Ted Strehlow, a controversial anthropologist

     According to the Koori Mail (12 March 2008, p-46), “the story of South Australian anthropologist Ted Strehlow and his controversial relationship with the Aranda people of Central Australia is being immortalised in opera”; and the opera project is in process. I did some research on this controversial anthropologist on the internet since there is not much information about him in the Koori Mail article; and I came across a very detailed article about him by John Morton( on www.duckdigital.net/FOD/FOD1060.html). According to this article:  

Theodore George Henry Strehlow was born in 1908 at Nthariye (or Hermannsburg), west of Alice Springs, the traditional homelands of Western Aranda (Arrernte) people. His father was Reverend Carl Strehlow, the head of the Finke River Mission started by German Lutherans in 1877. Ted’s father died when he was fourteen years old, and he left the mission with his mother to live in Adelaide. After completing his education, he came back to Alice Springs as an anthropologist.

Ted Strehlow grew up among the Aboriginal people and learnt Western Aranda as a first language. When he returned to Alice Springs, he began his career as a linguist and ethnographer of Aboriginal culture. As John Morton points out, “ Between 1932 and 1978 (the year of his death) Strehlow collected and produced an impressive collection of artefacts and records, most of which relate to the cultures of Aranda people” and “he published widely, translated Christian texts into Aranda for the Lutheran Church and was regularly involved in ‘native affairs’.”

When he returned to Alice Springs in 1932, Strehlow met an old man called Micky Dowdow, (also called Akwerre or ‘Gura’=’Bandicoot’ by his totemic affiliation)  a goat shepherd who was the traditional owner of sites in north of Alice Springs in Northern Aranda country. Gura told Strehlow that “he was the last of the great ceremonial chiefs of the gura bandicoot centre known as Ilbalintja,” and that he wanted Strehlow “to accompany him there to inspect the sacred-secret site which had been placed under his undisputed control by his long-dead forefathers and tribal elders.” And Gura told that “ all the old men of his tribe had held a conference that morning, and had come to the decision that, unless someone they could trust assumed responsibility for the preservation of the sacred secrets, they would all die with the old men.” Gura and other old men thought that their sons and grandsons were not responsible enough and could not be trusted with the secrets, the  tjurungas and other objects. Since Strehlow showed a genuine interest in their culture, they wanted him to “accept responsibility for all their sacred things”. As John Morton points out : 

Strehlow always maintained that he was invited to amass his collection as a kind of sacred trust and many Aboriginal elders came to believe that Strehlow’s ethnographic endeavour was the best way to preserve their knowledge for posterity in the face of the invasive threats of Euro-Australia. While Strehlow had certain misgivings about this trust, he took it on with ardent enthusiasm.

Collecting, preserving, understanding and disseminating central Australian culture became the hub of his life. Yet his story unfolded in uneven ways. While Strehlow’s relationship with Aboriginal people began smoothly enough, and progressed quickly and dramatically, it ended steeped in controversy. After his initial encounter with Micky Dowdow, Strehlow, aided by his Western Arrernte assistant Tom Ljonga, went on to travel through Northern, Upper Southern and Eastern Arrernte country in the 1930s, witnessing and recording some 166 ceremonial acts.

 There was a lull in his ethnographic work after 1935, when Strehlow turned his attention to other matters, but the work resumed in 1948. Between 1950 and 1964 Strehlow witnessed most of the other ceremonial acts that can be found in his records, so that his major ethnographic efforts could be said to have finished by the time he finally published his magnum opus – Songs of Central Australia – in 1971.

Advances in technology and transport helped him to complete his work more extensively and thoroughly after 1950, but there were also significant social changes going on in Australia at that time. Indeed, the 1960s were a true turning point in Strehlow’s life, just as they were in the lives of many Aboriginal people.

     By 1971, many of the senior old men who trusted him with their secret-sacred business were dead, and there was a new generation of Aboriginal people who wanted to take over the secret-sacred ceremonius and objects. Strehlow did not trust them. He became very possesive of the secret-sacred business and said that he had been given “a mandate to preserve the Law, and it had been bolstered by testimony from elders that the system of authority and transfer of rights in secret-sacred business was breaking down: the old men said that the young men could no longer be trusted with atywerrenge(men’s sacred-secret objects).” And he said that “In accordance with the Aranda rules of tjurunga inheritance, these traditions would be regarded as becoming my personal property after the deaths of their original owners.” And Strehlow published photographs of and his knowledge of secret-sacred ceremonies, and object in his books after the death of the old men. When he sold  the ceremonial photographs to the German magazine Stern in the final year of his life this created a big controversy in the final year of his life between him and the Aranda people who “were outraged at what they understood to be insulting and unethical use of their secret-sacred business.”         

