Alaskans. [5] Jensen, a then retired professor at Western Oregon, served as the curator and director of the museum until his death in 1994. [5] By 1993 the collection had grown to 3,000 artifacts [6] and the museum had 7,000 visitors annually. [7]

To celebrate the ten-year anniversary in 1995, the museum held a party featuring traditional Eskimo dancers. [8] [9] The museum received $5,000 in a federal grant in 1997 to allow it to improve its preservation of artifacts. [10]

In January 2005, the museum sponsored the Whale in Science and Culture Symposium which featured speakers from the Oregon Coast Aquarium and Oregon State University's former president John V. Byrne among others. [11] Each year the museum hosted a traditional salmon bake as a fundraiser, with 300 pounds of salmon cooked each year. [12] The 28th annual salmon bake was held in 2013, when it was announced that the museum collection would move to the MNCH at the University of Oregon, the official repository for anthropological collections owned by the state of Oregon. Jon Erlandson, director of the MNCH, said that Arctic cultures and environments are rapidly changing and that the Jensen Arctic Collection holds priceless records of those changes that will be used for a variety of research and public education purposes.

Collections

William L. Iggiagruk Hensley visits the Jensen Arctic Museum and poses with an employee. William L. Iggiagruk Hensley and Andrew Parodi at Jensen Arctic Museum lec.jpg
William L. Iggiagruk Hensley visits the Jensen Arctic Museum and poses with an employee.

Focused on the culture of the Inuit and Eskimos of Alaska, the museum housed over 5,000 artifacts [1] in a former home on the campus of Western Oregon University in Monmouth. [3] [13] Included among the artifacts are items that demonstrate the natural environment of these native Alaskans. To showcase the environment, the museum had a room dedicated to Arctic wildlife. [13] This life-sized diorama is called the Circumpolar Room and had an automated system that provides a narrative on the animals of the Arctic while lights illuminate busts of these animals. [14] Animals on display included musk ox, wolves, Arctic fox, a polar bear, brown bears, a snowy owl, and caribou. [3] [13]

An extraordinary feature of the Jensen collection is a 27-foot-long (8.2 m) umiak, an Inuit boat with a frame constructed of driftwood and covered with walrus skins. [3] [6] This boat was given to Jensen by those inhabiting St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, and he used the boat to circle the island during a native hunt. [3] [6] Other large items include a traditional Inuit home constructed of stones, hides, whalebone, and driftwood as well as an 11-foot (3.4 m) long sled and a sod house. [6] [14]

The museum included displays that demonstrate the daily lives of the Inuit and Eskimos, primarily the Inupiaq and Yupik Eskimos. [3] [4] These included exhibits on the clothing and artwork. Artifacts include ivory carvings, parkas, [3] jackets made of seal, wolf, and bear skins, [6] a yo-yo-type children's toy, and an anchor made from a whalebone. [13] Other items in the collection include ropes, ivory from mammoth and mastodon tusks, animal bones, [15] ceremonial masks carved from wood or bone, wooden dolls, mukluks, combs carved from ivory, knives, and harpoon heads among others. [14] There is also a dog sled, kayak, snowshoes, baskets, and toys along with artwork. Artwork consists of drawings on sealskins using ink, with some pieces dating to the 1930s.

Namesake

The museum was named after the founder, Paul Henry Jensen, an immigrant from Denmark, [5] who as a child in Denmark had several classmates who were Inuit. [13] Jensen was born on August 17, 1907, in Teestrup, Denmark, and immigrated to Canada in 1925, only to return in 1927. [5] He served seven months in the army as required by law before immigrating to the United States in 1928. [5] Jensen landed at Ellis Island in 1928 and then moved to Montana before starting college first at Spokane College in Washington State. [5] In 1935, he graduated from Midland College in Nebraska with a bachelor's degree, followed by a doctorate in 1938 from the University of North Dakota. [5] He married Arlene Munkres and they had two sons and three daughters. [5]

After some graduate work at the University of Washington and Oregon State University, Jensen began field work in the Arctic. [5] Beginning in 1962, he worked to improve the cultural resources of the Eskimo, bringing over 3,000 people to Oregon as well establishing seven libraries in Alaskan villages. [5] In all he spent over 30 years teaching Eskimo children in Alaska. [7] In 1966, he was hired at Western Oregon State College (now Western Oregon University) as a researcher, and in 1968 became a professor at the school. [5] Jensen retired from teaching in 1979. [5] For his work with native Alaskans, he was named as an honorary member of the Alaska Council of Elders in 1984. [5] To the Eskimos he was known as Angyalik, which translates as captain of the ship. [5] The next year he founded the museum with his artifacts and served as curator and director until he died on September 26, 1994. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eskimo</span> Exonym used to describe Indigenous people from the circumpolar region

