In this film, historians, artists, anthropologists and members of the indigenous communities in Australia, New Zealand and Canada, consider contemporary perspectives on Cook’s voyages and examine their legacy.
Queen Liliʻuokalani, the last sovereign of the of the Kalākaua Dynasty, c. 1891, gelatin silver print, sheet 38 x 29 cm (Library of Congress)
The Queen’s accession photograph
On January 29, 1891, the USS Charleston appeared in Honolulu Harbor on Oʻahu and quickly dispatched a message to the shore, informing Liliʻuokalani, then acting as regent during her brother King Kalākaua’s absence, that the king was dead. The Charleston had brought his body home from California. That afternoon, Liliʻuokalani would ascend to the throne as Hawaiʻi’s new queen. She was stepping into this role with her power and authority already under threat by a white male oligarchy that had steadily been chipping away at Hawaiian sovereignty throughout her brother’s reign. [1] Reflecting upon this moment seven years later, Liliʻuokalani said, “I was so overcome by the death of my dear brother, so dazed with the suddenness of the news which had come upon us in a moment, that I hardly realized what was going on about me, nor did I at all appreciate for the moment my situation.” [2] This moment would be commemorated in both words and images, including an accession photograph showing Queen Liliʻuokalani seated in state. This photograph presents Liliʻuokalani as regal and confident, and dressed in royal finery. It was tied to Hawaiʻi’s international relations, representing the monarchy’s sovereign right to rule for local and global audiences. This was particularly important given European and American interests in gaining political and economic control over the kingdom because of its strategic location in the Pacific.
Photography in the Pacific Islands was often used to objectify and other Indigenous peoples in encounters with media that was typically controlled and defined by Euro-Americans and their visual traditions. Photography in the 1890s was not commonly seen as a mobile technology that was creatively integrated into Indigenous cultures. While this is true in many circumstances it is not the case in Hawaiʻi, especially during the nineteenth century. By mid-century, the demand for photography was so high that studios and galleries known as na hale paʻi kiʻi or “houses of photography” were prevalent throughout the island chain. References to photographic media were also common in Hawaiian language newspapers, which likened photography to a “good catch of fish,” suggesting connections between material wealth, good fortune, and photography. [3] The metaphoric link between photography and fish in a popular Hawaiian language news source indicates the widespread social, cultural, and political interests Indigenous Hawaiians had for this media. Queen Liliʻuokalani’s accession photograph can be considered a conduit for such interests on both the local and global levels.
Queen Liliʻuokalani, the last sovereign of the of the Kalākaua Dynasty (detail), c. 1891, gelatin silver print, sheet 38 x 29 cm (Library of Congress)
The politics of the picture
Taken in 1891 using the popular silver-gelatin printing photographic process (likely with a glass negative, as film negatives were not in wide circulation and use until the twentieth century), the photograph shows Queen Liliʻuokalani ornamented in jewels and wearing a gown embroidered with seed beads and a sash crossing her body. The royal order of Kalākaua I is notably displayed: it is a Maltese cross, with a Kāhili or royal staff at the center, and is encircled by an inscription that reads “Kalākaua February 12 1874.” Four bracelets encircle each of her arms.
The warm tones of this image may be the unintended effect of age or the result of warm tone gelatin-silver paper. In either case, the tonal qualities render prominent contrasting textures such as the feathers of the fan that she holds and the luminous folds of her dress. Close scrutiny of her gown reveals delicate swirling volutes that combine to make a plant leaf pattern, recalling Hawaiʻi’s native flora. A jeweled flower broach emerges from a delicate patch of beadwork at her neckline. The throne on which she sits is draped in a feather cloak while her feet rest on a large fur rug.
Queen Liliʻuokalani, the last sovereign of the of the Kalākaua Dynasty (detail), c. 1891, gelatin silver print, sheet 38 x 29 cm (Library of Congress)
Like many other Hawaiian artistic expressions, Liliʻuokalani’s accession photograph is rich in metaphor and layers of meaning, indicative of potent connections between the Queen as sovereign, her ʻāina (land), and place. For example, the decorative pattern on the Queen’s gown is reminiscent of taro leaves. Taro is an important food staple in Hawaiʻi. Its cultivation was threatened by colonial water management.
ʻiʻiwi bird (photo: Marvin Kawano, Big Island Hawaiʻi, 2021)
The feather cloak draped across the throne is another object in the photograph with significant connections to place. Feathers, and featherwork objects including necklaces known as lei, royal staffs (kāhili), and cloaks materially manifested the link between local birds like the ʻiʻiwi and mamo, and the power and authority of Hawaiian elites. Objects like these were worn or displayed at important political events. [4] These featherwork objects were of social, political and religious importance.
Their display at events and in spaces of importance drew on older Hawaiian artistic traditions and practices. Prior to the nineteenth century, Hawaiian artisans produced large feathered sculptures representing specific deities and feathered helmets worn by chiefly men at important political and religious events. The appearance of the featherwork cloak in the accession photograph foregrounds the Queen’s sacred status and places it within the same artistic lineage of visual expressions of power and prestige—in this case in the form of objects of state, such as the mahiole (feathered helmets) from Hawaii. As such, we can read the inclusion of these objects in the photograph as a pointed statement about Queen Liliʻuokalani’s authority.
Left: Queen Emma with the silver christening font for her son Albert Kamehameha, a gift from Queen Victoria, c. 1880, photographer A. A. Montano (Hawaiʻi State Archives); right: Queen Kapiolani, c. 1883, photographer J. J Williams (Hawaiʻi State Archives)
Rather than being an anomaly in nineteenth century Hawaiʻi, the Queen’s accession photograph also stands as one prominent example among many, of Hawaiian royalty using photography to create images that promoted Hawaiian sovereignty and self-determination. Other notable examples including a photograph of Queen Emma with a silver christening cup and Queen Kapiolani’s coronation photograph. Cultivating public images like these photographs directly refuted colonial narratives that presented Indigenous Hawaiians as childlike and stuck in the past. These photographic portraits became part of the royal family’s strategy for advancing the interests of the Hawaiian people and maintaining sovereignty. Photography became coupled to Hawaiʻi’s national and international interests, allowing for creative combinations between Indigenous visual forms and newly encountered ones.
Queen Liliʻuokalani, the last sovereign of the of the Kalākaua Dynasty, c. 1891, gelatin silver print, sheet 38 x 29 cm (Library of Congress)
Accession imagery, and power in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi
Queen Victoria, replica by Sir George Hayter (based on a work from 1838), 1863, oil on canvas, 285 x 179 cm (National Portrait Gallery)
Liliʻuokalaniʻs accession photograph derives some of its power by drawing on coronation or accession images common to European monarchies, though it does so in a uniquely Hawaiian way. Such images (both painted and photographed) present the monarch enthroned, bearing symbols of their state power and authority. In Queen Liliʻuokalani’s accession photograph this was accomplished by adopting the posture and style common in portraits and photographs of European aristocrats and through careful curation of the mise-en-scène (a stage set that tells a story). [5] For example, Queen Liliʻuokalani’s is posed frontally, her head angled to the left and as she gazes out past the photograph’s frame, a posture that is similar to the one found in the coronation painting by George Hayter of Queen Victoria of England. As with Victoria, Liliʻuokalani is opulently adorned, the folds of her dress, the cloak at her back, and fur rug on the ground blurring the boundaries between her body and the throne and providing her figure with an increased appearance of solidity and strength. Finally, Queen Liliʻuokalani also appears with several objects of state, including the royal order of Kalākaua I and the featherwork cloak.
The features of this photograph constitute far more than fashionable tailored choices. They are material expressions of Queen Liliʻuokalani’s royal authority and responsibility to her people and land. [6] This visual statement is crucial given that two years later, on January 17, 1893, Queen Liliʻuokalani’s reign would end in a successful coup by foreigners, including Sanford B. Dole, a prominent descendant of American missionaries and cousin to James Dole (the founder of Dole Food Company).
Kūpaʻa ma hope o ka ʻāina (ever loyal to the land) [7]
Far from being an ending, the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 would mark a new phase of advocacy on the part of Queen Liliʻuokalani to restore control of her homeland from U.S. settlers to the Hawaiian people. Her accession image would help to shape these efforts and be shaped by them. For example, in 1916, twenty-three years after the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and eighteen years after Hawaiʻi was officially annexed to the United States, Queen Liliʻuokalani gave a copy of this photograph to Joseph Daniels, then U.S. Naval Secretary. The timing and chosen gift are apt; Liliʻuokalani certainly had dozens of other photographs of herself to choose from but settled on an image that reaffirmed her unrelinquished right to rule, a message that pervades everything within the photo from the choice of medium and composition to the display of material wealth. Her legacy continues today with the accession photograph taking on renewed potency and finding new life in contemporary art, on items of popular culture such as t-shirts, and within spaces like the 2020 Onipaʻa Peace March and protests against the Ten Meter Telescope. In one 21st-century re-interpretation of this photograph by the mural artists Estria Miyashiro and John ʻPrimeʻ Hina, they explicitly draw connections between the Queen and land, with her throne transforming into the landscape itself, complete with terraced loʻi kalo (taro patch).
