Some time ago, MAA alumnus Jesse Dart sent in this article from by Phillip Rothstein on the concept of “cultural property” and the way it has changed in significance since it was introduced by UNESCO in 1954.  Although the article is mainly focused on the impact of the concept on archaeology, there is a lot of interest for anthropologists, too.

Rothstein reviews Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage by James Cuno.  He notes the key argument that while the idea of “cultural property” was introduced in order to protect, retain and make available certain objects, sites, buildings etc as the “cultural heritage of all mankind”, it has instead come to be used in an increasingly parochial sense, to restrict access to and control over objects of cultural significance.

Of particular interest to me was the argument that modern states are increasingly defining themselves as the rightful owners of “cultural property”, even when these claims involve an anachronistic projection of the contemporary state into the past.  From the article:

The idea of cultural property has become a political trump card. At a conference in Athens in March, organized in part by a Unesco intergovernmental committee, the concept expanded even further: “Certain categories of cultural property are irrevocably identified by reference to the cultural context in which they were created (unique and exceptional artworks and monuments, ritual objects, national symbols, ancestral remains, dismembered pieces of outstanding works of art). It is their original context that gives them their authenticity and unique value.”

Those artworks, objects, symbols and relics do not just merit protection; they should be “returned” to their “countries of origin,” the only places, supposedly, where they can be fully appreciated. This has nothing to do with whether they were obtained illicitly or inappropriately.

The countries of origin, of course, are modern states, which are increasingly asserting control, a point emphasized by Mr. Cuno. In 1970 another Unesco agreement said it was “incumbent upon every state” to protect its cultural property. Cultural property — almost by definition beyond the control or disposition of individuals — is linked to the powers of the modern state and its political demands.

These are interesting points to make and it is always worth being reminded of the extent to which we take for granted the claims of nations to be the only legitimate inheritors of cultural property.  Indigenous groups have of course made ground claiming back elements of their heritage, including the remains of ancestors, from distant museums.  But nation states tend to claim heritage based on their territorialising strategies, i.e. where claims to heritage are connected with a defined territory over which exclusive sovereign rights are asserted.

In southern Thailand, where I did my fieldwork, premodern Buddhist sites are used to create a sense of the Thai nation state projected backwards in time.  In an area in which there are different and strongly contested historical sensibilities, between Thai Buddhist and Malay Muslim, this use of cultural heritage is highly political.  Similarly, the current stoush betweeen Thailand and Cambodia over the ownership of a Hindu/Khmer temple, Preah Vihear ( see here for a decent archive of stories about the conflict), illustrates the way claims to cultural heritage and claims to territory are intrinsically linked.  This case also provides an example of the way in which the “universal” UNESCO model of cultural heritage, which admonishes states to protect their heritage “for the benefit of mankind”, may contribute to the parochial claims of states against their rivals.  Indeed, the catalyst for the current crisis was precisely a UNESCO statement which reaffirmed a 1962 ruling of the International Court of Justice  granting Cambodia possession of the site.  (As a side note, a fascinating detail of this case occurred in 1963 when Thailand finally backed down after initially disputing the 1962 ruling. Rather than lowering the Thai flag that had been flying over the temple soldiers dug up the flag pole with the flag still flying, removed it from the site, and reinstalled it at another location in Thailand).

As Benedict Anderson noted, the imagined community of the nation state is imagined to be both sovereign and limited.  Correspondingly, in the national imaginary cultural heritage must also be limited, and sovereignty over it must be exclusive.   According to this zero sum mentality, a gain for one nation must necessarily entail a loss for another.

2 upcoming Sydney events of interest to anthropologists:

• Traditional Healing at the 4th Sydney Latin America Film Festival

Monday 7 September 6:00pm @ Dendy Opera Quays

The film “La Curacion / Healing” (Ecuador, Spanish and Quechua with English subtitles, 56 minutes) by Yoni Goldstein will screen at 6pm.  After the film, Kalpana Ram, Head of the Macquarie Department of Anthropology, will facilitate a panel of speakers, including practising shamanic healers.  Speakers will include Chris Kavelin of Macquarie University, Byron Serrano from the Tribal Warrior Association, Beata Alfoldi-Askew from Inner Vision Quest, and Violeta Arraya from the Alazan Horse Centre. Entry is first come first served, no bookings.

