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

The Second Life of Sacred Sites

Ute Eickelkamp put me onto a really fascinating article that appeared recently about legal and cultural issues arising due to real world locations being recreated in the online world Second Life.  The question of how to apply copyright is raised, but more interesting from my point of view is the controversy surrounding Teltra’s reproduction of a virtual Uluru without the permission of the traditional owners of the original, the Anangu people. The article reports that:

Designers of the BigPond site included a scaled down Uluru, with a barrier to stop people walking or flying over the sacred site. However, representatives of the traditional owners, the Anangu people, warned that even with the restrictions it may be possible to view sacred sites around Uluru, although they were continuing to investigate the issue.

Concerns have also been raised that Uluru and the opera house could be exposed to digital vandalism, following an attack on the ABC’s Second Life island earlier this week.

[...]

A spokesman for Telstra confirmed the company had not sought the permission of Uluru’s landowners.

Legislation has been in place to limit photography, filming and commercial painting at Uluru for 20 years, with tight restrictions on what is and is not allowed.

Capturing images of parts of the northeast face of Uluru is banned and all pictures taken of that part of Uluru must be submitted to the landowners for approval.

While visitors in the game cannot touch Uluru or fly over it, they can virtually fly in the no-fly zone to the northeast and take snapshots.

However, while the rules governing photography, filming and paintings have been in place since 1987, a spokesperson from National Parks said the issue of digital images online had never been raised before.

National Parks, which administers the area on behalf of the traditional landowners, now has lawyers looking at Uluru in Second Life and is considering sending a delegation to meet landowners to discuss the situation.

This article raises a lot of really interesting questions about the relationship between the digital technology, the sacred and cultural rights.  It’s worth noting that the Anangu people’s reaction is not to the unauthorised reproduction of Uluru but also because of unauthorised visiting and viewing of secret/sacred parts virtual rock itself. But given that this is just a digital model, in what sense are these virtual visitors seeing secret/sacred objects or sites? Unlike a photograph, a digital copy has no indexical relationship to the original — no physical connection between sign and referent. But nevertheless the Anangu are expressing a real concern about unauthorised people seeing what they’re not supposed to and going where they’re not supposed to.  The magical umbilicus between the two remains, it seems, and actions in a virtual world appear to be capable of damaging the sacred qualities of the original.

I don’t know a great deal about phenomenology of ritual and production of sacred sites in Aboriginal socieites, but it seems like an interesting case to explore how these are being rearticulated in response to the challenges presented by new technologies.

On Monday Ute will be hosting a round-table discussion about this article in her Art and Culture course here at Macquarie.  I might go along and see if I can learn some more about this.

Jovan Maud

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.

University of Hawaii agrees to give up 3 patents on taro

 

Native Hawaiians are determining which entity will receive the patents

Associated Press

The University of Hawaii announced yesterday that it will give three patents on genetically enhanced, crossbred taro plants to native Hawaiians.Discussions were under way within the Hawaiian community to determine the appropriate entity to receive the patents, UH officials said.Native Hawaiian activists, farmers and students have held protests demanding the university give up the patents and stop genetically altering taro, which many Hawaiians consider a sacred plant.

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