William F. Cogswell, Queen Lili’uokalani, and Maria Kealaulaokalani Lane Ena, ʻAhu ʻula (The Kalākaua Cape)
by Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay and Dr. Beth Harris
This royal portrait and cape convey the power of the Hawaiian monarchy and the tensions around the momentous historical events of 1898.
William F. Cogswell, Queen Lili’uokalani, 1891, oil on canvas, 243.8 x 182.9 cm (Hawai‘i State Archives, Honolulu) and Maria Kealaulaokalani Lane Ena, ʻAhu ʻula (The Kalākaua Cape), late 19th century, red ʻiʻiwi feathers, yellow and black ʻōʻō feathers, and olonā fiber, 76.2 x 193 cm (National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.). Speakers: Dr. Kate Clarke Lemay, Historian, National Portrait Gallery, and Dr. Beth Harris in the exhibition “1898: U.S. Imperial Visions and Revisions” at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Master sailors fashioned these maps from sticks and cowrie shells, registering relationships between land and sea.
Navigation Chart, late 19th century (Marshall Islands), wood, fiber, and shells (American Museum of Natural History, New York). Speakers: Dr. Jenny Newell, Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Tina Stege. URL: https://youtu.be/rrJkjEYJLWs?si=NlFxJ6CwQNPKaDFH
Navigation between the islands
The Marshall Islands in eastern Micronesia consist of thirty-four coral atolls consisting of more than one thousand islands and islets spread out across an area of several hundred miles. In order to maintain links between the islands, the Marshall Islanders built seafaring canoes. These vessels were both quick and manouverable. The islanders developed a reputation for navigation between the islands—not a simple matter, since they are all so low that none can be seen from more than a few miles away.
In order to determine a system of piloting and navigation the islanders devised charts that marked not only the locations of the islands, but their knowledge of the swell and wave patterns as well. The charts were composed of wooden sticks; the horizontal and vertical sticks act as supports, while diagonal and curved ones represent wave swells. Cowrie or other small shells represent the position of the islands. The information was memorized and the charts would not be carried on voyages.
This chart is of a type known as a rebbelib, which cover either a large section or all of the Marshall Islands. Other types of chart more commonly show a smaller area. This example represents the two chains of islands which form the Marshall Islands. It was collected by Admiral E.H.M. Davis during the cruise of HMS Royalist from 1890 to 1893.
This chart is of the type known as a mattang, specifically made for the purpose of training people selected to be navigators. Such charts depict general information about swell movements around one or more small islands. Trainees were taught by experienced navigators.
Source: The British Museum, “Navigation Chart, Marshall Islands,” in Smarthistory, April 1, 2017, accessed August 24, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/chart-marshall/.
RELIGION and PHILOSOPHY
Bis Poles at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
by Dr. Maia Nuku and Dr. Steven Zucker
Nine Bis Poles, from left to right: Jiem (artist), Otsjanep village, c. 1960; Jiem (artist), Otsjanep village, c. 1960; Terepos (artist), Omadesep village, c. 1960; Jewer (artist), Omadesep village, c. 1960; Fanipdas (artist), Omadesep village, c. 1960; artist unknown, probably Per village, c. 1960; artist unknown, Omadesep village, late 1950s; Ajowmien (artist), Omadesep village, c. 1960; Bifarq (artist), Otsjanep village, c. 1960, Asmat people, Faretsj River region, Papua Province, Irian Jaya, Indonesia, wood, paint, fiber (Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, The Metropolitan Museum of Art) Speakers: Dr. Maia Nuku, Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede Associate Curator for Oceanic Art and Dr. Steven Zucker
Source: Dr. Maia Nuku and Dr. Steven Zucker, “Bis Poles at The Metropolitan Museum of Art,” in Smarthistory, December 22, 2016, accessed July 31, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/bis-poles/.
The Life of Malagan (New Ireland)
by Patrick Nason
Funerary Carving (Malagan), late 19th–early 20th century, New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, wood, 280.7 x 87.6 x 26.7 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Tatanua, c. late 19th century, New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, wood, pith, and shell, 49.5 cm (Los Angeles County Museum of Art; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Let us assume this: that there is life in everything, and that living continues long after death. Certainly, we humans are alive; as are dogs, cats, lizards, fish, trees, and birds. But so too are rivers, forests, stones, boats, buildings, and even computers. All these lives and many more have one quality in common: they are relational beings. By that I mean they have the ability to interact with other living things and affect other lives in some way. Beyond anything else, it is through this ability to build relationships that we all remain alive in one form or another. From this basic premise, we can begin to understand the lives of malagan.
What are malagan?
The term malagan (also spelled malangan or malanggan) usually refers to one or more intricate carvings from the island of New Ireland in Papua New Guinea. These carvings may take the form of a mask, a wooden board or “frieze,” a sturdy housepole, a circular, woven mat, or a scaled model of a dugout canoe with or without human figures inside. In many such forms, malagan can be found in museums throughout the world. All of these well-traveled carvings were born in New Ireland, a place of extraordinary diversity. There alone, over thirty distinct languages are spoken. In most of these languages, the word malagan means “likeness,” or otherwise “to carve, or inscribe.”
To see a malagan in person or in a photograph is to meet many inscribed likenesses or motifs, each entwined to form a single, visible organism. Of these, there are several species: on mask-like malagan (referred to as Lentanon or Tantanua), we normally see a contrast in color and texture in hemispheric shapes above the face. Another, the Walik malagan, typically features two birds or two fish poised on opposite sides of the same hole, or “eye.” The Wowara malagan are characterized by a circular “sun” motif, and are typically woven from smooth, flat palm fronds. Upon seeing a malagan with its various motifs, we might ask, what does it mean? Or otherwise, considering the careful detail that goes into them, we might question the tools and techniques utilized by master carvers in their production.
Seven tantanua displayed at the annual “New Ireland Day” festival, 2016 (photo: Elisha Omar)
What do malagan do?
Wowara (the radial shapes) and a Walik in between (the two lobsters) displayed at the annual “New Ireland Day” festival, 2016 (photo: Elisha Omar)
With such variation emerging from so many common motifs, malagan have confused and confounded anthropologists and art historians for over a century. Only recently have scholars begun to think differently about them. Rather than asking what each motif means, we are now listening more closely to the people of New Ireland and asking what each assemblage of motifs does in the world. By understanding these composite forms as agents, we can begin to see how malagan inspire, nurture, and participate in social life. To see this agency in action requires we look closely at the socioecological context out of which malagan come to life.
New Ireland
New Ireland is a narrow, tropical island only a few degrees south of the Equator. There are two primary seasons: a hot and dry period lasting from March to around November, and a rainy monsoon in December, January, and February. There are two modest towns on the island, but the majority of people live in rural villages. These Indigenous residents spend the majority of their time in their beautiful gardens, where they grow sweet potatoes, cassava, bananas, various greens, and taro. In the village, they raise pigs, feeding them the white meat of dried coconuts. A significant part of their diet comes from the sea. They catch smaller fish on the coral reefs and larger fish like tuna and snapper in the deep ocean. While the fish can be caught year-round, the majority of garden food is harvested after the monsoon. Assuming the gardens are maintained properly (with labor as well as a kind of fertility magic), this seasonal variability yields a surplus of crops—far more than required for basic sustenance. This is fortunate, for the arrival of the dry season marks the time when large, elaborate feasts are held throughout the island to foster the passage of recently departed relatives into the afterlife.
Pig (detail), Funerary Carving (Malagan), late 19th–early 20th century, Papua New Guinea, New Ireland, New Ireland, wood, 280.7 x 87.6 x 26.7 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Mortuary feasts
The people of New Ireland take these mortuary rituals very seriously. Throughout the year, as the crops grow larger and pigs grow fatter, the feasts are planned by the families of the deceased. Only when all the materials are ready—when enough pigs have been marked for sacrifice, enough taro has been dug out of the garden, and enough traditional shell-money (or mis) has been amassed—will the host family announce the impending event to the entire island. Malagan is the name given to these large mortuary feasts, but it more accurately refers to the carvings that are revealed with great flourish and excitement in the final moments of the event. At that time, hundreds or even thousands of people have gathered to witness a process of customary work led by an appointed cultural leader, or maimai. Dressed conspicuously in red, the maimai coordinates the entire event. He says when the pigs should be killed, when the taro should be peeled and roasted, and when various singsing groups should perform their unique song and dance. He supervises and coordinates obligatory exchange of mis (a traditional form of currency) and paper money between the family of the deceased and others who have supported them in their grief.
