Producer unknown to us
A pair of moccasins
Americas, Canada, Quebec, Mashteuiatsh Reserve
1959
Moose leather, tanned, sewn
Eva Lips (ethnologist) acquired the item on a research trip to Canada (1959)
Purchased by the Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden from Elisabeth Malüg on December 6, 1989
NAm 4979 a, b
This pair of Innu (Montagnais) men’s moccasins is made of smoked moose leather, designed in a traditional pattern and machine-stitched with twine. This particular piece is a subassembly. No decorations have been added to these pieces, which were originally supposed to be embroidered with decorations, as they were intended to be sold.
Eva Lips (ethnologist, 1906–1988) acquired the moccasins on a trip to Canada in 1959. During their exile in the United States (1934–1947), she and her husband conducted field research among Indigenous communities in the northeastern woodlands, such as the Innu. After returning to Germany, Julius became director of the Leipzig Institute of Ethnology but died shortly thereafter. Eva Lips then chaired the institute until her retirement. Her trip to Canada in 1959 was one of the few research trips to Western countries possible at the time. The ethnographic objects collected on this trip thus present a rarity in the museum’s collection history during the GDR.
Frank Usbeck