Monthly Archives: April 2017

Object Lessons: Guest Post by Sarah Tamashiro

This is a guest post written by Sarah Tamashiro, a Masterʻs student in the History department at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa.

When the news of the auction of the Rainer Werner Bock Collection was released, it felt as if everyone on social media was talking about these objects.  Auctions that headline Pacific material culture are unusual, let alone an auction where the majority of the collection is of Hawaiian origin.  Aguttes was aware of the novelty of their auction and advertised the Bock Collection as the largest privately owned collection of Hawaiian material outside of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum (Honolulu, HI.)

The sale of Indigenous cultural material upsets the groups and descendants from which these objects were sourced.  Not knowing of the existence of the objects in the Bock Collection was enough to anger many of my Hawaiian friends and colleagues.  Private collectors that keep quiet about what is in their possession could potentially leave a whole generation of Natives in the dark about the location of their cultural material.  The rarity of the objects available to those only with money is also upsetting, especially because Hawaiians today lack the resources and knowledge to make objects at the level of quality of those in the Bock Collection.  The Bock objects left Hawaiʻi at a time when resources and knowledge were abundant and reproducible.  Over time, goods that were given during the early period of Hawaiian contact have become priceless, as the landscape and peoplescape of Hawaiʻi has changed drastically over the last few centuries.

Other Hawaiians were perturbed by the lack of provenance of the objects in the official catalog, especially objects of possible sacred origins.  Hawaiian activists like Edward Halealoha Ayau asked the auction house to “prove that you had informed consent to collect them, and if you have then you are free to do with them as you please.”[i]

Over time, goods that were given during the early period of Hawaiian contact have become priceless as the landscape and peoplescape of Hawaiʻi has changed drastically over the last few centuries.

The auction house did not present any documentation and the sale went on as planned.  The question of provenance that Ayau and other Hawaiians in the community posed regarding the history of the Bock objects reveals the great need for more historical research on objects from the past.  We need to reconstruct the historic systems of trade, commerce, and diplomacy that Hawaiians were engaging with to help answer questions of where, how, and under what circumstances did objects enter and exit Hawaii.  Failure to understand this history will continue to foreground traumatic stories of illegal and unjust stealing from Native peoples and sacred places rather than bringing attention to the complex global exchange that our ancestors were active participants in.

I was recently reading Reverend Hiram Bingham’s A Residence of Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands as side research for my thesis.  Historians and academics interested in the history of Christianity in Hawaii-Pacific or American-Hawaiian history are familiar with this text, one of the earliest written histories on the establishment of the Congregationalist Mission in Hawaii.

Bingham was a member of the first group of Christian missionaries to arrive in the Hawaiian Islands through the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.  In 1820, he and his cohort sailed on the Thaddeus from Boston to the western coast of Hawaiʻi Island.

This was my first time reading the words of Mr. Bingham and I was immediately struck by his attention to detail.  Bingham’s recollections of contact begin in chapter four of his memoir.  Shortly after turning into Kohala, the most northern district of Hawaiʻi Island, natives in canoes paddled to meet the Thaddeus.  They boarded the boat, ready to trade “their little articles of barter, and to look at the strangers.”[ii]  Faced for the first time with the natives that Bingham and company sought to morally save, the missionaries were horrified and began to question whether the Hawaiians were human and even trainable.  Yet, the answer was still a hard yes from Bingham.

Women of the Sandwich Islands by Louis Choris, circa 1816-1 (Honolulu Museum of Art).

The next day, the Thaddeus was greeted by another group of Hawaiians, this time by aliʻi (high-ranking chiefs determined by genealogy) and their entourage.  Bingham notes that aliʻi were “of a different race from those who had visited the vessel before, or decided superiority of the nobility over the peasantry.”[iii]  Whereas the first group was described as “naked savages, whose heads and feet, and much of their sun burnt swarthy skins, were bare,” the aliʻi were clothed in expensive western garments: gingham, silk, plaid, fur, objects not endemic to the middle of the Pacific.[iv]

Tattooed high chief in tailcoat and loincloth, and chiefess by Jacques Arago, 1819 (Honolulu Museum of Art).

These details provided by Bingham in two pages of text are fascinating.  In just over 40 years after contact with Captain James Cook, Hawaiʻi was a part of the globalized trade network.  By 1820, Hawaiians were no strangers to systems of trade and barter and they exhibited this upon their first contact with Bingham’s group.  The presence of western clothing, garments that in the world Bingham had just departed were considered high luxury items, indicates that Hawaiians were engaging with international fashion commerce.

What were Hawaiians reciprocating in exchanges with foreigners?  Bingham’s text also reveals what types of goods the Hawaiians were giving.  Bingham writes, “As a token of friendship and confidence, he (Kalanimoku) presented us with a spear,” to which the missionary party reciprocated the day following by presenting King Kamehameha II with “an elegant copy of the Bible, furnished by the American Bible Society.”[v]

Woman of the Sandwich Islands by Louis Choris, circa 1816 (Honolulu Museum of Art).