Felix Speiser, Group of malagan carvings displayed during a mortuary ceremony, Medina, Northern New Ireland, c. 1930 (Museum der Kulturen Basel)
With bold chants and avian gestures, the maimai gathers everyone together for the grand revelation of one or more malagan carvings. It is his responsibility to ensure everyone witnesses the powerful malagan, pays for the experience of seeing it, and then consumes all of the prepared food before returning to their homes at sundown. This dramatic revelation brings the living malagan into the social world, but only for a brief moment. For many months prior to the final event, a skilled carver secludes himself in a special enclosure, well out of sight from those in the village. With seashells, stones, knives, sharks’ teeth, fire, and natural pigments, he inscribes into a piece of monsoon-borne driftwood a set of images that have come to him in a dream. Snakes, crocodiles, birds, fish, and other motifs are brought into relief, many of which hold a special association with a particular matriline. [1] Through the sweat and fire of his efforts, a powerful assemblage comes to life.
Fish (detail), Funerary Carving (Malagan), late 19th–early 20th century, Papua New Guinea, New Ireland, New Ireland, wood, 280.7 x 87.6 x 26.7 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
When it is finally revealed to the public, the malagan is considered “hot” and dangerous. Only when its witnesses “buy” it with mis, and when the feasting is complete, does its power diminish. The once-powerful malagan is cast aside to decay in the tropical forest, or is otherwise sold off to foreign tourists or museums. This final dismissal marks the “finishing” of the dead, when all the work of mourning and customary obligations has been settled. The dead are “sent away to biksolwara”—to the deep sea where everything has come from and to where everything eventually returns.
Profile (detail), Funerary Carving (Malagan), late 19th–early 20th century, Northern New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, wood, paint, shell, resin, 132.7 x 34.9 x 33.7 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The power of the malagan
Like the maimai, the power or vitality of the malagan lies in its capacity to bring multiple clans together so that they may see each other, see themselves, and witness what the master carver has brought to life. Long after a dead receive their final malagan feast, part of that person remains active in the social world in the form of memory. Suppose, for example, a woman is working in the garden and sees a londoli (frigatebird) soaring overhead. There, for a brief moment, the graceful form of the bird prompts her to recall the intricate detail of malagan carved for her old uncle, who died when she was only a child. That uncle, who long ago was sent away over the sea, enters back into her world through the power of that one, particularly memorable motif. In this capacity, malagan and their associated mortuary rites ensure a vibrant social life for the people of New Ireland, and an eternal afterlife for their ancestors.
Yam Mask,early to mid-20th century, Abelam people, fiber and paint, 25 inches (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Abelam society
Religion and the natural world intersect not only in the teeming images of Chauvet Cave and the serpentine sculpture at Autun, but also in art produced in the lush foothills of northern New Guinea. This is the home of the Abelam, a group for whom male status rests on participation in the Tambaran (“Men’s House”) cults. These cults are central to Abelam society, and have a strong influence on their art and architecture.
The giant, human-sized yams at the heart of the cult — not the variety they grow for food — are sometimes themselves considered works of art, and are associated with ancestors, as well as with the potency of their growers. During the annual harvest festival, the spirits of ancestors are believed to inhabit the yams. Their presence is reinforced by placing yam masks atop the yams, which are also dressed in full regalia — ceremonial clothing and objects.
These masks are only loosely anthropomorphic (that is, having human qualities) with highly abstracted features. On this particular mask, as is frequently the case, the eyes are highly emphasized, so that the ancestor seems to be present and watchful. The yams also wear elaborate headdresses, like those worn by Abelam men, to indicate their status. The images, then, like the images of Chauvet Cave, suggest fertility and abundance, as well as ancestry.
The growing of these remarkable yams is, for the Abelam, a secret activity undertaken by the members of the yam cult, composed of initiated men and centered on the Korambo or Ceremonial House, used to store and hide the images until the annual festival. The massive structure, the size of which denotes its importance, is covered with extensive images of ancestors. These faces are, like the yam masks, abstracted images with large, staring eyes. They are nearly identical, establishing a strong pattern that emphasizes the unity of the group.
What matters here is not some sort of naturalistic representation but rather the power of the image. While the interior images are not as precisely patterned as those on the exterior, they nonetheless hold together to produce a cumulative effect. They so thoroughly cover the interior that, when the members of the yam cult view these images alongside freestanding carved ancestor images, the yam masks, and the yams, themselves, the members would seem to be surrounded on all sides by their revered ancestors. The environment is, like that at Chauvet, completely immersive.
The Wosera Abelam people live on forested plains in northern Papua New Guinea. They link spiritual well-being and material survival in one cosmology, which focuses in part on their staple vegetable crop: yams. At harvest, they decorate large yams of the variety Discorea alata (which can grow to between two to three meeters long). The decorated yams are displayed publicly and are exchanged between men.
When decorated, the yams represent ancestral spirits called nggwal. Nggwal do not act by themselves but must be encouraged with offerings, chants, and decorations. The decorations used on long yams like this include masks, shell valuables, feathers, and paint. This mask was therefore made to decorate a long yam, and to enable it to embody a nggwal spirit.
In August 1821, a group of people from Rurutu in the Austral Islands, in the south-eastern Pacific Ocean, traveled north to the island of Ra’iatea in the Society Islands, to a London Missionary Society station. There, they presented to the missionaries a number of carved figures that represented their gods, as a symbol of their acceptance of Christianity. The population of Rurutu had all converted to Christianity in obedience to a decision made by their highest leaders. This figure was among those presented, and is described by one of the missionaries at the time, John Williams. It was taken into the London Missionary Society collections, brought to London in 1822, and subsequently sold to The British Museum in 1911.
There is debate about which of the Rurutu gods this figure represents. John Williams identifies it as A’a. The god is depicted in the process of creating other gods and men: his creations cover the surface of his body as thirty small figures.
The figure itself is hollow; a removable panel on its back reveals a cavity which originally contained twenty-four small figures. These were removed and destroyed in 1882. Contemporary Rurutuans explain that the exterior figures correspond to the kinship groups that make up their society, and propose a number of theories about the relationship between the figure and Christianity. It is carved from hardwood, probably from pua (Fagraea).
“There is a Supreme God in the ethnological section”
Since it came to London the figure has attracted considerable attention, and it is widely regarded as one of the finest pieces of Polynesian sculpture still in existence. It influenced the sculptor Henry Moore, and is also the subject of a poem by William Empson (1906–84), “Homage to the British Museum,” quoted below:
There is a Supreme God in the ethnological section;
A hollow toad shape, faced with a blank shield.
He needs his belly to include the Pantheon,
Which is inserted through a hole behind.
At the navel, at the points formally stressed, at the organs of sense,
Lice glue themselves, doll, local deities,
His smooth wood creeps with all the creeds of the world.
Attending there let us absorb the culture of nations
And dissolve into our judgement all their codes.
Then, being clogged with a natural hesitation
(People are continually asking one on the way out),
Let us stand here and admit that we have no road.
Being everything, let us admit that is to be something,
Or give ourselves the benefit of the doubt;
Let us offer our pinch of dust all to this God,
And grant his reign over the entire building.William Empson, “Homage to the British Museum”
The Cook Islands are situated in the middle of the South Pacific. The wood carvers of the island of Rarotonga, one of the Cook Islands, have a distinctive style. The Cook Islands were settled around the period 800–1000 C.E. Captain Cook made the first official European sighting of the islands in 1773, but spent little time in the area during his voyages. In 1821 the London Missionary Society set up a mission station on the island of Aitutaki, followed by one on Rarotonga in 1827. The Cook Islands became a British Protectorate in 1888, and were annexed in 1901. Since then they have been administered by New Zealand.
Representations of the deities worshipped by Cook Islanders before their conversion to Christianity included wooden images in human form, slab carvings and staffs such as this, known as “god sticks.” They varied in size from about 73 cm to nearly four metres, like this rare example. It is made of ironwood wrapped with lengths of barkcloth.
The upper part of the staff consists of a carved head above smaller carved figures. The lower end is a carved phallus. Some missionaries removed and destroyed phalluses from carvings, considering them obscene. Reverend John Williams observed of this image that the barkcloth contained red feathers and pieces of pearl shell, known as the manava or spirit of the god. He also recorded seeing the islanders carrying the image upright on a litter. This image was among fourteen presented to Reverend John Williams at Rarotonga in May 1827.
The only surviving wrapped example of a large staff god, this impressive image is composed of a central wood shaft wrapped in an enormous roll of decorated barkcloth. There are no other surviving large staff-gods from the Cook Islands that retain their barkcloth wrapping as this one does. This was probably one of the most sacred of Rarotonga’s objects.
The shaft is in the form of an elongated body, with a head and small figures at one end. The other end, composed of small figures and a naturalistic penis, is missing. A feathered pendant is bound in one ear.
Little is known of the function or identity of these images. The ethnologist Roger Duff speculated that they represent Tangaroa the creator god, but without evidence. What is clear is that in their materials they combine the results of the skilled labor of men and women. They also have an explicit sexual aspect, thus embodying male and female productive and reproductive qualities. [1]
Male and female elements
This staff god is a potent combination of male and female elements. The wooden core, made by male carvers, has a large head at one end and originally terminated in a phallus. Smaller figures in profile appear to be prominently male.