• Mining and Sovereignty microcinema

Tuesday 8 September, 6pm @ Dendy Opera Quay

Forum discussion after screening of film When Clouds Clear on resistance to copper mining in northern Ecuador.  The forum has speakers who will connect the struggle to Australian Indigenous politics.

For full program details see www.sydneylatinofilmfestival.org.

According to Hungarian newspapers, the xenophobic, anti-Semitic party Jobbik (“The Righter”), which has three seats in the European Parliament, has launched a campaign to expunge from textbooks the accepted theory according to which Hungarians are a Finno-Ugric people, and replace it with one according to which they are related to the Huns, Avars and Scythians, Indo-Iranian nomads that inhabited large parts of the Eurasian steppe in the first half of the first millennium C.E. The party, whose EP delegation is led by a professor of criminal law and whose paramilitary offshoot, the Hungarian Guard, has recently been banned, called on the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and universities to rectify their curricula, asserting that the Finno-Ugric theory was a Hapsburg plot to break the self-respect of the Hungarian people. The signatories of the petition include a professor of archaeology, the self-described founding director of the Centre for Asian Studies at the University of Pecs, and a self-described anthropologist.

Linking Hungarians to Oriental origins has been a strand of Hungarian nationalism since the late 19th century. The idea is to stress the uniqueness of Hungarians and their difference from other Eastern European peoples. Yet the Scythican-Avaric references echo those of Russian Eurasianists, whose ideology tends to be that of Russia as a grand synthesis of Orient and Occident (see an interesting recent book by Marlene Laruelle): quite a different proposition from those of Hungarian nationalists, who stress isolation rather than mixing.

I recently had a conversation with my colleague Thijl Sunier about exactly how and when Islam has come to be the Other of Europe, and when and how alternative historical narratives disappeared. Southeastern Europe, where discourses of the bastion of Christianity against Ottoman barbarism have been a mainstay of nationalisms, is an interesting case in point. The re-emergence of self-Orientalising ideologies within mainstream nationalism complicates the picture. Jobbik’s leaders have expressed support for Hamas, some sympathise with Iran’s government, and ties exist between Jobbik and the Hungarian Islamic Community. (Eduardo Rozsa Flores, who was recently killed during a supposed plot to assassinate the Bolivian president, was a member of both.) So Jobbik’s wish to establish Hungarians as an Indo-Aryan people makes sense in today’s politics as well as within the historical frame of Nazism (and WWII “Hungarism”). Yet the Hungarian Guard’s vigilante patrols in villages with large Gypsy populations (who would logically be fellow Indo-Iranians) have been even more high-profile than its anti-Semitism. Jobbik is also the champion of animosity towards Russia (it has been demanding the removal of Soviet war memorials) and the only party that has made opposing immigration a consistent element of its campaigns (this element is not very distinctive, because no party supports immigration). So it is not clear what its version of history between antiquity and the Hapsburgs would look like. In any case, this campaign is likely to signify the return of radical revisionist (including but not limited to self-Orientalist and racist) voices into academic history writing, from which they had been banished since World War II.

The Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO), an Indigenous umbrella group, has issued a press release condemning the American Geographical Society’s Bowman Expedition, “México Indígena.”  (Below I’ve pasted this press release, and following that, the text of the AGS description of the Bowman Expedition’s “México Indígena” project, which refutes many of the UNOSJO charges.)

The first charge is that one of the AGS researchers, University of Kansas’s  Peter Herlihy,  failed to disclose the fact that his research was partially funded by the U.S. military, specifically the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) of the United States Army. It also claims that Herlihy failed to disclose the participation of Radiance Technologies, “a company that specializes in arms development and military intelligence.”

Another ethics charge is a novel variation on accusations that international researchers exploit Indigenous cultural and intellectual property: they accuse the project of “geopiracy.”

They also claim that the mapping data collected by the project is fed into “a global database that forms an integral part of the Human Terrain System (HTS), a United States Army counterinsurgency strategy designed by FMSO and applied within indigenous communities, among others.”

AGS refutes  the association with HTS, but one thing that seems clear from this project is that one of the 5 main concerns expressed by the American Anthropological Association about the HTS, namely its prediction that HTS would taint anthropologists and their informants worldwide, seems to be coming true.

–L.L. Wynn (pasted press releases below)

_________________________

PRESS BULLETIN FROM UNION OF ORGANIZATIONS OF THE SIERRA JUÁREZ OF
OAXACA (UNOSJO, S.C.) – Oaxaca, Mexico

TO ALL STATE, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA SOURCES:

We kindly request that you publish the present bulletin in your
respective means of communication.

