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Page 1: Museums, Colonialism, and Identity: A History of Naga Collections in Britain. AndyWest. london: horniman museum and gardens , 2011. 209 pp

of what an incredible challenge, and even impossible

achievement, this might pose.

However, the book’s contributors also realize

that it is only through a sincere engagement of all

the different parts invested in the past, in one way

or another, that any sincere assessment of that same

past could be achieved. They are also quite aware

that only a multiplicity of voices would enrich the

archaeological and ethnographic records in ways

that would otherwise be impossible, and that ulti-

mately, this rich past will only further enrich our

contemporary existence. Therefore, in this fashion, a

joint theoretical and practical (e.g., praxis) tool pro-

vides for a richer, and more realistic, understanding

of our global existence and communal destiny as a

species.

The text itself is composed of the published

proceedings of most (not all) of the papers and some

of the workshop discussions (as an appendix) of an

“expert meeting” (of the same name as the book) that

took place at the National Museum of Ethnology in

Leiden, the Netherlands, in November of 2007. The

meeting brought together indigenous and non-Native

experts from/of the Americas and Europe to discuss

issues such as the sharing of cultural knowledge,

heritage, material culture, and museum objects, and

ultimately to assess and develop stronger models for

realistically successful modes of intellectual, political,

personal, and anthropological collaborations between

Western academic institutions and Native popula-

tions.

What makes this book different, and unique, in

comparison to most other books engaged with

cultural heritage, is the realistic base from which the

authors began their discussion. Far from looking to

dwell on the decades of Native exploitation and

plundering on behalf of museums worldwide, they

are quick to accept that museums are very much the

closet of colonialism. But they are also quick to

acknowledge that placing blame is not a solution but

merely an initial starting point, one from which we

can not only start getting more realistic pictures of

the pasts (in the plural) but perhaps more impor-

tantly also assess the common humanity of all those

involved—Native subjects and investigators

included.

After all, as the chapters keenly point out, it is

these same museum practitioners and archaeologists

that have safeguarded millions of objects and material

culture. And, in a way, museums themselves now are

the objects of a history of the West that also must be

analyzed. Therefore, the issue, as is argued through-

out the book, is not to place blame, or attempt to

shrug off social responsibility, but rather to truly, and

honestly, find manners in which to build and grow

from the present conditions of our postcolonial

world.

To some degree, one of the most concrete results

of this “expert meeting,” highlighted several times in

the book, are the four shifts from which museum

anthropology would benefit: (1) to stop seeing muse-

ums as storing objects of dying cultures but see them

as resources to live ones; (2) to recognize that indige-

nous cultures, not museums, are the ultimate experts

of their own culture; (3) to understand objects not as

things but as animate objects that embody living,

socially significant, relationships; and (4) to act on

the increasing need to work in partnerships, not in

isolation (p. 13).

This is by far one of the best texts on cultural

heritage and collaborative efforts between Western

academics and Native populations that has been writ-

ten in the last couple of years. It shows an incredible

intellectual rigor, anthropological insights, and per-

sonal commitment. The answer will not come easy,

andmost probably will not be in the singular, but still,

the text argues, we “must come to this work with

respectful spirits, willing to flex, willing to do things

differently than we have before, willing to learn”

(p. 188). The collaborative road will be arduous and

challenging, but in reality it is the only path worth

taking, and perhaps that knowledge, and the mutual

respect it demands, might already be the first fruit of

such a joining effort.

Museums, Colonialism, and Identity: A History of

Naga Collections in Britain. Andy West. LONDON:

HORNIMAN MUSEUM AND GARDENS, 2011. 209 PP.

Vibha Joshiuniversity of oxford

This book adds to the existing literature on the Naga

peoples of the Indo-Burma border by giving an over-

view of the distribution of Naga artifacts in British

book reviews

85

Page 2: Museums, Colonialism, and Identity: A History of Naga Collections in Britain. AndyWest. london: horniman museum and gardens , 2011. 209 pp

museums. However, in contextualizing the collecting

of Naga artifacts, Andy West chooses to depend only

on colonial sources and therefore misses the opportu-

nity to provide a critical assessment of the collections

in relation to the current developments in museum

ethnography and their engagement with source

communities.