Jean Tekura Mason, curator of the Cook Islands Library and Museum Society suggests that the other figures facing outwards could depict women in childbirth. The barkcloth, made by women, not only protects the ancestral power (‘mana) of the deity, but contains it within the different layers.
This large figure probably represents Kūkaʻilimoku, one of the manifestations of Kū, the Hawaiian god of war. It was made for and erected by King Kamehameha I, unifier of the Hawaiian Islands at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Kamehameha built a number of temples to his god, Kūkaʻilimoku (“Kū, the snatcher of land”), in the Kona district of Hawaiʻi, seeking the god’s support in his further military ambitions. The figure is likely to have been a subsidiary image in the most sacred part of one of these temples: not so much a representation of the god as a vehicle for the god to enter.
The figure is characteristic of the god Kū, especially by his disrespectful open mouth. His hair, incorporating stylised pigs heads, suggests an additional identification with the god Lono. The pigs’ heads are possibly symbolic of wealth.
The figure is carved from a single piece of breadfruit wood. During the reign of Kamehameha, metal tools could be obtained from Europeans and were used to create figures like this and also to build temples.
The figure is one of only three large temple figures from Hawaiʻi surviving. It was donated to the British Museum in 1839 by W. Howard. It may have been taken to England by King Liholiho (Kamehameha II) in 1824, as a gift to King George IV. The figure still holds deep significance for many Hawaiians today. In 2010, the Bishop Museum in Honolulu brought together the three remaining sculptures of Kū, reuniting them for the first time in more than 170 years.
Fly Whisk (Tahiri), Austral Islands, early to mid-19th century, wood, fiber, and human hair, 13 x 81.3 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979.206.1487). Speakers: Dr. Maia Nuku, Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede Associate Curator for Oceanic Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Dr. Steven Zucker
Source: Dr. Maia Nuku and Dr. Steven Zucker, “Fly Whisk (Tahiri), Austral Islands,” in Smarthistory, January 16, 2017, accessed July 31, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/tahiri/.
LITERATURE
ARCHITECTURE
Ceremonial Houses in Papua New Guinea
The Sepik River is the primary “highway” for communities living in central Papua New Guinea. Running from west to east, the river is about 700 miles long and is located between two parallel mountain ranges. Canoes are the primary means of transport and travel. Most people live in small communities, some in stilt houses along the river flood plain and others in the rugged hill area. Some 200 different languages are spoken in this region.
Artistic and ritual activity is an important part of the lives of these communities – this includes highly decorated architectural structures, sculpture, painted and ceramics. Most villages are structured around a large ceremonial house, sometimes referred to as a “men’s house” because entrance into the house is usually restricted to initiated men. The houses are where male religious rites and initiation for young boys takes place and they also can serve as meeting and gathering places. These houses are structured much like an “A-Frame” building (and were part of the initial inspiration for A-Frame buildings that became popular in 1960s North America). Rectangular in shape, each building is supported by 4 large corner posts and a central gable. The central gable is covered by large stylized human imagery, much of which was painted by boys during initiation, and refers to mythological and ancestral figures or imagery of the natural world.
See also:
The Architectural Heritage Center of Papua New Guinea, Papua New Guinea University of Technology, 1993.
Source: Karen H. Brown, “Ceremonial Houses in Papua New Guinea”, in Huma 207, Exploring the Arts and Cultures of the World, 2024
Paikea at the American Museum of Natural History
by Dr. Wayne Ngata
Photograph showing Paikea in its original location atop the Māori meeting house, Te Kani a Takirau, Uawa, Aotearoa (New Zealand)
During the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, the trade in ethnic artifacts was rife, particularly where territories had been colonized by European powers. Thousands of artifacts of all descriptions from across the Pacific were traded legally and illegally, and many now reside in museums, private collections, and other institutions throughout the world—including an important sculpture of a Māori ancestor named Paikea (pronounced pie-kee-ah)
Paikea was an important ancestor of the Māori tribes in Uawa (Tolaga Bay) on the East Coast of the North Island of Aotearoa (New Zealand). He survived a marine disaster in the ancient Hawaiki homeland of the Māori in the Pacific Ocean, by invoking, through incantation, the denizens of the deep sea to come to his rescue and take him ashore. Paikea eventually made landfall at Ahuahu (Mercury Island) in Aotearoa (New Zealand). After several excursions to the south-east, Paikea eventually made his way to the mouth of the Waiapu River on the East Coast, married Huturangi, and settled at Whangara. He is more popularly known throughout the world as “The Whale Rider,” from the movie of the same name.
For his many descendants, Paikea is a key link to the ancient Hawaiki homeland, as well as to the marine stories and body of seafaring knowledge, and to the tribal settlements on the eastern seaboard of both islands of Aotearoa (New Zealand). He is honored through songs, genealogy, stories, dances, novels, film, and art.
A house and a dance
Paikea’s descedant, Te Kani a Takirau, was born 23 generations later, in about 1790. He was regarded throughout Māoridom as a leading ariki, a noble high-ranking person of his time. After Te Kani a Takirau’s death in 1856, a carved house was built by his people at Uawa, and named after him (see photograph at the top of the page). The carved figure on top was named Paikea, and notable orators composed a haka (posture dance) for this occasion:
Uia mai koia whakahuatia ake
If it is asked
Ko wai te whare nei e?
What is the name of this house?
Ko Te Kani
It is Te Kani
Ko wai te tekoteko kei runga?
Who is the figurehead on top?
Ko Paikea, ko Paikea
It is Paikea, it is Paikea
Whakakau Paikea
Paikea transformed
Whakakau he tipua
Into an amazing being
Whakakau he taniwha
Into an awesome being
Ka ū Paikea ki Ahuahu, pakia!
And Paikea did come ashore at Ahuahu!
Kei te whitia koe ko Kahutiaterangi
Do not mistake him for Kahutiaterangi
E ai tō ure ki te tamahine a Te Whironui
He cohabited with the daughter of Te Whironui
Nāna i noho Te Rototahe
And resided at Te Rototahe
Auē, auē he koruru koe, e koro e!
You are there sire as the figurehead!
Performance at the American Museum of Natural History, June 1, 2017
Since that time, six generations of Paikea’s descendants have performed this haka. For the past four generations it has also been performed as a waiata ā-ringa, an action song. In the last two generations it has developed into a novel—The Whale Rider, by Witi Ihimaera—which became the basis for the movie of the same name. This legacy now centers on another house: Whitireia at Whangara, on top of which Paikea sits on his whale. Children who are born into the legacy of Paikea “absorb” the haka and the waiata ā-ringa while growing up, performing it with peers, parents, and grandparents. It is a tribal marker, a rallying call, an expression of pride, and a reminder of our origins.
Documentary photograph of the Major-General Robley purchase, 1908 (Paikea is on the right), photo: Thomas Lunt, courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History
A century in storage
In 1908, the American Museum of Natural History acquired the Te Kani a Takirau Paikea from Major General Horatio Robley (British Army), a colonial collector of the time. Paikea was eventually placed on a storage shelf until 2013 when a small group of Paikea’s descendants of Te Aitanga a Hauiti, the tribe of Uawa, arranged a visit to the museum for the purpose of reconnecting with this ancestor figure—part of a bigger plan to reconstruct the house Te Kani a Takirau, physically or digitally.
With Paikea at the American Museum of Natural History, 16 April 2013, photo: Dr. B. Lythberg (the author is standing second from the left wearing a dark shirt)
It was an emotional visit: a mix of tearful reunion, immense pride and melancholy reflection. Coincidentally, the visit occurred at the same time as the Whales (Tohorā) exhibition at the museum, which allowed us to share our Paikea stories with members of the public, museum professionals, students, and others.
A token of love
Our parting with Paikea at the end of the week was difficult and tearful. As is our tradition, we left a gift with him as a token of our love: a carved whale tooth pendant sourced originally from a bull sperm whale that beached at Mahia in northern Hawkes Bay, New Zealand in 1967, which we secured around his neck. In doing so, we unknowingly transgressed museum acquisition protocols as well as international laws regarding trade in ivory, although we had done what was tika, or right, in our view. This provided an embarrassing conundrum for the museum curators who had hosted us, and so later that year the whale tooth was returned to us in New Zealand.
Pendant carved by Lance Ngata from the tooth of a bull sperm whale that beached at Mahia in northern Hawkes Bay, New Zealand in 1967
In 2017, as part of filming a documentary series “Artefact” and with the support of Greenstone TV, the American Museum of Natural History, and professional colleagues from Auckland University, we organized to return the whale tooth—legally this time—to Paikea, and make good our initial gift. Again, a small group of young people from Te Aitanga a Hauiti accompanied the whale tooth and once more the occasion, although shorter, was an emotional one. It was also an opportunity to consider repatriation again: both the process and the implications for the museum, and for Paikea’s descendants and their communities as well. This is what we will deliberate on over the next few months as we reflect on our experiences with this icon of our history and symbol of the colonial artifact trade.
Source: Dr. Wayne Ngata, “Paikea at the American Museum of Natural History,” in Smarthistory, August 27, 2017, accessed July 31, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/paikea/.