Towards the end of 2008, the results of the research project México
Indígena (Indigenous Mexico) were handed over to two Zapotec
communities in the Sierra Juárez in the form of maps. Research had
been undertaken two years earlier by a team of geographers from
University of Kansas. What initially seemed to be a beneficial project
for the communities now leaves many of the participants feeling like
victims of geopiracy.

In August 2006, the México Indígena research team arrived at the Union
of Organizations of the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO, S.C.) to
present research objectives and garner support to commence work in the
Sierra Juárez region. At the time, the team included a Mexican
biologist Gustavo Ramírez, an Ixtlán native well known in the area,
who was responsible for initially approaching UNOSJO.

Project leader and geographer Peter Herlihy explained the project
objectives to UNOSJO, S.C., initially stating that it was to document
the impacts of PROCEDE [a Mexican Government program has had on
indigenous communities. He failed to mention, however, that this
research prototype was financed by the Foreign Military Studies Office
(FMSO) of the United States Army and that reports on his work would be
handed directly to this Office. Herlihy neglected to mention this
despite being expressly asked to clarify the eventual use of the data
obtained through research.

Herlihy mentioned that his team would collaborate with the following
organizations: the American Geographical Society (AGS), Kansas
University, Kansas State University, Carleton University, the
Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí and the Secretary of
Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT). He failed, however, to
acknowledge the participation of Radiance Technologies, a company that
specializes in arms development and military intelligence.

Although UNOSJO, S.C. participated in some of the México Indígena
Project’s initial activities, the organization soon ceased
participation due to unclear project intentions. The Santa Cruz
Yagavila and Santa María Zoogochi communities also ended up feeling
the same distrust and they too abandoned the Project. For these
reasons, the México Indígena research team localized activities within
the San Miguel Tiltepec and San Juan Yagila communities, both located
in the Zapotec region known as El Rincón de la Sierra Juárez.

In November 2008, México Indígena members Peter Herlihy and John Kelly
attended a meeting of the UCC, the Unión de Comunidades Cafetaleras
“Unidad Progreso y Trabajo” (the Union of Coffee-Producing Communities
“Unity, Progress and Work”), held in the community of Santa Cruz
Yagavila. They announced the completion of the Yagila and Tiltepec
community maps and offered their services to other organization-member
communities. They went on to mention that research had been carried
out with the collaboration of UNOSJO, S.C.’s own Aldo Gonzalez, a fact
that was immediately refuted.

Following the aforementioned UCC meeting, UNOSJO, S.C. began looking
into the México Indígena Project. Investigation revealed that México
Indígena forms part of the Bowman Expeditions, a more extensive
geographic research project backed and financed by the FMSO, among
other institutions. The FMSO inputs information into a global database
that forms an integral part of the Human Terrain System (HTS), a
United States Army counterinsurgency strategy designed by FMSO and
applied within indigenous communities, among others.

Since 2006 the Human Terrain System HTS has, since 2006, been employed
with military purposes in both Afghanistan and Iraq and according to
what we g=have been able to determine Bowman Expeditions are underway
in Mexico, the Antilles, Colombia and Jordan.

In November 2008, the México Indígena Project completed the maps
corresponding to Zapotec communities San Miguel Tiltepec and San Juan
Yagila. Contrary to the often-mentioned promise of transparency,
México Indígena created an English-only web page, a language that the
participating communities do not understand. Before the communities
received the work, said maps had already been published on the
Internet. Furthermore, the communities were never informed that
reports detailing the project would be handed over to the FMSO.

In addition to publishing the maps, the México Indígena team created a
database into which pertinent information was entered: community
member names and the associated geographic location of their plot(s)
of land, formal and informal use of the land and other data that
cannot be accessed via the Internet.

According to statements made by those heading the México Indígena
research team, this type of map can be used in multiple ways. They did
not specify, however, whether they would be employed for commercial,
military or other purposes. Furthermore, as the maps are compatible
with Google Earth, practically anyone can gain access to the
information. Yet only community members can decipher information
expressed in Zapotec (toponyms), unless, of course, one has the
capacity to translate them, as in the case of FMSO linguistic specialists.

UNOSJO, S.C. is against this kind of project being carried out in the
Sierra Juárez and distances itself completely from the work compiled
by the México Indígena research team. We call upon indigenous peoples
in this country and around the world not to be fooled by these types
of research projects, which usurp traditional knowledge without prior
consent. Although researchers may initially claim to be conducting the
projects in “good faith”, said knowledge could be used against the
indigenous peoples in the future.