Eskimo is an exonym that refers to two closely related Indigenous peoples: Inuit and the Yupik of eastern Siberia and Alaska. A related third group, the Aleut, who inhabit the Aleutian Islands, are generally excluded from the definition of Eskimo. The three groups share a relatively recent common ancestor, and speak related languages belonging to the family of Eskaleut languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inuit languages</span> Branch of the Eskaleut language family

The Inuit languages are a closely related group of indigenous American languages traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and the adjacent subarctic regions as far south as Labrador. The Inuit languages are one of the two branches of the Eskimoan language family, the other being the Yupik languages, which are spoken in Alaska and the Russian Far East. Most Inuit people live in one of three countries: Greenland, a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark; Canada, specifically in Nunavut, the Inuvialuit Settlement Region of the Northwest Territories, the Nunavik region of Quebec, and the Nunatsiavut and NunatuKavut regions of Labrador; and the United States, specifically in northern and western Alaska.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yupik peoples</span> Indigenous peoples of Alaska and the Russian Far East

The Yupik are a group of Indigenous or Aboriginal peoples of western, southwestern, and southcentral Alaska and the Russian Far East. They are related to the Inuit and Iñupiat. Yupik peoples include the following:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iñupiat</span> Ethnic group

The Iñupiat are a group of Indigenous Alaskans whose traditional territory roughly spans northeast from Norton Sound on the Bering Sea to the northernmost part of the Canada–United States border. Their current communities include 34 villages across Iñupiat Nunaat, including seven Alaskan villages in the North Slope Borough, affiliated with the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation; eleven villages in Northwest Arctic Borough; and sixteen villages affiliated with the Bering Straits Regional Corporation. They often claim to be the first people of the Kauwerak.

The Thule or proto-Inuit were the ancestors of all modern Inuit. They developed in coastal Alaska by the year 1000 and expanded eastward across northern Canada, reaching Greenland by the 13th century. In the process, they replaced people of the earlier Dorset culture that had previously inhabited the region. The appellation "Thule" originates from the location of Thule in northwest Greenland, facing Canada, where the archaeological remains of the people were first found at Comer's Midden.

The Paleo-Eskimo were the peoples who inhabited the Arctic region from Chukotka in present-day Russia across North America to Greenland prior to the arrival of the modern Inuit (Eskimo) and related cultures. The first known Paleo-Eskimo cultures developed by 2500 BCE, but were gradually displaced in most of the region, with the last one, the Dorset culture, disappearing around 1500 CE.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ulu</span> Traditional all-purpose knife of Inuit, Yupik and Aleut women

An ulu is an all-purpose knife traditionally used by Inuit, Iñupiat, Yupik, and Aleut women. It is used in applications as diverse as skinning and cleaning animals, cutting a child's hair, cutting food, and sometimes even trimming blocks of snow and ice used to build an igloo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prehistory of Alaska</span>

Prehistoric Alaska begins with Paleolithic people moving into northwestern North America sometime between 40,000 and 15,000 years ago across the Bering Land Bridge in western Alaska; a date less than 20,000 years ago is most likely. They found their passage blocked by a huge sheet of ice until a temporary recession in the Wisconsin glaciation opened up an ice-free corridor through northwestern Canada, possibly allowing bands to fan out throughout the rest of the continent. Eventually, Alaska became populated by the Inuit and a variety of Native American groups. Trade with both Asia and southern tribes was active even before the advent of Europeans.

Dorothy Jean Ray was an author and anthropologist best known for her study of Native Alaskan art and culture.

James W. VanStone was an American cultural anthropologist specializing in the group of peoples then known as Eskimos. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania and was a student of Frank Speck and Alfred Irving Hallowell. One of his first positions was at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. In 1951, following completion of graduate studies, he joined the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. In 1955 and 1956, he conducted fieldwork with the Inuit at Point Hope, Alaska. Beginning in the summer of 1960, he started field work among Chipewyan Indians, living along the east shore of Great Slave Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories among eastern Athapaskans for a period of eleven months over three years. He died of heart failure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inuit art</span> Art created by Inuit of the Arctic

Inuit art, also known as Eskimo art, refers to artwork produced by Inuit, that is, the people of the Arctic previously known as Eskimos, a term that is now often considered offensive. Historically, their preferred medium was walrus ivory, but since the establishment of southern markets for Inuit art in 1945, prints and figurative works carved in relatively soft stone such as soapstone, serpentinite, or argillite have also become popular.