The Māori built meeting houses before the period of contact with Europeans. The early structures appear to have been used as the homes of chiefs, though they were also used for accommodating guests. They did not exist in every community. From the middle of the nineteenth century, however, they started to develop into an important focal point of local society. Larger meeting houses were built, and they ceased to be used as homes. The open space in front of the house, known as a marae, is used as an assembly ground. They were, and still are, used for entertaining, for funerals, religious, and political meetings. It is a focus of tribal pride and is treated with great respect.
The meeting house is regarded as sacred. Some areas are held as more sacred than others, especially the front of the house. The lintel (pare) above the doorway is considered the most important carving, marking the passage from the domain of one god to that of another. Outside the meeting house is often referred to as the domain of Tumatauenga, the god of war, and thus of hostility and conflict. The calm and peaceful interior is the domain of Rongo, the god of agriculture and other peaceful pursuits.
The example above illustrates one of the two main forms of door lintel. The three figures, with eyes inlaid with rings of haliotis shell, are standing on a base which symbolizes Papa or Earth. The scene refers to the moment of the creation of the world as the three figures push the sky god Rangi and earth apart. The three figures are Rangi and Papa’s children, the central one probably representing Tane, god of the forests. The two large spirals represent light and knowledge entering the world. The lintel was probably carved in the Whakatane district of the Bay of Plenty in the late 1840s.
This is a side post or amo from the front of a meeting house. A pair of amo would have supported the sloping barge boards of the house. The two carved figures represent named ancestors of the tribal group who owned the meeting house. The figures are male, but the phalluses have been removed, probably after they were collected. Their eyes are inlaid with rings of haliotis shell. They are carved in relief with rauponga patterns, a style of Māori carved decoration in which a notched ridge is bordered by parallel plain ridges and grooves. Roger Neich, an expert on the subject of Māori carving, has identified the style of the carving of the post as that of the district of Poverty Bay in the East Coast area of the North Island.
This is one of a group of seven carvings purchased from Lady Sudeley in 1894. They were collected in New Zealand by her uncle, the Hon. Algernon Tollemache, probably between 1850 and 1873. This board and another from the same collection form a pair.
This male figure is from the base of a poutokomanawa, an internal central post which supports the ridge-pole of a Maori meeting house. It represents an important ancestor of the tribal group which owned that house. The figure has fairly naturalistic features. It is clearly male, and has the typical Māori male hair topknot and a fully tattooed face. The eyes are inlaid with haliotis shell. The collar bone is carved as a raised ridge. The large hands have just three fingers each. This is not unusual, varying numbers of fingers are to be found on Maori carvings, and may be due to regional differences in style, rather than having a symbolic meaning.
The style of carving—the solidly proportioned body and large hands—is typical of the prominent Ngati Kahungunu school of carvers from the central Hawkes Bay district, in the mid-nineteenth century. The majority of Māori carving from this period is more stylized than this figure. This naturalistic style may have been intended to emphasize the social or human side of the ancestor represented.
The Māori meeting house increased in size and height during the nineteenth century, due partly to European influence. Consequently, poutokomanawa figures increased in size until the largest were around two meters high.
Tin Meweleun (commissioned by Tain Mal), Slit gong (Atingting Kon), 1960s, wood and paint, 175.2 x 28 x 23.5 inches (The Metropolitan Museum of Art); speakers: Dr. Billie Lythberg and Dr. Steven Zucker
Source: Dr. Billie Lythberg and Dr. Steven Zucker, “Tin Mweleun, Slit Gong (Atingting kon),” in Smarthistory, November 21, 2021, accessed July 31, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/tin-mweleun-slit-gong/.
Mask (Buk), Torres Strait, Mabuiag Island
by Dr. Peri Klemm and Dr. Beth Harris
Though we lack an understanding of its use or cultural context, this turtle-shell mask was certainly precious.
Mask (Buk), Torres Strait, Mabuiag Island, mid- to late 19th century, turtle shell, wood, cassowary feathers, fiber, resin, shell, paint, 21-1/2 inches high (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Speakers: Dr. Peri Klemm and Dr. Beth Harris
Hawai‘i, the fiftieth state of the United States, is an island chain in the Pacific Ocean with hundreds of islands, atolls, and reefs. Only eight of these islands are inhabited today, but the chain continues to grow with volcanic activity on the “Big Island” of Hawai‘i as well as faults under sea level. Hawai‘i is the northernmost island in a geocultural grouping of islands in the Pacific called Polynesia. The map below shows Hawai‘i to the north, New Zealand (Aotearoa) to the southwest, and Easter Island (Rapa Nui) to the southeast. The people living in Polynesia are all related in cultural and ethnolinguistic terms. The first settlers to Hawai‘i came from the Marquesas Islands around 300CE and later from settlers from the Tahitian Islands around 1000CE, bringing Polynesian mythos, foodstuffs, agriculture, and culture.
“Oceania UN Geoscheme” is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
The islands were unified by King Kamehameha I in 1795. The Hawaiian kingdom lasted until 1893 when its queen was overthrown by American businessmen and later given statehood by the United States. Today Hawai‘i is a multicultural place with a long history of immigrants coming to the islands. This cultural melting pot has musics that are heavily influenced by American, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Portuguese, and of course Native Hawaiian cultures. For this section, we will deal mainly with the dance of Native Hawaiians called hula and the music that is tied to the tradition.
Some definitions:
HULA – traditional dance of Native Hawaiians
MELE OLI – solo chant with no instrumental accompaniment
MELE HULA – chant for dance often with percussive instruments as accompaniment
KAHIKO – pre-colonial style hula
‘AUANA – post-colonial style hula
Hawaiian dance, music, and chant are passed down via oral traditions. This type of transmission passes on knowledge from one generation to the next through spoken words and physical action rather than through written means of communication. This allows for a continuous line of information from a teacher to their pupils. When the pupil masters the material and gains the right to teach, the tradition is passed on again.
Mele are verbal chants in the Native Hawaiian language. These chants come in many forms and are used for specific occasions. For instance, a “mele pule” is specifically a chant for religious purposes whereas a “mele pana” is used to honor a place or person. The example below is a typical “mele hula” that is used for kahiko style dance, this particular mele is often used as an entrance piece for troupes to take the stage.
KAHIKO STYLE MELE HULA
Title:
“Ho‘opuka I Kai Ka La I ‘Unulau” (The Sun Rises Over the Sea of ‘Unulau)
two taps on a gourd percussion instrument (ipu heke)
0:02-0:04
recitation of the chant’s name
0:05-0:08
rhythm and tempo set by ipu heke
0:08
chant with continued rhythmic support from the ipu heke
The instruments associated with kahiko style are used by both the dancers and the chanters. The dancers can use a number of different implements, mostly idiophones with a couple examples of membranophones that add sonic effects to the dance. The chanters often use gourd drums or large skinned drums made from wood and these instruments provide the driving rhythmic motion for the music.
“Dancer, Hula ʻauana” by Thomas Tunsch is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
‘Auana style dress
‘Auana style hula does not use chant. This style developed after the importation of non-Hawaiian popular musics from America and Hawaiian interpretations of foreign musics. The following example is typical of ‘auana style music with a small instrumental group including guitars, string bass, piano, and most often, ‘ukulele. Though sonically this example is quite different from the mele hula example above, the strict metric order and steady tempo in both styles allows for dancing.
Pahu, ipu heke, and some other instruments are not used in ‘auana style music due to the sacred nature of those instruments. ‘Auana style dancers use the slit bamboo pu‘ili often as well as a flourished and feathered rattle.
‘Auana style song with guitar, ‘ukulele, and string bass. Listen to the singers’ range of their voices from quite low to a high falsetto range.
Visually, the two styles are quite different. The motions in kahiko style are often more forceful to show strength and fierceness. This style tends to highlight the power of both male and female dancers. The video below is an example of a warrior hula showing off the strength and ability of the male dancers. Note the fierce movements and exaggerated motions.
“Hula kahiko performance” by Ron Ardis is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Kahiko style dress
Kahiko style is also noted for its pre-colonial dress. The garb worn by the men in the video above is based on an ancient form of ceremonial warrior clothing and intentionally shows the body of the male dancer. The female garb for this style is quite modest and often incorporates natural fiber fabric skirts, shell necklaces, and head and ankle bands made of leaves.
‘Auana dancers utilize a variety of clothing. Men can wear board shorts and aloha shirts, while women can wear modern gowns or hand-crafted skirts made of ti leaves ornamented with feathers and flowers. This style often incorporates more creative interpretations for visual effect. The video below is a female ‘auana dance. Note the more graceful and flowing motions of the dancers. Not only are they more feminine than the male warrior dance above, the texts in ‘auana tend to be lighter and less serious than those found in kahiko. Not all ‘auana examples are this slow, some are quite fast and energetic.
The most important trait of hula is the confluence of text and movement. The dance is interconnected with the text and the text is enhanced by the dance. While some traditions, including more Western cultures, can separate music from other cultural practices, Hawaiian cannot separate hula from its music. Without one, the other does not make sense.
