Refocusing Ethnographic Museums through Oceanic Lenses

316 Pages·2021·8.283 MB·English

by  Philipp Schorch

REFOCUSING ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUMS
THROUGH OCEANIC LENSES

REFOCUSING ETHNOGRAPHIC MUSEUMS
THROUGH OCEANIC LENSES
Philipp Schorch
with
Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu
Sean Mallon
Cristián Moreno Pakarati
Mara Mulrooney
Nina Tonga
and
Ty P. Kāwika Tengan
University of Hawai‘i Press
Honolulu
© 2020 University of Hawai‘i Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
25 24 23 22 21 20 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020933166
Cover art: Mahina Poepoe (the many faces of the full moon)
by Hawaiian kapa artist Verna Takashima (Kanaka ‘Ōiwi).
Made of wauke (paper mulberry) and natural dyes in 2017,
this artwork conveys how pō/darkness gives birth to beauty,
diversity, and creative complexity.
University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free
paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and
durability of the Council on Library Resources.
Contents
vii
List of Illustrations
ix
Acknowledgments
xi
Note on the Text
1
Introduction
PART I Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Hawai‘i 19
1
I Kū Mau Mau: Restoring Hawaiian Intent, Presence,
21
and Authority with Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu
2
Rethinking Temporalities: Curatorial Conversations,
43
Material Languages, and Indigenous Skills
PART II Museo Antropológico Padre Sebastián Englert, Rapa Nui 69
3
Cross-Cultural Journeys: Informants, Collections,
and Communities with Cristián Moreno Pakarati
71
and Mara Mulrooney
4 94
Curating an Island, Curing Rapa Nui
PART III Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Aotearoa New Zealand 119
5
Materializing German-Sāmoan Colonial Legacies
121
with Sean Mallon and Nina Tonga
6
“Anthropology’s Interlocutors” and the Ethnographic
147
Condition
178
Conclusion: An Ethnographic Kaleidoscope
183
Afterword: Regenerating Maka by Ty P. Kāwika Tengan
191
Notes
249
Bibliography
289
Contributors
291
Index
v

List of Illustrations
Figures
Figure I.1 Ceremony at Bishop Museum, 2016 7
Figure I.2 Private ceremony at Bishop Museum, 2016 7
Figure 1.1 Kamehameha Boys’ School students, circa 1895 25
Figure 1.2 L ahilahi Webb with two wooden images at
Bishop Museum, 1936 28
Figure 1.3 Peter Buck (Te Rangihīroa) and Mary Kawena
Pukui at Bishop Museum, 1940s 30
Figure 1.4 M āori delegation, women’s association
conference, 1968 34
Figure 1.5 E Kū Mau Mau ~ The Return of Kū, Bishop
Museum, 2004 36
Figure 2.1 Makaloa mat, 1874 51
Figure 2.2 Artwork, Nā‘ū nā kala, 2014 54
Figure 2.3 Artwork, Looking Forward into the Past,
Bishop Museum, 2013 58
Figure 2.4 Jasmine Kupihea, dancer from Hālau o Kekuhi,
wearing kapa skirt, 2016 59
Figure 3.1 “Easter Island: Tepano making a statue,”
Juan Tepano, 1934–1935 80
Figure 3.2 C ristián Moreno Pakarati and Carlos Paoa
Huke identify individuals in photographs, 2016 87
Figure 3.3 “Easter Island: Natives in Sunday attire,” 1934–1935 88
Figure 3.4 “Easter Island: Native boy with statues,” 1934–1935 89
Figure 4.1 Poster of film Te Kuhane O Te Tupuna—El Espírito
de los Ancestros, 2015 105
Figure 4.2a “Ahu of Tongariki,” 1946 106
Figure 4.2b Ahu Tongariki, 2016 106
Figure 4.3 Entrance to former leprosarium 107
ŋ
Figure 4.4 Entrance to Ho a‘a o te Mana—Aldea Educativa
Rapa Nui, 2016 109
Figure 4.5 Conjunto central of the former leprosarium 109
Figure 4.6 Casa del arte (house of art), 2016 110
Figure 4.7 Computer lab in the form of an egg, 2016 111
vii
viii Illustrations
Figure 4.8 T angata manu performed and displayed at
Tapati farándula, 2016 114
ŋ
Figure 4.9 Manu piri resurrected outside and inside Ha a
Roa church, 2016 114
Figure 5.1 Commemorative Coin, 2010 131
Figure 6.1 Mulinu‘u Peninsula, Upolu, raising German
imperial flag, 1900 150
Figure 6.2 Postcard, “German War Flag captured at Samoa,”
1914–1916 153
Figure 6.3 Postcard, “Hoisting the Union Jack in Samoa,”
1914 155
Figure 6.4 German handheld stamp, circa 1900 157
Figure 6.5 B anner (Alofa‘aga o Malifa mo misi Latafoti
ma le Faletua), 1919 164
Figure 6.6 E yeland Part 6-Glass Walls and Dark Seas, research
notes, Berlin, 2014 172
Figure 8.1 Art work, Ki‘i Kupuna: Maka 187
Plates (following page 140)
Plate 1 Postage Stamps, “Samoa I Sisifo: Sixth Anniversary of
Independence,” 1968
Plate 2 Postage Stamps, “Opening of Berlin Wall, 1989” and
“Treaty of Berlin, 1889”
Plate 3 Commemorative Coin, 1980
Plate 4 Beer bottle label, Apia, late twentieth century
Plate 5 Pennant and pin, Hamburg, 2016
Plate 6 Reproduction of postcard, Germany, 1903
Plate 7 Patch, Aotearoa New Zealand, 2005
Plate 8 Digital poster, Germany, 2015
Acknowledgments
This book is the outcome of collaborative research carried out between
2014 and 2016 and written up between 2017 and 2018. First, I am in-
debted to Noelle, Cristián, Mara, Sean, Nina, and Ty for engaging over
several years to see this book come into fruition. As an experiment in
rethinking, or refocusing, and writing, the process was complex and exhaust-
ing, but ultimately very rewarding. I also thank the three museums—
Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Hawai‘i; Museum of New Zealand Te
Papa Tongarewa; and Museo Antropológico Padre Sebastián Englert,
Rapa Nui—as well as its various staff members (many of whom are
named throughout the text) for making the research possible. Those in-
dividuals, like many others I have encountered over the last fifteen years
of traveling, working, researching, and living across Oceania, have
turned this part of the world into my second home, and have made me
become a scholar—I shall never forget and always treasure.
Further, I extend my gratitude to my dear mentors Eveline Dürr and
Conal McCarthy, who supported and advised me on the project while
I was a research fellow at the Institut für Ethnologie at the Ludwig-
Maximilians-Universität München, Germany, funded first through a
stipend from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and then a fellowship from the
European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme
under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 659660 as
well as European Research Council Starting Grant No. 803302, Indige-
neities in the 21st Century. I also appreciate the anonymous reviewers
and the acquisitions editor, Masako Ikeda, who assisted with their crit-
ical comments and reflections in the development and completion of
the manuscript.
Finally, I extend my heartfelt thanks to my family and friends for
their continuous support and to my wife Eliza for being Eliza, the back-
bone of my life.
Philipp Schorch, December 2019
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