What I like about the Bingham text is that it reveals three different types of exchanges between Hawaiians and foreigners, illustrating how historical sources in both Hawaiian and English (if not other languages of foreigners to Hawaiiʻs shores) can help reconstruct the systems of commodities trade and economy.  We have one account of Hawaiians ready to trade at the first sight of foreigners.  We also have another account of the giving of a spear by a Hawaiian aristocrat, understood by Bingham as a gift of goodwill.  The missionaries reciprocate this by giving an object (although perhaps maybe not as fun as a bolt of gingham) to the King in the hopes of gaining trust.  All three transactions were made consciously with intention and purpose, prior to monetary valuing of objects.   This brief analysis of a historical moment is not even taking into account what lies outside of this frame.  How were Hawaiians exchanging before Bingham arrived and how did those proceedings influence this first interaction between the missionaries and Hawaiians?  How does the trade of services (i.e. food, sex) also impact the ways in which Hawaiians and foreigners interacted on Hawaiian shores?

My hope is that in talking about the value of Hawaiian material that we also look more closely at the culture of Hawaiian exchange, if not Native exchange systems around the world.

The Aguttes auction stirred up a lot of feelings and questions for many people.  The objects that were auctioned are representative of a Hawaiʻi very different from the colonial reality contemporary Hawaiians inhabit.  We have a tendency to look at the past nostalgically, however, often losing the context of history.  My hope is that in talking about the value of Hawaiian material that we also look more closely at the culture of Hawaiian exchange, if not Native exchange systems around the world.  Although sales of art and artifacts increase with legitimate provenance, auction houses are not obliged to complete provenance to the degree that which Native communities feel comfortable with.  Object history is one that Native people have the capability and resources to retell and the seeking of information is up to us collectively.

Sarah Tamashiro is a Masterʻs student in the History department at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Her thesis focuses on the social history of the establishment of the Anglican Church to Hawaiʻi. She received her BA in Art History from Occidental College.

NOTES

[i] “Protest against Native Hawaiian Items up for Auction in Paris,” accessed April 19, 2017, http://www.kitv.com/story/35029893/protest-against-native-hawaiian-items-up-for-auction-in-paris.

[ii] Hiram Bingham, A Residence of Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands; Or, The Civil, Religious, and Political History of Those Islands: Comprising a Particular View of the Missionary Operations Connected with the Introduction and Progress of Christianity and Civilization Among the Hawaiian People (H. Huntington, 1847), 81.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ibid., 81–82.

[v] Ibid., 87.

 

The Ancient One Goes Home

On May 15, the University of Washington will host a celebration of the return of the human remains known to the general public as Kennewick Man. To the tribal coalition (Yakama, Umatilla, Nez Perce, Colville and Wanapum tribes) who successfully argued that the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) mandated his repatriation to his descendants and interment in a traditional ceremony, he is The Ancient One.

Women from the Confederated Tribes appealing for the repatriation of The Anceint One (PHOTOGRAPH BY WILLIAM ALBERT ALLARD, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE)

In previous posts, I have related the story of his “discovery,” the decades-long arguments about his ethnicity, and how DNA evidence just released last year confirmed that he is an ancestor of the the indigenous peoples of the Columbia River basin (see “The Ancient One”). Even after this confirmation, however, he remained locked in a vault, awaiting the final legal ruling that would return him to his people. In February of this year, some 200 members of the tribes who fought for his return buried him in a private ceremony at an undisclosed location in the Columbia Basin.

 

The Laissez Faire Ethics of Global Culture Brokers

Investors in indigenous art anxiously awaited last week’s auction of the Rainer Werner Bock collection of Native Hawaiian materials. Gathered over a twenty-year period, it numbers some 1000 items, ranging from pounding stones to medicine bundles.

A visit to the online auction catalog of the esteemed French auction house Aguttes yields page after page of objects, each within its own little well-lit, immaculately photographed rectangle. Here, a huge run of grinding stones dating to the 18th century; there, a “stone medicine bowl,” its dating and method of “collection,” uncertain. The sale last week contained items of great historic interest as well, including a spear said to have been collected by Captain Cook during his third expedition in 1779/80, and a flag from the Hawaiian monarchic period.

Hawaiian flag, Monarchy Period (c. 1795-1893).

But where the avid collector of “antiquities” sees bargains and objet d’art to decorate a home, others find evidence of a forced diaspora of the stuff of Kanaka Maoli life.

One item in particular caught my eye, a “ceremonial bundle” from the nineteenth century. Is a religious utensil art? How was it acquired? If one community wishes to treat their religious objects as museum pieces, must all others?

Needless to say, not everyone was happy with the proposed sale. Native Hawaiian Edward Halealoha Ayau took a day off from sightseeing with his family on a European vacation to picket the auction house. When reached by phone on Hawaii’s KITV Island News, Ayau explained, “All we are asking is for the sellers to provide us with documentation that demonstrated that these were legitimate Hawaiian objects that were collected lawfully.  . . . All we asked them to do was to prove the provenance of these items, ‘prove that you had informed consent to collect them, and if you have then you are free to do with them as you please.’”