VISUAL ARTS
Bark cloth from Wallis and Futuna
by Dr. Billie Lythberg and Dr. Beth Harris
Waist Cloth (Salatasi), Futuna Island, Wallis and Futuna, late 19th–early 20th century and Sash (Lafi), Wallis and Futuna, late 19th–early 20th century, bark cloth, paint (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) URL: https://youtu.be/f4UXY5weL3c
Presentation of Fijian Mats and Tapa Cloths to Queen Elizabeth II
by Dr. Jennifer Wagelie
Presentation of Fijian mats and tapa cloths to Queen Elizabeth II during the 1953–54 royal tour, silver gelatin print, 16.5 x 22 cm (Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand)
A procession for a royal visit
On December 17, 1953, a newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, arrived on the island of Fiji, then an English colony, and stayed for three days before continuing on their first tour of the Commonwealth in the Pacific Islands. The Commonwealth of Nations, today commonly known as the Commonwealth, but formerly the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organization of 53 member states that were mostly territories of the former British Empire.
While the precise date of the photograph depicted above is unknown, there is still much that can be learned both about Fijian art and culture and the Queen’s historic visit. The first thing you might notice in the photograph is the procession of Fijian women making their way through a group of seated Fijian men and women.
Barkcloth
Several of the processing women are wearing skirts made of barkcloth painted with geometric patterns. Barkcloth, or masi, as it is referred to in Fiji, is made by stripping the inner bark of mulberry trees, soaking the bark, then beating it into strips of cloth that are glued together, often by a paste made of arrowroot. Bold and intricate geometric patterns in red, white, and black are often painted onto the masi. The practice of making masi continues in Fiji, where the cloth is often presented as gifts in important ceremonies such as weddings and funerals, or to commemorate significant events, such as a visit by the Queen of England. While in this photograph, the masi is only worn by the women and not carried, as far as can be ascertained in this picture; it is very likely that the women also presented the cloth to the Queen to celebrate the occasion of her visit.
Masi, Fiji, date unknown, barkcloth, 185 x 122.5 cm (Auckland War Memorial Museum)
Mats
What is definitely evident from the photograph are the rolls of woven mats that each woman in the procession carries. Like masi, Fijian mats served and continue to serve an important purpose in Fijian society as a type of ritual exchange and tribute. Made by women, Fijian mats are begun by stripping, boiling, drying, blackening, and then softening leaves from the Pandanus plant. The dried leaves are then woven into tight, often diagonal patterns that culminate in frayed or fringed edges.
Mat, Fiji, date unknown, pandanus leaf, 176.5 x 77.5 cm (Auckland War Memorial Museum)
Bure kalou (model spirit house), Fiji, 1800s, plant fibre (coconut fibre and bamboo), 42 x 86 x 42 cm (Te Papa Tongarewa/Museum of New Zealand, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
While the mats that the women in this photograph are carrying may seem too plain to present to the Queen of England, their simplicity is an indication of their importance. In Fiji, the more simple the design, the more meaningful its function. Fijian artists continue to create mats and it is a practice that is growing, with many mats beings sold at market, often to tourists. With the advent of processed pandanus, they are more widely available than masi, and used heavily in wedding and funeral rituals.
In addition to masi and mats, Fijian art also includes elaborately carvings made of wood or ivory, as well as small woven god houses called bure kalou, which provided a pathway for the god to descend to the priest.
The Queen’s itinerary
Returning to the Queen’s visit in 1953, while in Fiji she visited hospitals and schools and held meetings with various Fijian politicians. She witnessed elaborate performances of traditional Fijian dances and songs and even participated in a kava ceremony, which was (and continues to be) an important aspect of Fijian culture. The kava drink is a kind of tea made from the kava root and is sipped by members of the community, in order of importance. On the occasion of the Queen’s visit, she was, as you might imagine, given the first sip of kava. In thinking about the importance of the kava ceremony, consider what might happen if everyone from a large group takes a sip from the same cup and of the same liquid. Although sipped in order of hierarchical importance, it would, in the end, put everyone in the group on the same level before beginning the event, meeting, or ceremony.
After three days on the island of Fiji, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip departed for the Kingdom of Tonga where they stayed for two days before leaving for extended stays in New Zealand and Australia. On Tonga, they were greeted warmly by Queen Sälote and other members of the royal Tongan family. On the occasion of her visit to Tonga, an enormous barkcloth was commissioned in Queen Elizabeth’s honor and had her initials, “ERIII,” painted onto the rare piece of ngatu. Referred to as ngatu launima (tapa cloth) in Tongan, it is just shy of 75 feet in length and is significant not only because it commemorated Queen Elizabeth’s visit, but also because it was placed under the coffin of Queen Sälote when her body was flown back to Tonga in 1960 after an extended stay in a New Zealand hospital. The barkcloth is now in the collection of Te Papa Tongarewa/Museum of New Zealand, after being donated by the pilot who had flown Queen Sälote’s body back to Tonga, to whom the barkcloth had been given by the Tongan Royal Family.
A breastplate of this style, known in Fijian as civavonovono, was worn as an emblem of high status for ceremonies or during battles. Collectors and curators assumed for many years that they were made by Fijians, because they were worn and collected in the Fijian Islands. It is now recognized that they were in fact the work of Tongans or Samoans living in Fiji, who produced them for sale to chiefs. Tongans also made ivory breastplates as ornaments for themselves. Some of the earliest examples are large and would have had a protective rather than an ornamental function.
Sperm whale ivory became increasingly available in the 19th century due to American and British whale hunting and ivory trading. Polynesians did not hunt whales themselves, so prior to this activity only the teeth of stranded whales would have been used. The breastplate is made from sections of sperm whale tooth secured to a pearl-shell backing with metal rivets. The pearl-shell, typically, is of the black-lipped variety (Meleagrina margaritifera). It has a plaited coconut fiber cord. It is usual for the pearl-shell to be decorated with geometric shaped pieces of ivory as here. A breastplate in the Fiji Museum, Suva, is decorated with ivory human figures. The average width of a breastplate is around 20 centimeters. Many of the earliest examples are very skilled work, in which the pieces are sewn together with fiber cord through drilled holes, invisible from the front.
Whale ivory was also used for the manufacture of other personal ornaments. Necklaces of whale teeth were popular—either a row of complete teeth or split and polished ones were threaded together with coconut fiber. Fine specimens of whale teeth known as tabua were prized. They were exchanged during ceremonies and used as a symbol of prestige.
Gottfried Lindauer, Tamati Waka Nene, 1890, oil on canvas, 101.9 x 84.2 cm (Auckland Art Gallery)
Ancestor portraits
We all know portraits can be of ancestors, but can a portrait be an ancestor?
In Te Ao Māori, the Māori world, they can. Paintings like this one—and even photographs—do two important things. They record likenesses and bring ancestral presence into the world of the living. In other words, this portrait is not merely a representation of Tāmati Wāka Nene, it can be an embodiment of him. Portraits and other taonga tuku iho (treasures passed down from the ancestors) are treated with great care and reverence. After a person has died their portrait may be hung on the walls of family homes and in the wharenui (the central building of a community center), to be spoken to, wept over, and cherished by people with genealogical connections to them. Even when portraits like this one, kept in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery, are absent from their families, the stories woven around them keep them alive and present. Auckland Art Gallery acknowledges these living links through its relationships with descendants of those whose portraits it cares for. The Gallery seeks their advice when asked for permission to reproduce such portraits. This portrait has been published in the Google Arts & Culture project, which is why we can look at it here.
Tamati Waka Nene
Māori are the Indigenous people of New Zealand/Aotearoa. The subject of this portrait, Tāmati Wāka Nene, was a Rangatira or chief of the Ngāti Hao people in Hokianga, of the Ngāpuhi iwi or tribe, and an important war leader. He was probably born in the 1780s, and died in 1871. He lived through a time of rapid change in New Zealand, when the first British missionaries and settler-colonists were arriving and changing the Māori world forever. An astute leader and businessman, Nene exemplified the types of changes that were occurring when he converted to the Wesleyan faith and was baptised in 1839, choosing to be named Tāmati Wāka after Thomas Walker, who was an English merchant patron of the Church Missionary Society. He was revered throughout his life as a man with great mana or personal efficacy.
Paua eye in tewhatewha (detail), Gottfried Lindauer, Tamati Waka Nene, 1890, oil on canvas, 101.9 x 84.2 cm (Auckland Art Gallery)
In his portrait, Nene wears a kahu kiwi, a fine cloak covered in kiwi feathers, and an earring of greenstone or pounamu. Both of these are prestigious taonga or treasures. He is holding a hand weapon known as a tewhatewha, which has feathers adorning its blade and a finely carved hand grip with an abalone or paua eye. All of these mark him as man of mana or personal efficacy and status. But perhaps the most striking feature for an international audience is his intricate facial tattoo, called moko.