We hereby demand that Peter Herlihy honor his promise of transparency
and that the Mexican public be made aware all his sources of funding
and the institutions that received information on findings obtained in
the communities.

We further demand that, in light of these facts, the Mexican
Government, firstly the Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources
for having financed part of the research, as well as the Department of
Internal Affairs, the Department of External Affairs, Deputies and
Senators for possible violations of the Indigenous Peoples’ National
Sovereignty and Autonomy, clarify its position on the matter.

Oaxaca de Juárez, Oax., 14 January 2009

UNION OF ORGANIZATIONS OF THE SIERRA JUÁREZ OF OAXACA (UNOSJO, S.C.)
________________________________

The American Geographical Society’s Bowman Expeditions seek to improve geographic understanding at home and abroad: Spotlight on México Indígena

Since 1851 the American Geographical Society (AGS) has been recognized worldwide as a pioneer in geographical research and education. Our mission is to link the business, professional, and scholarly worlds in the creation and application of geographical knowledge, methods, and technology to address economic, social, and environmental issues. To this end, AGS and collaborating universities send teams of geographers to foreign countries to build a comprehensive multi-scale geographic information system (GIS) for each region, collect open-source GIS data, conduct participatory GIS, build lasting relationships among American and foreign scholars and institutions, conduct geographic research on issues of national interest to the United States and host countries, train a new cadre of regional experts, disseminate GIS data freely to the public here and abroad, and publish results in scholarly journals and popular media.

Our purpose is to improve U. S. understanding of foreign lands and peoples and, thereby, to reduce international misunderstandings, provide a knowledge foundation for peaceful resolution of conflicts, and improve humanitarian assistance in case of natural disasters, technological accidents, terrorist acts, and wars. Each project is called a Bowman Expedition in honor of former AGS Director Isaiah Bowman, one of the greatest scholar-statesmen of the 20th Century, who served as geographer and close advisor to Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, served as chief advisor to the American Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, and played a key role in establishing the United Nations.

“México Indígena” was the first Bowman Expedition and is the prototype for all subsequent expeditions. From 2005 through 2008, we worked in two indigenous regions of Mexico, studying the effects of changes brought on by Mexico’s massive new land tenure program. We put geographic tools in the hands of the communities to help them use the power of GIS and maps to support their property claims and cultural rights, educate their youth, and plan conservation and community development strategies. México Indígena is an academic, transparent investigation led by Associate Professor Peter H. Herlihy of the University of Kansas (KU) and conducted entirely by university faculty and students with the knowledge, consent, and enthusiastic participation of indigenous authorities and local investigators chosen by their communities to work directly with the research team. A key role of the AGS is to ensure that the researchers maintain their academic freedom and independence.

AGS President and KU Professor Jerome E. Dobson conceived the Bowman Expedition program in the belief that “geographic knowledge is essential to maintain peace, resolve conflicts, and provide humanitarian assistance around the world” – a topic we discuss in the Geographical Review (Volume 93, Issue 3, July 2008). The goal is worldwide coverage (see http://www.amergeog.org/bowman-expeditions.htm). To date, expeditions have been sent to Mexico, the Antilles Region, Colombia, Jordan, and Kazakhstan.

The AGS Bowman Expedition program operates according to a strict set of ethical guidelines for foreign field research posted on the México Indígena website (http://web.ku.edu/~mexind/ethics_statement_prototype.htm). The program has never requested nor has it received any funding from the controversial Human Terrain System (HTS) program, whose design differs in crucial ways from our posted guidelines. The México Indígena research project was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Kansas.

Research topics are chosen by each expedition leader, and results are shared with all of the participants and the general public. The México Indígena expedition represents collaboration between the AGS, KU, Carleton University (Canada), and the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí (Mexico). The project has had two objectives: (1) as the first expedition, to develop a prototype for the Bowman Expeditions for the AGS, and (2) to develop a geographic, multiscale analysis of the new property regime in Mexico, in particular the Programa de Certificación de Derechos Ejidales y Titulación de Solares (Program for the Certification of Ejido Rights and Titling of House Plots, PROCEDE) and its influence in indigenous communities. For the analysis we combined public information at various levels or geographic scales to understand the impacts of land certification in the rural sector. The results show that while privatization can bring benefits to some sectors of Mexican society, they also threaten indigenous lifeways through the introduction of individualistic and capitalistic practices. Land certification changes the historic guarantees of the inalienability of ejido and communal property and puts at risk the patrimony of rural families. It is hoped that the results will have a positive impact on understanding and disseminating the problems of the new neoliberal reforms on indigenous peoples in the country.

