Experiential practice and learning take place in our classrooms. The ongoing Travelling Museum Exhibition “Piercing from Paris to the Pacific Northwest” began as part of the ANTH 303 Museums, Galleries, and Archives course (Dr. Shauna LaTosky). Students gained archival research practices, team building skills, and hands-on experience of many aspects of museum curation and the creation of gallery displays while practicing audience/ indigenous community engagement. 

Students created their own poster-based exhibition alongside a professionally curated (travelling) exhibit from Musée de l'Homme in Paris, researching and sharing their own experiences of body modification (tattooing, piercing). Their displays complemented the professional displays of archaeological evidence and modern cultural evidence of body marking in such cultures as the Mursi in southern Ethiopia to the Tlingit First Nations of the Northern Pacific Rim. This joint exhibition was launched at UNBC’s Robert Frederick Gallery with an open house and stayed on view for over a month. 

After the semester ended, five undergraduate students from the course worked with Dr. LaTosky to apply for, and were successfully granted, a group URE (Undergraduate Research) Award on Indigenous labrets on the Pacific Northwest Coast. Labrets are just one form of body modification – a traditional lip ornament. This Award allowed the group to collaborate and write a research paper for publication in a scholarly journal, as well as to organize for the exhibition to travel to UNBC’s regional campuses across northern BC.