{"id":2602,"date":"2018-12-06T17:20:45","date_gmt":"2018-12-06T17:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/?p=2602"},"modified":"2018-12-06T17:20:45","modified_gmt":"2018-12-06T17:20:45","slug":"hey-thats-our-stuff-maasai-tribespeople-tackle-oxfords-pitt-rivers-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/2018\/12\/06\/hey-thats-our-stuff-maasai-tribespeople-tackle-oxfords-pitt-rivers-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Hey, that’s our stuff: Maasai tribespeople tackle Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

A<\/span><\/span>round a large table in a bright room in the University of Oxford\u2019s Pitt Rivers Museum<\/a>, four members of the Maasai tribe from east Africa are inspecting a small object. It has been carefully placed in front of them by a curator wearing special handling gloves. The Maasai say that it is a bracelet, an orkatar<\/em>. They talk between themselves, in the maa <\/em>language, about what the bracelet is used for. \u201cThis is something that cannot be sold or given,\u201d says Yannick Ndoinyo, a junior elder from Loliondo, northern Tanzania. The orkatar <\/em>symbolises the death of a father and is a form of inheritance that passes down the generations. How did it end up in a museum in Oxford? Perhaps it was stolen from the original owner or given away under duress. According to the database, it was \u201cdonated\u201d to the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1904 by Alfred Claud Hollis<\/a>, a colonial administrator in British East Africa.<\/p>\n

This encounter between the Pitt Rivers, one of the most important ethnological museums in the world, and the Maasai is part of a process of cultural decolonisation. The relationship began when Maasai activist Samwel Nangiria<\/a> visited the museum in November last year for a conference. The Pitt Rivers has more than 300,000 objects in its collection, many of which were \u201cacquired\u201d by colonial functionaries, missionaries and anthropologists in the heyday of the British empire. The museum itself is curated in a peculiar style \u2013 in line with the request of benefactor Augustus Pitt Rivers<\/a> \u2013 with objects organised according to type rather than place of origin. This Victorian aesthetic has been consciously upheld: the Pitt Rivers is often referred to as a \u201cmuseum of a museum\u201d. There are shrunken heads from the Amazon and rudimentary tools from India; a magisterial totem pole from the Haida nation in Canada towers above the central, darkened atrium.<\/p>\n

Nangiria walked through the museum and stopped when he saw something he was not expecting: his own culture, entombed in a glass cabinet. \u201cWhen I saw objects from the Maasai community I was a little bit shocked,\u201d he tells me. \u201c[They were] poorly described, with a lack of what the object is meant for [and its] cultural significance.\u201d His heart started beating so fast that it felt like it was vibrating: \u201cBecause I know our culture is not dead. It\u2019s a living culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nangiria, a purposeful and diplomatic presence, expressed his displeasure to the museum\u2019s director, Laura Van Broekhoven<\/a>. She sent him a copy of the museum\u2019s strategic plan for the future and invited him back. Keenly aware of its problematic origins, the Pitt Rivers, like many museums, engages \u201coriginating communities\u201d \u2013 in the museum-world lingo \u2013 to allow them to reclaim the narrative around their objects. Last month, Nangiria, with four other Maasai from Tanzania and Kenya, and help from the Oxford-based NGO InsightShare, returned to do so.<\/p>\n

One purpose of the weeklong visit was to provide the museum with more accurate information. The database was littered with errors and gaps: it transpires that an object marked as a Maasai bracelet is actually an anklet; a trinket made for an unknown purpose in fact plays a vital role in circumcision rituals. After a Maasai sword is laid down on the table, Marina de Alarc\u00f3n, joint head of collections, tells us that the museum takes great care when holding arrows, assuming that their tips \u2013 as is Maasai custom \u2013 are poisoned. Francis Shomet Ole Naingisa, a village elder, duly confirms this: \u201cIf the poison mixes with your blood then you have five minutes left.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of the 60 objects examined, the Maasai came across five that are sacred, which \u201cthey would not expect to find elsewhere apart from within their community\u201d. One was the orkatar<\/em>. Another was an isurutia<\/em>, a necklace used as a wedding dowry. Nangiria sent a photograph to village elders back home via WhatsApp: \u201cThey were astonished to hear that such a thing was here,\u201d he tells me. \u201cThey say this particular object might have brought bad omens to the family [who lost possession of it].\u201d For the Maasai, these items are not historical curiosities. They are part of a living culture.<\/p>\n

