To Feather the Shock: Extraction, Copying, and Rebreeding of Ethnographic Materials for Museum Collections

Rather than the focus on the extraction of minerals and labor as usual, this is an unconventional history of extractivism, focused on rebreeding for the purpose of extraction. The relationship between extractivism, potential extinction, and restitution as a remedy is also unfolded here—not as a simple cause and effect, but to indicate a future trajectory for the zones in which extractivism has lain waste to resources and where extinction already threatens many more species. In these cases, repatriation—often seen as highly political or cultural and, therefore, not directly impacting food or fresh water supplies—becomes, in the context of extractivism and extinction, a way to provide a direct response and raise necessary awareness.