Detail, Gottfried Lindauer, Tamati Waka Nene, 1890, oil on canvas, 101.9 x 84.2 cm (Auckland Art Gallery)
Gottfried Lindauer and his patron
Lindauer was a Czech artist who arrived in New Zealand in 1873 after a decade of painting professionally in Europe. He had studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna from 1855 to 1861, and learned painting techniques rooted in Renaissance naturalism. When he left the Academy he began working as a portrait painter, and established his own portrait studio in 1864. Just ten years later he arrived in New Zealand and quickly became acquainted with a man called Henry Partridge, who became his patron. Partridge commissioned Lindauer to paint portraits of well-known Māori, and three years later, in 1877, Lindauer held an exhibition in Wellington. The exhibition was important because it demonstrated Lindauer’s abilities and he was soon being commissioned by Māori chiefs to paint their portraits. Lindauer took different approaches to his commissions depending on who was paying. He tended to paint well-known Māori in Māori clothing for European purchasers, but painted unknown Māori in everyday European clothing when commissioned by their families to do so. His paintings are realistic, convincingly three-dimensional, and play beautifully with the contrast between light and shadow, causing his subjects to glow against their dark backgrounds. As his patron, Partridge amassed a large collection of portraits as well as large scale depictions that re-enacted Māori ways of life that were thought to be disappearing. In 1915, Partridge gave his collection of 62 portraits to the Auckland Art Gallery—the largest collection of Lindauer paintings in the world.
New Zealand—The Battle of Mahoetahi,” The Illustrated London News, January 19, 1861, page 67 with engraving from John Crombie photograph of Tāmati Wāka Nene (University of Waikato Library)
Painting Tāmati Wāka Nene
If you’ve been paying attention to dates you will have noticed that Nene died in 1871 but Lindauer didn’t arrive in New Zealand until 1873, and didn’t paint his portrait until 1890. It is likely that Lindauer based this portrait on a photograph taken by John Crombie, who had been commissioned to produce 12 photographic portraits of Māori chiefs for The Illustrated London News. There are several other photographs of Nene, and in 1934 Charles F. Goldie—another famous portrayer of Māori—painted yet another portrait of him from a photograph. So Nene didn’t sit for either of his famous painted portraits, but clearly sat for photographic portraits in the later years of his life. These were becoming more common by 1870, due to developments in photographic methods that made the whole process easier and cheaper. Many Māori had their portraits taken photographically and produced as a carte-de-visite, roughly the size of a playing card, and some had larger, postcard-sized images made, called cabinet portraits. Lindauer is thought to have used a device called an epidiascope to enlarge and project small photographs such as these so he could paint them.
Lindauer didn’t make many sketches. He worked straight onto stretched canvas, outlining his subjects in pencil over a white background before applying translucent paints and glazes. Through the thinly painted surface of some of his works you can still see traces of pencil lines that may be evidence of his practice of outlining projected images. But Lindauer wasn’t simply copying photographs. In the 1870s, color photography had yet to be invented—Lindauer was working from black and white images and reimagining them in color. Moreover, sometimes he dressed his sitters—and those he painted from photos—in borrowed garments and adorned them with taonga that were not necessarily theirs. Thus some of his works contain artistic interventions rather than being entirely documentary.
“The 19th century was in its infancy. Princess Nāhi‘ena‘ena, descended from the ali‘i and most elite echelons of Maui and Hawai‘i Island society, was still only a child when she was gifted a feather pāʻū so magnificent that its fame lives on today.
Creating the pāʻū was a massive undertaking. The skirt consisted of 1,000,000 tiny feathers bundled and tied to a netted base by the people of Lahaina over what could have been a mere year, says Marques Marzan, the cultural advisor at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, where the skirt now lies. Especially remarkable is its color, which is almost entirely yellow. This hue required the rarest of the feathers to be taken from a small tuft of golden plumage at the neck of the now extinct ʻōʻō. The sheer volume of plumage required kia manu, or bird catchers, to venture in groups into the forests for days to pluck precious, wee feathers from the evasive honeyeaters.
Featherwork can actually be seen all across the Pacific and the world. Early Hawaiian settlers brought the art with them from their homes in older parts of Polynesia, says Marzan, and over time the practice evolved in slight, distinct ways. The type of net backing used in traditional Hawaiian handiwork, for example, was made of olonā, a fiber found only in Hawai‘i. Originally, he explains, both making featherwork, as well as wearing it, was reserved for the chiefly class. The Bishop Museum collection houses everything from magnificent cloaks in royal yellow and red shades, and iconic, crescent-shaped feathered helmets, to elegant lei, and fierce, feather-coated god effigies.”
The Hawaiian male nobility wore feather cloaks and capes for ceremonies and battle. Such cloaks and capes were called ‘ahu’ula, or “red garments.” Across Polynesia the color red was associated with both gods and chiefs. In the Hawaiian Islands, however, yellow feathers became equally valuable, due to their scarcity. They consisted of olonä (Touchardia latifolia) fibre netting made in straight rows, with pieces joined and cut to form the desired shape.
The manufacture of these prestigious feathered items was a highly skilled and time-consuming craft, restricted to men of high status, who observed religious practices as they worked. Each piece of netting was made separately, accompanied by the recitation of protective prayers. Such a cloak provided its important wearer with sacred protection when worn in dangerous situations.
Tiny bundles of feathers were attached to the netting in overlapping rows starting at the lower edge. The exterior of this example is covered with red feathers from the ʻiʻiwi bird (Vestiaria coccinea), yellow feathers from the ʻōʻō (Moho nobilis), and black feathers also from the ʻōʻō.
The most common color scheme for Hawaiian ceremonial feather cloaks uses a red background with yellow geometrical motifs and lower border. Yellow feathers were scarcer than red ones, so the most valuable garments were predominantly yellow. It has been estimated that the largest cloaks would be covered with nearly half a million small feathers. Cloaks were valued items, passed down the generations as heirlooms.
This small cape has a shaped neckline which would closely fit the wearer. This style of semi-circular cape is considered a later development from the trapezoidal shape. Large numbers of feathered cloaks and capes were given as gifts to the sea captains and their crews who were the earliest European visitors to Hawai’i. Some of these attractive items would then have passed into the hands of the wealthy patrons who financed their voyages. It is not known who brought this particular cape to England.
Necklace (Lei Niho Palaoa), Hawai’i, early to mid-19th century, ivory, human hair, fiber, 4 1/4 x 16 in. / 10.8 x 40.6 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979.206.1623). Speakers: Dr. Maia Nuku, Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede Associate Curator for Oceanic Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Dr. Beth Harris. URL: https://youtu.be/7wnwZYcefQU
This spectacular necklace pairs human hair with a sperm-whale tooth. Chiefs wore it to assert their divine right.
Australian Aboriginal art expresses the enduring relationships between people and land. At the same time it is a commercial enterprise by which the artists make money for themselves and their community. In the Western Desert region, where this painting was made, earlier art forms were adapted to a European medium at the beginning of the 1970s. This has led to an upsurge of artistic creativity and energy, which is also a political assertion of the sustained presence and importance of Aboriginal people in Australia.
This painting uses acrylic paint on canvas to depict a creation story. It depicts a yarla, a low-growing bush with beautiful pink flowers, that bears potato-like tubers. In one telling of the story, two old men, Jakamarra and Jupurrula, sat down and shook a sacred stone in Yamaparnta, a place near Yuendemu, where the painting was made. The yarla plant grew from the stone, and is believed to be the ancestor of all the plants now found in that place.
The concentric circles in the middle of the painting represent the stone, the waving lines the plant growing from it. The two semi-circles are the men. Next to the old men, on the fourth side of the concentric circles, is a food carrier, with some food in it.
At nearly twenty feet wide and nine feet high, Emily Kame Kngwarreye‘s painting Earth’s Creation is monumental in its scale and impact, rivaling Abstract Expressionist paintings by Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock not only in size but also in its painterly virtuosity (see a photo of it in a gallery here, to get a sense of its scale). Patches of bold yellows, greens, reds, and blues seem to bloom like lush vegetation over the large canvas. Comprised of gestural, viscous marks, each swath of color traces the movement of the artist’s hands and body over the canvas, which would have been laid horizontally as she painted, seated on (or beside) and intimately connected to her art.
The work made records at auction when it was sold in 2007 for over $ 1,000,000—the highest price ever fetched for a work by a female artist in Australia. Yet, just decades earlier, Kngwarreye was virtually unknown to the world outside her small desert community in the Australian country of Alhakere. A self-taught artist who was trained in ceremonial painting, she rose to international prominence only in her eighties, and enjoyed a flourishing career at the end of her life.
Rooted in tradition
Kngwarreye was born around 1910, and spent most of her life in an isolated Anmatyerr community in Central Australia. The area, however, was forcibly occupied by European pastoralist settlers in the 1920s, and the artist, alongside other members of her community, worked on the pastoral property. In 1976, Aboriginal land rights were legally granted, and she was able, finally, to live independently.