The relationship between European museums and the people from whom their collections were taken has never been more fraught. The same week as the Maasai visit, Tarita Alarc\u00f3n Rapu, governor of Easter Island, begged for the return of the Hoa Hakananai\u2019a statue from the British Museum<\/a> in a tearful message that went viral: \u201cYou, the British people, have our soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few days later came the publication<\/a> of a report commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron, who had expressed his desire to see colonial-era items in France returned to Africa. Macron has his own reasons for this type of cultural diplomacy: it eases the passage of further economic and military cooperation with Francophone Africa. Nonetheless, the report is bold, recommending that France return African treasures if governments request them.<\/p>\n

Museums handle the question of repatriation as delicately as their objects. The Museums Association\u2019s policy statement <\/a>notes that it is a \u201ccomplex issue involving a range of emotional, ethical, legal and political factors\u201d. In my interviews I heard suspicion from some in the museum world about the politicised nature of state-to-state transactions, while the legal framework governing returns can be ambiguous, as has been with the case with recovering art stolen during the second world war. The British Museum has agreed to hold talks about Hoa Hakananai\u2019a, but a likely conclusion will be a temporary return on loan, as was the case with Nigeria\u2019s Benin bronzes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Repatriation, however, is not the only form of decolonisation. For the activist Alice Procter, who gives unofficial tours of London museums that foreground their histories of colonialism and slavery<\/a>, just as urgent is transforming the institution itself. \u201cDecolonisation means rethinking the structure of the museum,\u201d she tells me. \u201cUntil people from [originating] communities are actually working in museums with their collections on a permanent and long-term basis, it won\u2019t be truly institutional change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Procter tells me that the Pitt Rivers is a good example of a museum working hard to \u201crethink the role, power and status of museums\u201d, and Van Broekhoven is refreshingly forthright. Fluent in the language of decolonial studies, she admits that the model of originating communities visiting for a week to talk about their customs is not sufficient and that the power dynamic between participants should always be carefully considered. \u201cThere are times [in these exchanges] when you think, \u2018What are we doing here? Are we decolonising or are we neo-colonising?\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cBut that\u2019s why it\u2019s so important to think through the power balances in these relationships. It should certainly never be tokenistic. Decolonising really needs to be a process and as it deeply questions the institutional practices it will often be painful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Will the Maasai be able to facilitate the return of sacred objects? Van Broekhoven tells me over email that \u201cin principle\u201d, and provided they find funding, the museum is ready to \u201clearn together how we might envision new ways of redress\u201d. The words are carefully chosen. Nangiria, ever the diplomat, suggests an alternative solution in one of our conversations: inviting elders to perform a spiritual ceremony that will \u201cdisconnect\u201d the objects from their cultural function, allowing the Maasai to actively donate them to the museum. The museum will wait to hear from the elders to \u201cjointly decide\u201d on the next steps in the partnership.<\/p>\n

At a public event on the final day of their visit, the five Maasai, led by Scholastica Ene Kukutia, a women\u2019s rights activist from Kenya<\/a>, perform a ritual in the museum. Standing on the balcony overseeing the collection, sporting red shukas <\/em>and bejewelled with earrings and necklaces that chime as they move, the group sing a melodious incantation that speaks of a meeting between \u201cgreat cultures\u201d. Attendees cry, as does Nangiria. He thanks the museum for \u201copening its doors\u201d to them.<\/p>\n

But history always finds a way to seep through to the present, especially in a city like Oxford. The day before, I joined the Maasai at the university\u2019s Weston Library. Enduring the November cold, they posed for a photograph on a balcony that frames the city\u2019s skyline: implacable limestone that speaks of centuries of imperial wealth. Inside, they were shown archival maps of Maasai territory. The British engineered a forced migration, at gunpoint, of the Maasai at the turn of the century, moving them from one of the most fertile plains of Kenya to a drier part of Tanzania<\/a>. Nangiria pores over the maps to see the changing contours of his people\u2019s land.<\/p>\n

One book taken from the library\u2019s archives, written in 1901 by Sidney Langford Hinde<\/a>, a medical officer in British East Africa, is called The Last of the Masai<\/a>. It is a work of colonial anthropology. Kukutia is intrigued and reads from a chapter: \u201cAll Masai [sic] are quick at learning and, since they are both quiet and intelligent, they make excellent servants.\u201d She laughs. And then, after reading a few more lines, lets out a sound of weariness. I ask if she is glad that she came to Oxford. She says yes. She is happy that they have provided the Pitt Rivers Museum with better information for people learning about her culture. What\u2019s more: \u201cNow they have made us at least aware of where our belongings are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/span> This article was amended on 5 December 2018. An earlier version referred to the Haida community. This has been changed to nation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Around a large table in a bright room in the University of Oxford\u2019s Pitt Rivers Museum, four members of the Maasai tribe from east Africa are inspecting a small object. It has been carefully placed in front of them by a curator wearing special handling gloves. The Maasai say that it is a bracelet, an orkatar. They talk between themselves,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/109"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2603,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2602\/revisions\/2603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}