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Mary Collins is an American academic archaeologist. She served as a faculty member and museum director at Washington State University (WSU) in the department of anthropology from 1994 until her retirement in 2013. During her career at WSU, she was fundamental in working with local tribal communities and facilitating the return of cultural items and remains.

Early Life

Collins was born and raised as a fourth-generation farmer in Pullman, Washington. She graduated from Pullman High School in the early 1970’s.

Education

In the early 1970’s, Collins found herself attending college at University of Washington earning a degree in anthropology because it caught her interest even though she had no idea what she could do with an anthropology degree. She decided to start volunteering at the WSU museum. The work she was doing was fulfilling, but also made her realize she needed more education. The University of Idaho had a museum program and so she enrolled. Collins received her PhD in 1997 from Washington State University.

Early Career

Collins describes herself as being “second or third generation CRM”, a time when cultural resource management was really in its infancy. Cultural resource management was (in some cases still is) seen as a job that no one really knows what to do with. Collins noted, people “settle” for jobs in the private sector when academia doesn’t pan out for them. Her belief, is “CRM is really cool!”  Through the U of I, Mary applied and got a job working in northwest Montana. She (and others) was tasked with working in an area near Libby, Montana to evaluate the area and scout out potential archaeological sites. The intent was to build a dam. It never happened. The job lasted three years and was year-around. Collins had control of the lab because “that’s what women did”. One thing Collins learned was that she did not have the knowledge she felt was needed for this work. Looking back, she says none of them really did and she really wasn’t alone in that. Collins decided to take classes at Montana State on archaeological procedures taught by Bob Dunnell.

As the dam project was coming to an end, a job opening with the Forest Service came up and she applied. And was hired. This was a seasonal job lasting only nine months out of the year. The Forest Service had the idea that they would hire all these “-ologists” (as they called them according to Collins) and in ten years-time, they would have locations of all archaeological sites.

Things at the Forest Service were a bit different where they worked off planning units. They searched each planning unit and recorded any potential site for each area. One thing that stands out from her time working for the Forest Service, was that they had hired a Native American that could tell them where the Tribe’s “special places” were located. This was forward for the time, considering there was so much controversy and the government was trying to wade through the chaos. Again, we are talking about the 1970’s into the 1980’s. This is on the heals of Martin Luthor King Jr., Alcatraz takeover, the sit-in, and all the rallies, protests, and riots that those incited. Working with a Tribal member so early on in her career gave insight into issues and how to connect.

During her time at the Forest Service, Collins had enrolled at the University of Montana to get a master’s degree. Her time at the University was in-between her work at the Forest Service, a class here, a quarter there, but she finished. She ended up going back home and enrolling at WSU for their PhD program as a way to have more time with family before moving on to other things. She fully intended on returning to the Forest Service. However, life had different plans for Collins, and she met her future husband who was at the U of I as a fisheries biologist.

This brings us to the early 1990’s. NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection Act) was signed into law and museums were scrambling to inventory, send letters of notice, and repatriate artifact that had to be done by 1995. In 1992, Collins was hired as a student to help the  curator catalogue all the artifacts throughout the museum. There were multiple collections housed at WSU for the Army Corp of Engineers and WSU’s own collection from their CRM firm that was slowly being phased out.

This work found her dissertation topic. Going through the records, which at the time, were all paper because computers were not quite “in” yet, she wrote her paper on “how gender relations affected people at contact”, ahead of its time. If you ask Collins, her dissertation was “lousy”. Those of us looking at it today (and lived during this time) will tell you gender was not something anyone was paying much, if any attention to at the time. This took her some time to put together with having to comb through all the paperwork. She defended her dissertation in 1997.

In the meantime, it’s 1994, and the head curator was moving on from WSU. Collins continued to work on cataloging, mailing notices, and repatriating artifacts. Her boss, Dr. Bill Andrefsky was busy interviewing for the curator position, which was being restructured with the new hire. When Bill was preparing for a trip that would have him out of town for two weeks, he left Collins a list on a yellow notepad of paper of things that needed to be done. At the end of that note he wrote that she should apply for the job. So, she did. Collins still has that paper.

Collins loved her job even through all the scary ups and downs. When she was faced with some uncomfortable situations, she did not back down or try to pawn it off onto someone else. She took her dress-downs, she showed up, and she made things right.

NAGPRA had some scary parts yet humbling for Collins. Collins was invited to meetings to discuss repatriation strategies with the Army Corp of Engineers and all the Tribes associated with those artifacts. At one point, Collins admitted to them that her family was on Native land having taken it, the land. She felt it needed to be said to them, to their faces, they needed to know. Collins career went on to have a beautiful relationship with the Tribes she encountered.

Then Kennewick Man. During one of the monthly meetings, the Commander of the Corp took Collins aside, valuing her input, and giving her whatever it was she needed to make sure the rest of the repatriation process went smoothly. She was not about to do a shotty job and told him so. He allowed her five years instead of the one he first offered, to get it all done. She did.

When Collins took the job at WSU, her title was Assistant then morphed into Associate, and she was in charge of opening lines of communication with the Tribes whose artifacts they potentially held. Collins had a sort of open house at the museum for Tribal leaders to sit and discuss the next steps. Later, she met Peter Campbell who was visiting from Spokane, Washington who had just taken a position with the Tribe there but had been unable to make Collins meeting. They had about a two-hour conversation, and he told her three things that she should do next. He told her first, be uncomfortable. Second, she needs to go to them, not invite them to her turf, go to them and get to know them. Lastly, just listen. As Collins told this story, you could see the way the words had affected her then, and how they still have an effect today. She says, “I carry that…as special”. Peter Campbell had a heart attack that night after their conversation and passed away.

Eventually, Collins became the first Director of the museum at WSU. She has had the opportunities to meet, work with, and experience many things throughout her career including being invited by Tribes who were reburying their ancestors. An honor that most non-natives will not ever experience. Her work, being one of the leaders in repatriating items to their proper tribal affiliations, earned her a special place within Tribal culture. The Tribe’s valued her opinion asking what she would do. Having had to give testimony in a court of law before, Collins would give her advice telling them the anthropological suggestion and leaving it to them to make the choice they needed to make.

When asked, “What does CRM mean to you?”, her own words say it best:

Keep it rooted in tangibles, places, and objects. It’s like any other resource. The changes that I’ve seen in my lifetime versus…all the things that are required for us to be, physical and social beings are finite, and should be kept with care. We don’t want to be so focused on the past that we don’t address the present or the future. In terms of contemporary decisions, under the understanding the context of which things come is vitally important. They’re part of the story…like beautiful places.

Here is a link to the recording:   https://wsu.zoom.us/rec/play/aFAtuJi4WWEDv3y2hIMIwYhIjORRiUIJrIFuyfjxeXrujQRsug4Ok1JabOUnAQgO_Naje71aRCCyM4wR.E71K3FK5Ba2xWiC6

Dr. Mary Collins, Jan 30, 2023 videorecording, during Shannon Tushingham's spring 2023 graduate seminar in Cultural Resource Managment (ANTH 535)

Guest speaker presentation, interview, and class discussion on the history of Cultural Resource Managment (CRM) and the WSU Museum of Anthropology. Featuring Dr. Mary Collins (1997 WSU Phd ) is the retired Director of the WSU Museum of Anthropology and former Associate Director of the Plateau Center for American Indian Studies at WSU. The interview and discussion content is cited in a Wikipedia article about Dr. Collins by MA graduate student Tiffany Kite, which is an assignment for ANTH 535 and part of Tushingham and Lipe’s Pioneers in Americanist Biography Project.