Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey

Here is  a press release regarding a new exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey

An exhibition celebrating Australian Indigenous women

Discover Indigenous women’s contribution to the Australian community through a new exhibition - Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey - opening at the Powerhouse Museum on 21 March.

Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey will take visitors on a journey into the sometimes unknown and often unexplained world of Indigenous Australian women. A world of people, land, law and ritual, of ceremony and celebration, of social order, language, story, song and dance, art, lore, plants and animals.

Through objects, photographs and personal interviews, Yinalung Yenu reveals the many roles Indigenous women have played in Australian society from traditional times to the present.

The exhibition explores areas where a woman’s influence far outweighed those of Indigenous men, from their everyday activities as educators, child rearers, camp builders and food collectors, to their influential role as decision makers, artists, story tellers, peace keepers and healers.

This history is interpreted through a display of beautiful crafts from the Powerhouse Museum collection, including textiles, posters, ceramics and basketwork, each of which reveal the skill and artistry of Indigenous women.

The exhibition also features the stories of six prominent Indigenous Australian women: doctors and twin sisters Dr Marlene Kong and Dr Marilyn Clarke; artist, designer and businesswoman Bronwyn Bancroft; lawyer and university professor Larissa Behrendt; and respected elders Aunty Beryl Carmichael and Aunty Sue Blacklock.

Be inspired by the strength and expression of these Indigenous women who have become successful in contemporary Australian society and who have become role models for a new generation.

Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey reflects the ways in which Indigenous Australian women’s knowledge and perspectives of their world were often ignored until recent times. Today, they are carving their rightful place in Australia’s Indigenous history and endowing the next generation of women with the knowledge to speak to their future for succeeding generations of women to come.

On View:          Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey

Date:                From 21 March 2008

Address:           Powerhouse Museum, 500 Harris Street, Ultimo, Sydney

Telephone:       (02) 9217 0111 or infoline (02) 9217 0444

Website:           www.powerhousemuseum.com

Hours:              10.00am to 5.00pm (closed Christmas Day)

Admission:       $10 adult, $5 child, $6 concession and $25 family.  Powerhouse Museum members and children under four admitted free.

‘People, power and the politics of anthropology’

There is an interesting exhibition at Macleay Museum of Sydney University called ‘People, power and politics: the first generation of anthropologists at the University of Sydney’. The exhibition explores the history of anthropological study of Aboriginal people in Australia; and the methods used and the research done by the first anthropologists from 1923 to 1947. Below is more information from the Sydney University website http://www.usyd.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=2139

As national ‘Sorry’ day on 13 February, 2008 approaches, this exhibition gives an insight into the experiences of these early scholars, the politics of their encounters and significantly, exposes the sway anthropologists had in determining early Aboriginal policy.

The first Department of Anthropology in Australia was set up at the University of Sydney in 1925, after the International Pan Pacific Conference of 1923 expressed to the Government the urgent need for the study of Aboriginal and indigenous people of the Pacific region.

According to the exhibition curator’s Rebecca Conway and Jude Philp, senior curator of the University of Sydney’s Macleay Museum, this changed the face of anthropology.

“Anthropology went from being based on ‘armchair’ theories - the previous British style popular back then - to active fieldwork where anthropologists spent months and even years studying and working with communities,” say Conway and Philp. “These young anthropologists worked with communities to chronicle their whole societies, documenting language, cultural practices and other aspects of daily life. They also documented the effects of European settlement and colonisation on these peoples’ lives.”

People, Power, Politics specifically looks at the lives and work of ten prominent and highly respected Sydney University anthropologists, including Ian Hogbin, and the Department’s first Professors, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, A. P. Elkin and Raymond Firth, whose work became internationally significant.

Using notebooks, journals, objects and photographs accumulated by these anthropologists, the exhibition describes the University’s anthropological department as an advisor on policy in overseas administration in the Pacific as well as policy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander welfare. It also looks at the department’s powerful position in determining who was studied, what was studied and how the results of their early studies would be disseminated.“

The exhibition tells how this very strongly Government-aligned faculty compromised, hindered, helped and assisted the investigation of indigenous people across our region,” says Philp, adding that many of the issues raised by early anthropologists - such as the destruction of Aboriginal lands and social order - are as relevant today as they were then.

A series of events will be held at the Macleay Museum in association with People, Power, Politics. These include:

* Recovering the Music of Arnhem Land: At 4pm on Friday, 22 February, 2008, Dr Neparrnga Gumbula and Dr Aaron Corn will discuss the work they have been undertaking with the University of Sydney’s Anthropology Department archives to unearth the stories, photographs and songs recorded in North-East Arnhem Land. Free entry. Phone: (02) 9036 5253.

* Papua New Guinean performance: Papua New Guinea was often seen as a wonderland of anthropological research. At 2pm, on Sunday, 30 March, 2008, songs and dances from the Motu tradition of the capital region of Papua New Guinea will be performed at the Macleay. Free entry. Bookings (02) 9036 5253.

* “What is anthropology?” school holiday program: At 1pm each day from Monday, 14 April to Friday, 18 April, 2008, children will be invited to put on their pith helmets and find out what anthropology is all about through discovering the different cultures seen in People, Power, Politics. Free entry however bookings essential: (02) 9036 5253.