     He did not want to leave his collection of the Aranda  secret ceremonies and objects to a public institution and established an organisation called the Strehlow Research Foundation which opened in Adelaide on 3 October 1978; and “Strehlow died just a few hours beforehand, his last words reputed to have been Arrernte, as he attempted to explain Aboriginal culture to visiting dignitaries who had arrived prior to the opening.”  His wife has been the head of the foundation since his dead. Although now most of the collection is back in central Australia, and open to the Aboriginal people, the controversy still continues.

You can read the whole story about Ted Strehlow by Dr John Morton on  http://www.duckdigital.net/FOD/FOD1060.html 

PS- the Koori Mail is Australia’s national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Newspaper. It is 100 percent Aboriginal owned and controlled. www.koorimail.com

Copyrighting Egyptian antiquities

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the Chinese terracotta warriors on display at the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology in Germany.  Now here’s another interesting case of cultural heritage, authenticity, and profit sharing: the CBC and the BBC are both reporting that the Egyptian government is considering copyrighting pharaonic antiquities, “from the pyramids to scarab beetles, in an attempt to collect royalties from the creation of replicas.”  The money gained from copyright royalties would be used to maintain antiquities sites in Egypt.  In a rare moment of understatement, Hawass said that the Las Vegas Luxor hotel would not be affected by the proposed law “because its interior bears no resemblance to a pyramid. “

Authenticity and profit: the case of Chinese terracotta warriors in Germany

Reuters reports on Chinese claims that the supposedly ancient statues currently on display in the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology are fake. Some 7,000 life-size “terracotta warriors” from the reign of Qin Shihuangdi, China’s first emperor, were found in a necropolis in the 1970s and are amongst China’s most famous archaeological relics. The Museum of Ethnology mounted a small exhibit of warrior figures, horses, and other artifacts that were obtained, according to the Reuters article, through the Center of Chinese Art and Culture in Markkleeberg, near Leipzig, which in turn “said the figures had been obtained from public authorities, institutes and businesses in China.”

The Cultural Heritage Administration in Shaanxi province, where the terracotta army was excavated, announced its “outrage” that the Hamburg museum was showing reproductions and that the exhibition was “a very serious act of cheating the media and the public.” It also vaguely threatened legal action. The statues remain on exhibit but a sign announces that their authenticity is disputed and refunds have been offered to the 10,000 people who have already paid to see the exhibit.

What is interesting in this story is what is not said. The affront is said to be to the “media” and the “public” who are being “cheated.” The only time that money is mentioned is with reference to the museum-goers who are eligible for a refund. But exhibits are huge money-makers for museums, and dividing the profits between the entities that loan artifacts and foreign museums that display them is always a matter of fierce negotiation. The Cultural Heritage Administration in Shaanxi is therefore probably angry that the Hamburg museum didn’t go through them to obtain their exhibit objects, and thus is not paying them a portion of the exhibit revenues. But this interest in the profit of the museum exhibit is veiled and outrage is instead expressed on behalf of the museum-goers who were denied authenticity. Perhaps this is because openly admitting to their pecuniary interest in the exhibit of Chinese artifacts would somehow detract from the moral outrage being expressed by the Cultural Heritage Administration. Note how money seems to sully the keepers of cultural heritage, even as it clings to the objects that they keep.

L.L. Wynn

Council to protect Rastafarian intellectual property established

The Jamaica Gleaner reports that the “global Rastafarian community” — as part of a global trend towards the institutionalisation and legal protection of indigenous “cultural property” announced the establishment of a council to protect Rasta intellectual property from unauthorized appropriation by non-Rastas (notably gangstas). See the article here.

Migration Heritage Centre

A place that is doing very interesting work on Australia’s migration history is the Migration Heritage Centre operating out of the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. I haven’tvisited the physical exhibitions but they are providing an enormous amount of beautifully constructed online exhibitions. Recent content includes the following:

BELONGINGS: POST-WORLD WAR 2 MIGRATION MEMORIES AND JOURNEYS

Meet HANK RUNEMAN and see the marquetry picture made by his grandfather in Holland:

OBJECTS THROUGH TIME

Discover the dugout canoe made by German World War One internees at Berrima in 1917. The canoe is made from Australian hardwood, most likely a eucalyptus or gum tree from the internees’ camp site at Berrima Gaol NSW:

Our New home ‘Meie uus Kodu’: Estonian-Australian Stories

Australia is home to a small but thriving community from the northern European country of Estonia. At the end of World War II, over 6500 Estonians left behind the familiar northern lights of Estonian skies to make their home beneath the Southern Cross in Australia.