We use participatory research mapping (PRM), a methodology that we initially developed in Central America to provide technical training (and global positioning system, or GPS receivers) to local people who participate directly in the research. Together, we produce standardized maps for the indigenous communities that they use to promote their culture and traditions, protect their territorial rights, and plan their own projects. These maps combine, for the first time, the government cartography of the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática, INEGI) and cadastral information of the National Agrarian Registry (Registro Agrario Nacional, RAN) with local community knowledge.

Financing for the AGS Bowman Expeditions can come from any source, public or private. When Dobson first sought funding for the program, he found a champion in the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Subsequently, FMSO has financed the expedition to Mexico, as well as others to Colombia, the Antilles and Jordan, through the Radiance Corporation that administers the contracts between FMSO, AGS, and the universities. Support for the first stage of this project also came as a research grant from the sectorial fund of the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) and the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources (Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, SEMARNAT) through the UASLP Coordinación de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, as well as from the U.S./México Fulbright García Robles program, for financing the participation of professors and students in the participatory mapping during 2005-06. Additional support came from the universities. All sources have been publicized on our web page from the beginning and announced repeatedly in presentations and publications.

The PRM methodology implemented in this project was approved by local assemblies and authorities in each of the eleven communities in which research was undertaken. Participation in the research was, of course, voluntary and not imposed. Local populations were involved and informed from the initial research design to the final development and publication of findings. The maps and other information generated have been submitted to the communities in digital and paper formats. For the first time, the maps document community boundaries together with topographic data and geographic and cultural information provided by the communities themselves. These maps combine the information needed for improved management of their lands and natural resources and are valuable for future generations as they document the knowledge of elders of places and sites of historical and cultural importance.
In keeping with the policies of the Bowman Expeditions, the final results are available to the public through the México Indígena web site (http://web.ku.edu/~mexind/index.htm), and in publications and student theses. The original database is safeguarded and housed at the two universities (KU and UASLP). While the final results are publicly available, no personal information is released to anyone outside of the research team. The idea of sharing the final results with the general public was discussed and approved by the communities, and their published maps now are available on the project web site – now even used by community members themselves and soon available in Spanish.

We hope the maps and data will continue to be used as a tool by the local communities in their efforts to maintain control, protect, and manage their ancestral lands. The Zapotec community of San Miguel Tiltepec in the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca, for example, is using their new standard map in dialogue with government officials to correct an error in the delimitation of their boundary, and to locate their environmental services area. This community held an assembly of comuneros (the maximum authority of the community) on December 13, 2008 for the presentation and approval of the final maps. They listened to an opposing argument by an activist from outside the municipality, and then formally approved the maps and their inclusion on the project’s web site (http://web.ku.edu/~mexind/oaxaca_community_maps.htm); and they implored us to continue helping the community with future projects. We seek no higher endorsement of our work or the AGS Bowman program.

Today’s New York Times reports that “Arts Leaders Urge Role for Culture in Economic Recovery”. “Culture” here means the arts, and what the “leaders” urge is state funding for public art projects, ranging from more fine art commissions built into public construction and transportation projects to a European-style government-level secretary of culture.

Because in the past there has been much less of this in the US, discussions of “culture” have centred less on the arts and more on education and the media, which — along with museums — is where the “culture wars” largely played out (of course, they did in the National Endowment for the Arts as well, but that wasn’t so significant and visible to a broad public). If the wishes reported in the article materialise, then the American state will be confronted with the question of how to shape public representations of culture in the arts more strongly than before, and similarly to the way that, say, Britain’s Arts Council has. Considering the dominance of the “heritage format” (in Andrew Shryock’s term) in the (self-)representations of American society, there is a risk that ethnically labelled “cultures” will proliferate in this imagery.  This was, for a while, the case in Britain, where, say, certain artists tended to be selected qua British-Chinese or British-Caribbean artists, and expected to represent their “constituencies.” On the other hand, the fact that Obama’s own person, to an extent, defies the “heritage format” raises hope that this will not be the case.

     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

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. “

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

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.

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.