Based on archeological finds, Brooman Point Village is an abandoned village in Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is located in the central High Arctic near Brooman Point of the Gregory Peninsula, part of the eastern coast of Bathurst Island. Brooman was both a Late Dorset culture Paleo-Eskimo village as well as an Early Thule culture village. Both the artifacts and the architecture, specifically longhouses, are considered important historical remains of the two cultures. The site shows traces of Palaeo-Eskimo occupations between about 2000 BC and 1 AD, but the major prehistoric settlement occurred from about 900 to 1200 AD.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inuit</span> Indigenous peoples of northern North America

Inuit are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of North America, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Yukon (traditionally), Alaska, and Chukotsky District of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. Inuit languages are part of the Eskimo–Aleut languages, also known as Inuit-Yupik-Unangan, and also as Eskaleut. Inuit Sign Language is a critically endangered language isolate used in Nunavut.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qulliq</span> Traditional oil lamp used by Arctic peoples

The qulliq, is the traditional oil lamp used by Arctic peoples, including the Inuit, the Chukchi and the Yupik peoples.

Margaret Lantis was an American anthropologist, Eskimologist, and writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yupʼik doll</span>

Yup'ik doll is a traditional Eskimo style doll and figurine form made in the southwestern Alaska by Yup'ik people. Also known as Cup'ik doll for the Chevak Cup'ik dialect speaking Eskimos of Chevak and Cup'ig doll for the Nunivak Cup'ig dialect speaking Eskimos of Nunivak Island. Typically, Yup'ik dolls are dressed in traditional Eskimo style Yup'ik clothing, intended to protect the wearer from cold weather, and are often made from traditional materials obtained through food gathering. Play dolls from the Yup'ik area were made of wood, bone, or walrus ivory and measured from one to twelve inches in height or more. Male and female dolls were often distinguished anatomically and can be told apart by the addition of ivory labrets for males and chin tattooing for females. The information about play dolls within Alaska Native cultures is sporadic. As is so often the case in early museum collections, it is difficult to distinguish dolls made for play from those made for ritual. There were always five dolls making up a family: a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, and a baby. Some human figurines were used by shamans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eskimo yo-yo</span> Traditional two-balled skill toy

An Eskimo yo-yo or Alaska yo-yo is a traditional two-balled skill toy played and performed by the Eskimo-speaking Alaska Natives, such as Inupiat, Siberian Yupik, and Yup'ik. It resembles fur-covered bolas and yo-yo. It is regarded as one of the most simple, yet most complex, cultural artifacts/toys in the world. The Eskimo yo-yo involves simultaneously swinging two sealskin balls suspended on caribou sinew strings in opposite directions with one hand. It is popular with Alaskans and tourists alike. This traditional toy is two unequal lengths of twine, joined together, with hand-made leather objects at the ends of the twine.

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Tom Akeya is an Inuit ivory carver. His work has been sold in multiple places.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Research on Inuit clothing</span> History of research on Inuit clothing

There is a long historical tradition of research on Inuit clothing across many fields. Since Europeans first made contact with the Inuit in the 16th century, documentation and research on Inuit clothing has included artistic depictions, academic writing, studies of effectiveness, and museum collections. Historically, European images of Inuit were sourced from the clothing worn by Inuit who travelled to Europe, clothing brought to museums by explorers, and from written accounts of travels to the Arctic.

References

  1. 1 2 "About us". Jensen Arctic Museum. Western Oregon University. Retrieved 2009-10-03.
  2. ↑ "Climate Change at the Jensen Arctic Museum". Jensen Arctic Museum. Western Oregon University. Archived from the original on June 13, 2011. Retrieved April 1, 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Richard, Terry (February 17, 2008). "Take an Arctic trip to Monmouth". The Oregonian. Retrieved 2009-09-20.
  4. 1 2 "Oregon's arctic zone". Via. AAA Northern California, Nevada & Utah. November 2005.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Lane, Dee (September 29, 1994). "Champion of Eskimos dies in sleep at 87". The Oregonian. p. B8.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 "Get off the beaten track and find odds and ends of Oregon attractions". The Oregonian. August 20, 1992. p. B2.
  7. 1 2 From correspondent and wire reports (July 26, 1993). "Arctic museum at WOSC seeks volunteer guides". The Oregonian. p. B2.
  8. ↑ "Arctic museum marks 10 years". Register-Guard . July 21, 1995. pp. 7D. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
  9. ↑ From correspondent and wire reports (July 14, 1995). "Museum at WOSC slates birthday party on July 22". The Oregonian. p. D2.
  10. ↑ "Close-Up Today - Schools News & Update; $5,000 grant will help care for Jensen Museum artifacts". The Oregonian. August 19, 1997. p. B4.
  11. ↑ Kahler, Jamie (January 14, 2005). "The whales are coming to Western". Western Oregon Journal. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
  12. ↑ Knowlton, Stefanie (September 14, 2009). "A traditional approach". Statesman Journal .
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 Riley, Erin (January 6, 1994). "A lesson in Arctic culture". The Oregonian. p. D2.
  14. 1 2 3 Fencsak, Richard (May 22, 1998). "Art and Entertainment: Day Tripper; Angels and the Arctic await within day's drive of town". The Oregonian. p. 53.
  15. ↑ From correspondent and wire reports (June 23, 1994). "Open house marks milestone at Monmouth Arctic museum". The Oregonian. p. D2.
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