Today four out of every ten Australians are either migrants or the children of migrants. Most, like the Estonians, arrived in the decades following World War II.

This exhibition explores harrowing stories of invasion, dispossession and flight from Europe. It also reveals what settlement in Australia has meant to generations of Estonian-Australians. Watch interviews in mini-documentaries.

“Theme Park” Architecture in China

One of my favourite blogs is BoingBoing, not the least because a lot of the posts tickle my anthropological funnybone. A good example is a recent post on new architectural trends in China, where the emergent middle-class is being tempted to live in simulacra of historical Western cityscapes.

In Nanjing, there are Balinese retreats and Italian villas. In the southeastern city of Hangzhou, there are Venice and Zurich. In downtown Beijing, everything is about Manhattan, with Soho, Central Park and Park Avenue.

Seems that there is quite a bit of interest in producing replica of iconic structures from a usually Western “elsewhere”. Another BoingBoing article reports about the Shijingshan Amusement Park in Beijing, described as “basically a weird, Chinese clone of Disneyland”.

Perhaps more interesting than the phenomenon itself is why stories like this are so ticklish for people like me. What should “we Westerners” have a monopoly on consuming the exotic other? Various kinds of exotica have long been decorating Western homes, both inside and out, for a long time now. An example that springs to mind is the not uncommon practice of a few decades hence of placing concrete Aborigines, like indigenous garden gnomes, in front gardens. Can’t do that anymore though; the consumption of exotica these days must be done with requisite postmodern irony. And maybe that’s what’s so strange about these Chinese consumption patterns: they’re just dripping with pomo simulation, but without the ironic self-parodic attitude you’d expect in the West. Or maybe it’s the strange thrill of seeing changing power relations at work. Maybe it’s not so much the weirdness of the copying, but the fact that it’s being done to “us”. “We Westerners”, not the least anthropologists, have been accustomed to representing the other. So its strange to find “our” forms as exotic consumer items.

I’m just guessing here, of course. Good ethnographic work would provide some sense of why the Chinese middle class seem to be enjoying these kinds of consumption. Perhaps our resident China expert, Third Tone Devil, has something to say about this?

Bob Geldof - the “saviour” of the cultures of the world?

I just came across a post on the Norwegian-German blog antropologi.info (also on our blogs-we- like-list) about Bob Geldof and his latest project: together with the BBC he is planning to digitally document all living cultures. As the blogger points out, Geldof’s premise is that the cultures of the world need saving before they are all homogenized. He apparently wants to “capture all 900 of the separate groups of people anthropologists believe exist in the world”. Here we see again the widely popular notion of “cultures” as distinct, static and unchanging entities threatened by Western-led globalization. It seems a pity that this outdated view should be perpetuated by the BBC who in its reportages so often manages to portray a very different image of the cultural dynamics in globalization: i.e. in which a new diversity is created by the encounter between global consumer goods, media, ideas and institutions with local ways of doing and thinking. One of my own recent examples comes from Calcutta, where my husband and I went into a discotheque. On the surface this looked very much like a club in Berlin or Barcelona, yet here we were at 4 in the afternoon, surrounded by a colourful mix of (upper)-middle class youth (18+), wildly dancing and singing along to bollywood songs (especially Tu Hi Meri Shab Hai from the film “Gangster”). People drank few alcoholic drinks, dressed modestly and all would go home at 9 o’clock, just like good girls (as everywhere else nobody worries about the boys) are supposed to. A few years ago Marie Gillespie has written about the same day discotheques in London, which cater to the Punjabi youth of Southall.

Course: Applying Anthropology To Nature and Heritage Conservation

Ethnographic Field School-Natural Res Conserv-Guatemala

NC State University announces the Fourteenth Annual

Ethnographic Field School, Summer 2007
Lake Atitlán, Guatemala
May 18 - July 8, 2007

Applying Anthropology To Nature and Heritage Conservation

field school website: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~twallace
Objectives: Students learn how to do ethnographic fieldwork, design a
research project, carry out independent research and study the effects of
tourism and change on the local environment and communities. During the
seven week program students live with local, Maya families in the Lake
Atitlán area of the Western Highlands, a region with an ancient and rich
cultural heritage. The effects of globalization and tourism growth are
having an significant impact on their way of life. In this fourth summer of
research in Guatemala we will focus on the political, economic and
environmental impacts of tourism, religion and globalization on the
indigenous Mayan communities around Lake Atitlán. Students will study how
these Tzutujil and Kaqchikel Maya are adapting to changing demographics, the
effects of the global economic slowdown on the export of coffee and
traditional textiles, as well as on the continuing presence of more and more
tourists and foreign residents. The program is designed for 10-12
undergraduate and/or graduate anthropology majors or minors or students in
related fields wishing to learn applied ethnographic field methods. Students
will be encouraged to develop an applied component to their research
projects that will complement the 2002-2005 applied research efforts. Some
of the participants will be Guatemalan undergraduate anthropology students.
The program is also affiliated with the Universidad del Valle-Guatemala City
(UVG) and the Universidad del Valle-Altiplano (Solola).