Aboriginal culture has long been intimately connected to the landscape of Australia; inhabited by humans for over 40,000 years, the region is characterized by deserts, grasslands, and dramatic arched rock formations. Kngwarreye was an established elder of her community and was trained to create ceremonial sand paintings inspired by her ritual “dreamings,’” as well as to paint decorative motifs on women’s bodies as part of a ceremony called Awelye. These visual forms were connected to cultural expressions in song, storytelling, and dance. While her paintings have never been figural, they remain influenced by the culture in which she grew up as well as the natural environment.
In the late 1970s, Kngwarreye began to work in the medium of batiks, making works that were purely artistic endeavors for the first time. In 1977, she was a founding participant of the Utopia Women’s Batik Group. Her compositions were abstract and featured the motif of repeated dots, acting sometimes as a linear stroke, or elsewhere used to fill large patches of space. A decade later, in 1988, the S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney initiated a “Summer Project” that sought to facilitate the creation of Aboriginal art, as well as to establish a market for the genre. Sponsored by the collector Robert Holmes à Court, curators traveled to the Aboriginal homeland of Utopia and delivered acrylic paints and materials. After two weeks, they returned to find “abstract and richly expressive” compositions created by many of the artists and held a group exhibition in Sydney.
Kngwarreye’s painting Emu Woman was selected for the cover of the exhibition catalogue as a gesture of respect for her seniority, as she was the oldest artist from the community. Dominated by rich, earthy tones, the painting—her first ever on canvas—contained references to plants and seeds that featured in her “dreaming” ritual. Against a dark field of charcoal, violet, and black, the piece is punctuated with bright marks in tangerine and white hues, which lend the work an electric sense of energy and rhythm. Her decades-long experience in painting directly on the human body informs the curving swells of dotted marks that comprise the composition.
Critics lauded the piece, and virtually overnight, the artist received international exposure and unprecedented acclaim. The following year, Kngwarreye held her first solo exhibition at Utopia Art Sydney, after which she would be invited to participate in several renowned international exhibitions and biennales.
The “global” turn
The arc of Kngwarreye’s career runs alongside a period of tremendous change in Australia, moving from the end of a phase of colonial settlement through to a more ethical embrace of Aboriginal culture by the nation’s Western population. Yet the period in which she came to prominence also reflects changes taking place in the contemporary art world internationally, as the 1980s and 1990s saw a notable expansion within the mainstream to include non-Western or historically underrepresented artists.
Earth’s Creation belongs to the “high colorist” phase in Kngwarreye’s work, which is characterized by a loosening of her compositions—which were no longer reliant on pseudo-geometric patterns—and the expansion of her color palette to include a range of tones beyond the familiar clay and ochre hues that dominated her prior works. Still connected to the natural environment; however, these works reference the changing atmospheric character of seasonal cycles. Earth’s Creation documents the lushness of the “green time” that follows periods of heavy rain, and makes use of tropical blues, yellows, and greens. The piece has often been likened to Claude Monet’s studies of seasonal and temporal change, and given its formidable, room-filling scale, a comparison to the artist’s Water Lilies of 1914–26 might be remarkably apt.
Earth’s Creation was created as part of the larger Alhalkere Suite, which contains twenty-two panels, and is still considered one of the most virtuosic of Kngwarreye’s immense and prolific artistic output. In the last two weeks of her life, Kngwarreye completed a suite of twenty-four small paintings. These were characterized by extremely broad, milky strokes of jewel-toned hues of blue and rose, and communicate the artist’s long-standing fascination with color and her sophisticated grasp of abstract composition.
What can a tin can bull teach us about ecological and population health issues in the Pacific? Michel Tuffery is one of New Zealand’s best-known artists of Pacific descent, with links to Samoa, Rarotonga, and Tahiti. He majored in printmaking at Dunedin’s School of Fine Arts, and describes art quite literally as his first language because he didn’t read, write, or speak until he was 6 years old. Encouraged instead to express himself through drawing, he now aims artworks like Pisupo Lua Afe primarily at children, hoping to engage their curiosity and inspire them to care for both their own health and that of the environment.
Pisupo Lua Afe is one of Tuffery’s most iconic works, made from hundreds of flattened corned beef tins, riveted together to form a series of life-sized bulls. Despite evident connections to Pop Art, especially Andy Warhol’s celebrations of the humble Campbell’s Soup Cans, it’s impossible to read this work solely in terms of Western art history. So what is Tuffery trying to tell us?
Pisupo—canned food in the Pacific
Pisupo is the Samoan language version of “pea soup,” which was the first canned food introduced into the Pacific Islands. Pisupo is now a generic term to describe the many types of canned food eaten in the Islands—including corned beef. Not only is corned beef a favorite food source in the Islands, but it has also become a ubiquitous part of the ceremonial gift economy. At weddings, birthdays, and other important life events both in the Islands and in Islander communities in New Zealand, gifts of treasured textiles like fine mats and decorated barkcloths are made alongside food items and cash money. But unlike the Island feast foods gifted at these events—such as pigs and large quantities of root vegetables—canned corned beef is a processed food high in saturated fat, salt, and cholesterol (a type of fat that clogs arteries). These are all things that contribute to disproportionately high incidences of diabetes and heart disease in Pacific Island populations as diets formerly high in locally grown fruits and vegetables, seafood, coconut milk, and flesh give way to cheap, imported foodstuffs.
So Tuffery’s sculpture is impossible to separate from the ceremonies at which brightly colored tins of corned beef now figure in large quantities. But these links to traditional economic exchanges and population health only tell part of the story. Pisupo Lua Afe also critiques serious issues of ecological health and food sovereignty. Tuffery is interested in the introduction of cattle to New Zealand and the Pacific Islands and how they impact negatively on these countries’ plants, landscapes, and waterways, as well as how industrialized approaches to farming disrupt traditional food production.
Look at Pisupo Lua Afe. It’s literally a “tinned bull”—solid, hard-edged, and weighty. Whereas a real cow has a visual softness suggested by its movements, eyes, and coat, Tuffery’s tin cans and rivets—overlapping like large metal scales—better convey the capacity of beef and dairy cattle to destroy fragile Island ecosystems. Look closer—single out just one flattened can. Think about all the cans that were emptied to make Pisupo Lua Afe. Then think about all the cans that are emptied and discarded in the Pacific Islands each year. Tuffery is gesturing rather obviously towards the challenge of rubbish disposal in Island economies where creative “upcycling” of materials into new objects is often more common than the civic recycling regimes of larger cities and countries. What use is there for thousands of empty tin cans? And what use are foods that cause ill health, damage the environment, and take up large swathes of land formerly used to grow healthier indigenous foods? Especially when the Pacific Island nations under Tuffery’s scrutiny are recipients of some of the worst products of such agricultural farming: fatty lamb flaps, turkey tails, and tinned corned beef.
Food sovereignty
Food sovereignty (sometimes called food security) is a great lens through which to view the various threads of traditional economic exchanges, population health, environmental degradation, and industrialized food production introduced so far. Food sovereignty is the right of a nation and its peoples to decide who controls how, where, and by whom their food is to be produced, and what that food will be. For Indigenous peoples in the Pacific, food and the environment are sacred gifts. There cannot be food sovereignty without control over food production and ownership and without appropriate care of the environment.
Alongside Pisupo Lua Afe and his other tin can bulls, Tuffery has produced many artworks that address challenges to food sovereignty and the continued exploitation of Pacific Island resources, including the taro leaf blight epidemic in Samoa in 1993, and drift net fishing that is depleting fish stocks. For example, he’s made fish tin sculptures, like his “tinned bull,” which upcycle cans that hold another “staple” food in the Pacific: tinned mackerel. Tuffery made two of these for an exhibition called Le Folauga, shown in Auckland, New Zealand in 2007, which are now in the Auckland War Memorial Museum collection.
O le Saosao Lapo’a and AsiasiI reflect on the ironic and irreversible impact that over-fishing and exploitation of the Pacific’s natural resources has wrought on the traditional Pacific lifestyle. This includes changing virtually overnight the dietary habits of generations.
Is it co-incidental that significantly increasing health and dietary problems amongst Pacific Islanders has occurred during the same period that their premium fisheries catches are exported? And at the same time locals have experienced explosive growth of canned & other imported products flooding into the Pacific?Michel Tuffery
Tuffery states the aims of his works very clearly. His fish tin sculptures are perhaps even more interesting and evocative because they are also functional fish-smokers used to cure and preserve fish. They have been used in this way at his exhibition openings, bringing a smoky, wood- and fish-scented haze to the gallery experience.
Firebreathing bulls?
Tuffery has also brought his “tinned beef” bulls to smoky life in various performative installations throughout the world by installing fireworks inside their heads to give them the appearance of breathing fire. Mounted on casters with their necks articulated so their heads can be turned, he has staged bullfights with his fire-breathing monsters, accompanied by drummers and groups of human performers issuing fierce challenges. But these performances have not been restricted to the sanctuary of the white-walled gallery—these were performed outdoors, on city streets, to reach a community that might not otherwise come into the gallery to encounter his work.