2005 Nga Aho Tipuna (Ancestral Threads): Maori Cloaks from New Zealand (original) (raw)
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In postcolonial Melanesia, cultural discourses are increasingly organized around creole words, i.e. keywords of Bislama (Vanuatu) and Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea). These words make up (or represent) key features of an emerging ethnolinguistic worldview, which is partly born out of the colonial era, and partly out of postcolonial ethno-rhetoric. This paper explores two cultural keywords of Melanesia kastom 'traditional culture' in Bislama and pasim bilong tumbuna 'the ways of the ancestors' in Tok Pisin. The words kastom (from custom) and pasin (from fashion) are examples of semantic cryptodiversity, i.e. of words with an English surface, but with Melanesian-specific meanings. The study explores the pancronic semantics of three kastom meanings in Bislama, and pays specific attention to the shift from " negative " to " positive " , following from postcolonial rhetoric of, and its re-evaluation of the importance of ancestral practices. The Tok Pisin phrase pasin bilong tumbuna 'ways of the ancestors' 117 shares with kastom a number of semantic tropes and discursive functions, but it is used in a more descriptive and less celebratory way. Sociality terms in postcolonial discourse make up a fertile ground for understanding neo-cultures through their keywords.
High chief, waetman and the codification of ritual objects in Vanuatu
Made in Oceani. Social Movements, Cultural Heritage and the State in the Pacific, 2011
This is chapter 9 in the book 'Made in Oceania'. I describe a historical process of codification of kastom that took place in the social terrain between local chiefs in North Ambrym and the colonial district agents in the 1960s. I explore how the concept of kastom has in many ways served as an ideal appropriation of ‘cultural heritage’ – a concept that was at the core of the colonizers’ experience of native life. I situate that encounter between concepts inside the social movement that led to the Independence of Vanuatu in 1980, and aim to highlight how the contemporary discussion about ‘intellectual property rights’ was already anticipated in the controversies between the North Ambrym chiefs at that point. These events can be situated in a long trajectory of inter-cultural encounters, each of which plays out the field of cultural heritage as a paradoxical, ambiguous and troublesome terrain.
Oceania occupies an intriguing place within anthropology's genealogy. In the introduction to this collection of essays, we examine the role of the ethnography of Oceania in the development of our anthropological perspectives on materialisation, the dynamic process by which persons and things are inter-related. Building upon the recent resurgence of theoretical interests in things we use the term materialisation (rather than material culture or materiality) to capture the vitality of the lived processes by which ideas of objectivity and subjectivity, persons and things, minds and bodies are entangled. Taking a processual view, we advocate for an Oceanic anthropology that continues to engage with things on the ground; that asks what strategies communities use to materialise their social relations, desires and values; and that recognises how these processes remain important tools for understanding historical and contemporary Oceanic societies. Examining these locally articulated processes and forms contributes to a material (re)turn for anthropology that clarifies how we, as scholars, think about things more widely.
The Australian Journal of Anthropology (2009) 20, 3–27
Oceania occupies an intriguing place within anthropology’s genealogy. In the introduction to this collection of essays, we examine the role of the ethnography of Oceania in the develop- ment of our anthropological perspectives on materialisation, the dynamic process by which persons and things are inter-related. Building upon the recent resurgence of theoretical interests in things we use the term materialisation (rather than material culture or materiality) to capture the vitality of the lived processes by which ideas of objectivity and subjectivity, persons and things, minds and bodies are entangled. Taking a processual view, we advocate for an Oceanic anthropology that continues to engage with things on the ground; that asks what strategies communities use to materialise their social relations, desires and values; and that recognises how these processes remain important tools for understanding historical and contemporary Oceanic societies. Examining these locally articulated processes and forms contributes to a material (re)turn for anthropology that clarifies how we, as scholars, think about things more widely.
CREATION AND DESTRUCTION IN MELANESIAN MATERIAL CULTURE
Book chapter, 2019
Since the advent of European explorers, missionaries, traders and subsequent colonialism, Melanesian material culture has lived a double life (Thomas 2013: xi). On the one hand, indigenous material culture remained significant in local lives, despite many objects being abandoned, replaced by Western products, or destroyed by colonial agents. On the other hand, Melanesian objects were systematically collected by these same colonial agents, who included colonial officers, missionaries, traders and anthropologists. However, Melanesians have always had a complex relationship with things, which calls into question Western dichotomies between objects and subjects, keeping and giving, creating and destroying. Melanesian persons, it has been argued, are constituted out of things that are transacted as gifts (Strathern 1988, 1991; Wagner 1991). These ‘things’ may be objects such as pearl shells, beads, pigs or barkcloth, but also human blood, semen or nurture. The intimate relations between people and things are reworked in life- cycle rituals, such as initiations and mortuary rites, where objects are not only exchanged and given away, but also destroyed.
The Past Before Us: A Brief History of Tongan Kava
The Journal of the Polynesian Society, 2020
This article examines deep and contemporary history through analysis of the Tongan kava origin story, a kava chant, the rise of the kalapu ‘kava club’ in the twentieth century and the growing expansion of contemporary kava. It is argued that a key function of past and present kava practices is a ritual liminality of noa ‘neutralisation of protective restrictions’ that results from mediating mana ‘potency, honour’ and tapu ‘protective restrictions, set apart’. This is supported through ethnohistorical literature, song lyrics and ethnographic data. While the expressions, purpose, material and uses of kava evolve and change throughout time and space, from the titular ceremonies to the social rituals, they are connected through contextually specific mediations that establish noa. The kava origin story indicates a performance of mediations between ancient power relations, while the kava chant describes material culture alongside the establishment of the ritualised chiefly kava ceremony. Kalapu and the expanding contemporary kava practices today maintain connections to past practices while adapting to current circumstances such as global Tongan mobility and cultural diversity.
Claiming Ka Mate Maori Cultural Property and the Nations Stake
The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation, 2019
This chapter unpacks the sociocultural and legal issues surrounding the Māori haka (chant/dance) "Ka Mate" authored by Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha in the 1820s. In Aotearoa New Zealand, this beloved haka has become a symbolic display of biculturalism and is integral to the national imaginary. Historical associations and usages in wartime and sport, particularly rugby, have exacerbated associations with aggression and masculinity with essential meanings becoming diluted and erased with each further layer of appropriation. Important dialogues emerge from Ka Mate's complex location at the intersection of Indigenous cultural property, the public imagination, the nation-state, and global appropriation. Ka Mate's contentious legal history, including its recent repatriation to Ngāti Toa as an "intangible" taonga (treasure), highlights the problematics that the circulation of music and dance have for Indigenous custodial guardians, underscoring that repatriation must include an acknowledgment of history, context, and mana (integrity/power).