All we are asking is for the sellers to provide us with documentation that demonstrated that these were legitimate Hawaiian objects that were collected lawfully

Edward Halealoha Ayau

 

 

 

 

This is not the first time that a prestigious Paris auction house has been embroiled in controversy over trafficking in indigenous cultural objects.

Back in 2013, the Néret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou auction house in Paris put into bidding a collection of rare Hopi and Navajo ceremonial masks whose provenance was unclear. When concerned tribal members tried to take the auctioneers to court, French legal authorities held that the Hopi tribe had no legal standing in France. From the point of view of some outside observers, this ruling meant that the Paris market in antiquities had become “a safe haven for any indigenous cultural property.” The auction netted $1.2 million. 70 of these masks remain in private hands.

Later that year, another Paris dealer offered yet another set of masks, but this time, as the LA Times reported, “the L.A.-based Annenberg Foundation phoned in anonymous bids, landing 21 Hopi masks and three sacred Apache headdresses for $530,000, in order to return them to the tribes.” http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-native-american-hopi-sacred-mask-auction-paris-20140627-story.html

In 2016, Indian Country Today featured an interview with Tlingit Athabascan artist Crystal Worl, who was in Paris for an exhibition of her work. Once again, art dealers in the French capital were auctioning off Hopi masks. Among the lots were also a set of Haida and Tlingit ceremonials items. Worl joined other protesters outside the auction house, explaining to ICT reporter Dominique Godrèche,

My grandmother wanted me to be there; she knew what the Tlingit items meant. So I joined the protest, standing outside, holding signs. Hoping that this protest would reach the buyers, and they would give back the pieces to the community. We want them, because we are striving, as a culture . . . . [S]tanding there, at the auction, and seeing my ancestors was frustrating . . . I went to the Northwest coast room to see the objects, and they saw me: I wanted them to know that we are there for them, and we will wait for them. Their cultural value is essential to us: stories are related to each object, passed on to the next generation. All the pieces contain the spirits of the ancestors who created them. There is no Tlingit word for art, as our ceremonial objects are living beings. So this event was unfair; the items are our ancestors, they belong to our communities.

https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/culture/arts-entertainment/ceremonial-objects-trickster-skateboards-and-protesting-an-auction-tlingit-artist-crystal-worl-in-paris/

I went to the Northwest coast room to see the objects, and they saw me: I wanted them to know that we are there for them, and we will wait for them.

Crystal Worl

Chrystal Worl (second from left) and others protesting in Paris. (Indian Country Today, Csia-Nitassin)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yet amidst this seemly wholesale disregard for indigenous cultural sovereignty, there is still some good news to report. The April 5-7 auction did not go well for Aguttes. As Thomas Admanson of the Associated Press reported last week, “only two of the least valuable lots sold for 10,455 euros ($11,134). The auctioneers believe “buyers apparently were scared off by a protest . . .”

Because the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) does not cover items in private collections, and is not recognized outside the U.S., Article 31 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People offers guidance on how these issues should be handled in the global art marketplace:

Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing arts. They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions. 2. In conjunction with indigenous peoples, States shall take effective measures to recognize and protect the exercise of these rights.

When courts and ethnics guidelines fail, it becomes the work of everyday people like Edward Halealoha Ayau and Crystal Worlreally all of us—to remind others of their responsibilities to the living cultures of the indigenous world.

 

 

Massasoit Returns Home (April 7, 2017)

As reported by Cape Cod Today, the remains of the Wampanoag tribal leader who first parlayed with the English settlers known as the “Pilgrims,” were returned to their homeland on April 7, 2017.

(See the full article here http://www.capecodtoday.com/article/2017/04/12/231617-Wampanoag-Massasoit-Returns-Original-Burial-Site)

Known in his Native language as 8sâmeeqan, the Wamanoag tribal leader was finally interred in a traditional Wampanoag ceremony earlier this month. This marks the end of a 20-year quest by tribal members who sought to bring together the scattered remains from the holdings of seven different museum collections. As reported on the tribe’s website, the effort was spearheaded by “Ramona Peters, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act Director for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe; Repatriation Officers, Edith Andrews of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), Kenneth Alves of the Assonet Band of Wampanoag, and John Peters Jr. of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.”

For more information, see (https://www.massasoithomecoming.com/news/)

 

 

The Ethical Battle Over Ancient DNA

Ancient DNA researchers have learned to collaborate with American Indian tribes in relevant cases. But still more sensitivity is needed.

Source: The Ethical Battle Over Ancient DNA

By Michael Balter

“The time when scientists should go and study ancient human remains from the Americas without some kind of tribal engagement has passed,” . . . For many tribal groups, human remains from the Americas are considered ancestors whether or not there is evidence of cultural or genetic links.”  

DNA expert Eske Willerslev

 

Correction: April 3, 2017
An earlier version of this article stated that the Chaco civilizations cultural influence spread throughout the Four Corners region of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado, and possibly as far south as Mexico. This has been updated to make it clear that its influence spread throughout what is today known as the Four Corners region and modern-day Mexico.  

This work first appeared on SAPIENS under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license. Read the original here.