Post #141784 by bigbrotiki on Thu, Feb 17, 2005 11:07 AM

On 2005-02-17 03:01, cheekytiki wrote:
These are wonderful, but(and I hate to be a wet blanket)there is also aproblem in that there are none of these old pieces left in the countries they originate from, which I find a shame.
I found this out whilst I was in Oz and got talking to a tiki collector who had spent time with his Oceanic neighbours. He said though it was fairly easy to come by the contempory/tourist art, the country (PNG) had been pillaged of everything else, and apparently the natives aren't too happy about it.

This is true and must be considered. I LOVE old Ehnographic Museums, especially photos of old displays like the one in
http://www.tribalmania.com/SHOWCASE.htm

But look at all that stuff! Forget Tiki mug collecting, if you wanna talk collectors mania, see what went on with European Museums at the turn of the last century. Under the guise of scientific need they cleaned out whole cultures with a thoroughness that can only be described as greed.

The argument that is still used today is preservation, which sticks only partially. True, many amazing objects would have rotted away would they have not been collected, but it is a half truth/excuse that ALL these pieces would have been thrown away after their ritual use had ended. Yet it was used as Carte Blanche for all objects, and is still the attitude of mind for freely displaying them today.

My home town's beloved Voelkerkunde Museum had an interesting exhibit last year of the results of their South Seas expedition of 1908/09:

Ethnologists used a specially equipped steamer (which was partially rebuilt in the exhibit) to visit villages in the Bismarck Archipelago and along the New Guinea coast, which were at that time "German Protectorates", one of the belated efforts of Germany to become a colonial power (which ended with World War One). Within in a few weeks the expedition amassed a collection of 15 000 (!) objects. Granted, this counts small things like fishhooks too, but why so many!

Most were traded, but the mode in which this was done sometimes was highly questionable, too: In some villages, the natives took flight to the jungle because they feared being "recruited" (enslaved) for plantation work, so the ethnologists went through the empty huts and "collected" what they liked, and, in a manner referred to as "anonymous purchase" left trinkets in trade for the primitve art pieces. "Excuse me, but I am sure you don't mind if I take your family saint and leave you this CAN OPENER!"

Not a good example of scientific behaviour, to use the protection of being the colonial power, and the fear instilled by skin traders, to obtain the desired objects.

I am not one to believe that history can be reversed, and that if all this stuff would be repatriated today, all would be fine. New Guinea is a country rife with corruption and crime, and who knows who would end up with that stuff. But the European Museums should own up to their deeds and discuss them openly, which they don't.

That's why I would be carefully considerate in the purchase of old tribal art, and believe that the gallery that Tiki Wahine mentioned to be a nice alternative. I like that they name the artists, which was never done in "primitive" art collecting. I would be like saying today "..this carving might hail from the "Orange County Province", or the "Whittier Tribe".

I am not trying to be Mister Politically Correct, I still love the shunned term "primitive" art, and would like nothing more than to own an ancient Marquesan bone Tiki, but ya can't have it all!