* The Aboriginal Question - race, anthropology and things that endure: At 6pm on Wednesday, 16 April, 2008, Diane Austin-Broos, a retiring Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sydney and Gillian Cowlishaw, an ARC Professorial Fellow, Faculty of Humanities at the University of Technology,will discuss the impact anthropological studies and the concept of “race” have had on the treatment of Aborigines in Australia. Free entry. Bookings: (02) 9036 5253.

The Macleay Museum is located in Gosper Lane, near the Footbridge Theatre entrance to the University of Sydney.

People, Power, Politics: The First Generation of Anthropologists at the University of Sydney closes on 20 July, 2008.

http://www.usyd.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=2139

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

Kentucky’s new Creation Museum (Adam and Eve were really hot!)

Hallelujah! The Creation Museum has just opened its doors this week in Kentucky, U.S.A, with 4,000 visitors the first day. Armed guards dressed in black with attack dogs patrolled the grounds, presumably to deter the handful of atheist protestors who showed up from thinking they could get away with sabotage. Inside, animatronic, vegetarian T. rexes graze in the same fields where children play. In the picture published on salon.com, a very tanned and sexy Adam and Eve look at each other longingly, and I’m not sure because they’re mostly covered up with her hair, but it looks like Eve may have had breast implants (thanks, God!). No, wait: maybe that’s just her breasts before the fall.

The new museum puts me in mind of some of the anthropology publications that I subscribe to which have recently been serving up homilies about how anthropologists should rally round to oppose the teaching of creationism and intelligent design (ID) in American schools. As Chris Toumey puts it,

“Our discipline of anthropology ought to take the intelligent design agenda seriously, and should actively oppose it, for two reasons: First, it is wrong for our public schools to mislead students. Secondly, intelligent design is a prominent feature of the so-called culture wars. Each victory for intelligent design in the classroom or the courtroom makes it easier to discredit the accounts of human origins that we generate in anthropology, along with the methods and concepts that guide our work.”

Edwin Segal, meanwhile, complains that ID “shows no understanding of science, scientific thought, or scientific progress.”

I’d like to see Anthropology News and its ilk publish careful ethnographic analysis of the debates over intelligent design and the teaching of evolution in the United States. For example, in the set-up of Us vs. Them, with Them attempting to overthrow logic, science, and “progress,” we might see the glimmerings of an intellectual line of descent between contemporary anthro attacks on ID and the notion of “progress” that characterized early anthropology’s attempts to give an evolutionary framework to culture. And I for one would love to know more about what broad visions of time and human history are imagined by proponents of ID. Is it still fundamentally a story of progress? Is it eschatological? Is it a cyclical process of cultural decay and divine renewal (as the Mormon account of ancient American history is)? In the Creation Museum, for example, visitors are taught about the “‘Six C’s of History’: creation, corruption, catastrophe, confusion, Christ, and consummation.” Some of the interesting things that could be revealed about one nation’s multiple visions of human history get trampled down by the “down with ID!” line of attack.

For choir members who have heard enough serious talk about how Bad creationism and ID are, Colin Purrington has attempted to lighten things up a bit by proposing a hilarious set of science textbook stickers on evolution and intelligent design. The background: a school district in Georgia (southern U.S., not the former Soviet Union) mandated that the science textbooks that were being taught in the schools have a sticker attached to the outside of the books reading,

“This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.”

Purrington proposes that opponents print up competing stickers, to be affixed over the school board’s stickers. A sampling:

“This book discusses evolution. President George W. Bush said, ‘On the issue of evolution, the verdict is still out on how God created the Earth.’ Therefore, until 2009 this material shood be aproched with an open mind, studeed carefuly, and critcly consid’rd.”

He also has a set of stickers that can be stuck to other texts that promote ID. A sampling:

“This book was anonymously donated to your school library to discreetly promote religious alternatives to the theory of evolution. When you are finished with it, please refile the book in the fiction section.”

There are more on Purrington’s Flickr website.

Back to the Creation Museum: how could anyone possibly poke more fun at it? This unbeliever is hard pressed to imagine anything that could be funnier than the museum itself, with its depictions of humans and dinosaurs peaceably living together and a Grand Canyon carved out instantaneously (geologically speaking) in the wake of Noah’s Flood. If Baudrillard could coin the term simulacra to describe a copy that has no original, what term might we coin to describe an object that is its own parody? I’m not an etymologist, so someone who knows Greek, please help me out here.

L.L. Wynn

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.

Renewal plan is ‘anthropology in action’

Partnership forged to expand a UBC museum is a study in human creativity

ALEXANDRA GILL

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060606.BCMUSEUM06/TPStory/Education

VANCOUVER — Anthropology is commonly perceived as the dusty exploration of past cultures and extinct peoples. A huge renewal project at the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology proves that notion dead wrong.

The Partnership of Peoples, a $52-million expansion project that is intended to reinvigorate this world-renowned institution, was announced yesterday morning at a ceremony in the museum’s Great Hall, a stunning glass-encased, post-and-beam inspired room designed by Arthur Erickson. It houses North America’s most impressive collection of Pacific Northwest totem poles.

“We’re not ready to die down yet,” Anthony Shelton, the museum’s new director, joked after the presentation, which included traditional native drumming and prayers. His comment was more politically loaded than you might imagine.

At first glance, the renewal plan might seem like simply a major addition to a cultural cause. But if you take a closer look at the larger context of the province’s divided arts community and the various controversies, both past and present, attached to the parties involved, this so-called partnership actually sets the framework for a fascinating study in human creativity. You could almost call it “anthropology in action.”

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