thinking about fluff and practices of care that cuff

I'm thinking here about cuffing, reorientation, change of the direction in relation to the practice of care - efforts, movements, 'nudging' (as somebody well said) that create a fold, a space of/for activation…

I’m not sure about this example (especially now after the 'supplement') but I wanted to see how it resonates: this is the Manitou Stone on display in First Nations gallery of the Royal Alberta Museum. The Stone is one of the examples in the First Nations gallery where the complexity and liveliness of a thing is reduced to an inert object. Even though the label acknowledges the sacredness of the Stone to First Nations, the Stone is still displayed conventionally with Western sensibility in the historical context of the annihilation of the buffaloes by settlers without regard to its ongoing spiritual importance to First Nations nor recommendations of the communities.

The Stone in the display, RAM

It is important to note that the Manitou Stone, after being taken from the communities in 1866 by the Methodist missionaries and placed in Victoria Methodist College (Ontario) changed its location few times before it was transferred to Royal Alberta Museum in 2001 under condition that museum consults with the First Nations to seek advice for its appropriate care and location. Consultations undertaken between 2002 and 2004 recommended that the Stone should be returned to the Iron Creek area, or should it remain in the RAM, to be displayed in a separate area that allows privacy for prayer and performing ceremonies. Since 2004 the RAM hasn't fulfilled these guidelines.

The label

Nevertheless, evidence of the Stone’s ongoing activity is made visible as the Stone discretely but continually accumulates tobacco offerings at its base, indicating a progressive addition that marks time and reifies process. Here, tobacco offerings could be seen as a part of the Stone’s aesthetic whole, perhaps its cuff (or a fluff that signals a cuff), as a discrete microclimate/ecology that sustains and nourishes its liveliness and ongoing relevance. 

Tobacco offerings

This activity of tobacco offerings is not in any way encouraged by the museum, the caption does not suggest it nor does the design of the display; rather, these offerings are acts acknowledging the Stone’s ongoing spiritual importance by the communities and initiated by them.