Bears like us: Blurring species boundaries through embodied experiences of museum skeleton specimen preparation

Though regional Indigenous concepts of nonhuman personhood have always known that bears are people, traditional Western museum specimen collections reify differences between humans and bears that embodied experiences contradict. The interspecies material blurriness of bone and flesh makes specimen preparation an interesting site of sensory decolonization of museum collections. This paper uses ethnographic engagement with the skeleton preparation process at the Pratt Museum in Homer, Alaska, to evidence how engagement with animal bones can produce cross-species self-recognition. Through analysis of Lee Post's skeleton preparation methodology, notebooks and experiences from 2001–2003 summer education programs, and the author's personal experiences, this paper provides ethnographic description of the impact of specimen preparation on embodied “zoomimetic” awareness. The history of Western anatomy and medicine contextualizes how animal interiors delineate anxiety over human relationships to nature. Bears’ physical similarities to humans lend uncanniness to settler-bear interactions, which extends to their material bodies. Reference specimens in museums create expert objects that textualize the subtle differences between bears and humans, and the processing of animal bones through cleaning, boiling, and chemical soaking, serve to “overmine” bone to reveal these differences. Volunteer students of the Pratt's “Summer Adventure Program” experienced recognition of similarities between a black bear and their own bodies, enhanced by the haptic attention of drawing and the identification of pathological indices of the individual life experiences of “Wiley” the bear. The production of the bear skeleton specimen as a clear, detailed material which would maintain traditional Western museum boundary between species instead creates opportunity to subvert anthropocentrism and recognize shared interiors and individuality of bearkind.