The Research Site

Lake Atitlan is one of the most majestic and scenic spots in all of Latin
America. Ringed by dormant volcanoes and about a mile in elevation, Lake
Atitlan was formed out of an ancient volcanic basin. Dotting the shores of
the Lake are about a dozen small villages inhabited by the contemporary
descendants of the ancient Maya. Panajachel (pop. 9000) is the largest town
and will be the headquarters for the program. The view of the lake from
Panajachel is magnificent, and its attractive sunsets and views daily lure
many tourists, which in turn has transformed the town into a tourist Mecca
with small hotels, delightful restaurants and plentiful souvenir stores.
Yet, the town and the other communities in the region have retained much of
their traditional Mayan heritage. Each student is free to choose any topic
for his or her independent ethnographic research project, but environment
and tourism inevitably will play at least some role in nearly all potential
topics. Guatemala has the largest indigenous population in Mexico and
Central America. There are approximately 23 different languages spoken in
Guatemala and three of them are spoken around lake Atitlan (Kaqchikel,
Tzutujil and Quiche). Despite conquests and civil wars, the Mayans have
survived for nearly two millennia. Lake Atitlan is one of the best places in
the country to learn about this amazingly durable and vibrant culture.

Six Course Credits (graduate or undergraduate):

Prerequisites are two courses in anthropology, one of which must be in
Cultural Anthropology. No previous experience in ethnographic fieldwork
required. Priority will be given to students who have completed at least two
semesters of Spanish.

ANT 419 Ethnographic Field Methods. (3 cr.) This is a field methods course
that emphasizes practical training in ethnographic fieldwork and ethics.
Applied research methods such as focus groups and rapid assessment
procedures will also be demonstrated. Students learn research design,
systematic observation, interviewing, fieldnote-taking, coding, ethics data
analysis and report writing.

ANT 431 Tourism, Change and Anthropology (3 cr.) This course focuses on
tourism and the role of culture as it affects the interactions between hosts
and guests. Students learn through seminar discussions and field work the
problems underlying the achievement of sustainable tourism and maintenance
of cultural traditions.

Graduate students will be enrolled in ANT 610 Independent Study in
Anthropology (6cr).

Note: English is the language of instruction, but Spanish is an invaluable
tool for a full experience. The focus of all course work is the design,
implementation and write- up of an independent research project with an
applied focus.

Housing

Each student will be housed with a local Mayan family in one of ten
communities around Lake Atitlan. Each student will receive room, breakfast,
lunch and dinner and laundry services. Families also will help students
learn Spanish and establish networks in the community.

Program Costs

The cost of the seven-week program is $2995. Other than airfare, the fee
covers all expenses including:

-room, board (three meals/day), laundry
-in-country excursions (Antigua, Chichicastenango, Quetzaltenango, Patzun,
Tecpan and Iximche among others)
-local transportation costs and transfer fees
-national park entrance fees
-program fees and instruction
-tuition for six credits in anthropology
-full coverage health insurance during stay abroad
-research supplies and free rental of a cellphone.

Airfare from most US cities is approximately $500-600. Students are strongly
encouraged to bring a laptop word processor to the field. Other than a valid
passport, US and Canadian citizens need no other documents to enter
Guatemala for a stay of up to 90 days.

Applications

Students from any university or country, regardless of major - graduate,
undergraduate or post-graduate - may apply. Applications may be accessed
through the field school website: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~twallace or through
the NC State University Study Abroad Office website
http://studyabroad.ncsu.edu/ . Please feel free to contact Dr. Tim Wallace,
the program director, for additional information or any type of inquiry
about the program at 919-815-6388 (m) or 919-515-9025 (o). Fax
no:919-515-2610; E-mail: tmwallace@mindspring.com. All applications must be
accompanied by a $200 registration fee, applicable to the total program
cost. The registration fee will be refunded to students who are not accepted
for the program. In previous years the program was full by mid-January, so
acceptance is more likely the earlier the application is received. The
applications are submitted online, but if you have any problems, please
contact Deirdre OMalley at the NCSU Study Abroad Office, Box 7344, NC State
University, Raleigh, NC 27695-7344, deirdre_omalley@ncsu.edu, 919-515-2087.
The official deadline is February 9, 2007, but applications received after
that date will be considered if there are spaces still available. A copy of
the application for the brochure is attached.