The book provides a descriptive account of meth-

ods of collecting (purchase, gifting, exchange, and

plunder), and asks why the collections were made.

West answers by linking ethnographic collecting with

the development of anthropology as a subject in Brit-

ain. In his introductory chapter he summarizes the

relationship between museum ethnography and

anthropology, and examines the influence of early

anthropological theories of evolutionism, diffusion-

ism, functionalism, and structural functionalism on

the changing relationship between ethnographic

museums and the teaching of anthropology. West has

chosen to bypass the debates surrounding methods of

display and the holistic depiction of a culture through

its artifacts, expounded by Bastian in Berlin and taken

forward by Boas. Their influence is apparent in the

ethnographic collections commissioned by Balfour,

who travelled to Naga Hills for the Pitt Rivers

Museum of Oxford University.

Having situated the collection in the theoretical

concerns of the museum and anthropology period,

West devotes subsequent chapters to the analyses of

Anglo–Naga history and the relationship between the

governors and the governed, and tries to explain an

alleged conundrum—who are the Naga people?—giving many examples of the groups and subgroups

that constitute “Naga.” He suggests that Naga aspira-

tions for prosperity, gift exchange, and control of

trade routes explain the development of the Anglo–Naga relationship and of intergroup relationships.

But, in relying on colonial sources, West unwittingly

repeats the Western romantic vision of the Naga peo-

ple and the idea that the relationship was friendly and

of mutual respect. Recent historical research on

northeast India dispels such conjectures. The Naga

collections in Britain are directly related to a history

of coercion and colonial hegemony. Currently, the

term Naga has become a “given,” and its acceptance

(or rejection) by several communities in northeast

India and in Burma is in terms of it now referring to a

single “ethnie,” it having acquired a political signifi-

cance due to Naga nationalist demands for a sover-

eign nation.

The main strength of the book lies in highlighting

the myriad people who collected the artifacts and

whose collections are now in various museums, big

and small, scattered across Britain. While we know

about the main collectors of Naga objects in Britain

—J. H. Hutton and J. P. Mills (and comparable col-

lections made by anthropologists, von F€urer-Hai-

mendorf and H. E. Kauffmann, in Vienna and Basel

—not in Zurich as claimed in the book)—not much

is known about the lesser-known collectors. They

were officers (and their wives) stationed in the erst-

while Naga Hills and/or members of expeditions,

both exploratory and punitive, that were undertaken

during the colonial period. West rightly points out

that many objects that have been catalogued under

the generic category “Naga” may have come from

non-Naga communities who have similar material

culture—examples of such mislabelling have been

found in some European Naga collections dating

from the late 19th century.

Taking the point about accuracy further, West

argues that having two dominant collectors, Hutton

and Mills, the British administrators who also wrote

monographs and were therefore seen as authorities

on Naga, has created a bias in the classification and

identification of objects. But there was no one else,

and they did provide a benchmark or basis of classifi-

cation on which other collectors might have built,

even if through improvement. Indeed, elsewhere, the

author states that many smaller collections made by

those less versed about Naga culture and museum

collecting lack basic information about community,

place, village, owner or maker, and function of the

object. In this kind of scenario how does one identify

an object? There are two ways: first is to cross-check

with a well-recorded collection (despite the claim by

West, a number of objects presented by Hutton and

Mills and specifically commissioned for the Pitt Riv-

ers Museum have systematic and detailed informa-

tion), and the other is to do field research. Many

objects are still manufactured or are part of the living

memory of the people.

An example of not making use of already exist-

ing information is the misidentification of jewelry

and textiles in plates 11, 20, 21, and 23. If the writer

had cross-checked with the Museum of Archaeology

book reviews

86

Page 3: Museums, Colonialism, and Identity: A History of Naga Collections in Britain. AndyWest. london: horniman museum and gardens , 2011. 209 pp

and Anthropology, Cambridge University, and the

Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford object

and photo collections (and perhaps combined this

with a visit to Nagaland), he would have easily iden-

tified them as women’s items belonging to the Ao

Naga community. I agree that there can be difficul-

ties in identifying an object as belonging to a partic-

ular group, when the object in question is used by

more than one group. From both colonial writings

and contemporary research on Naga oral narratives

and ethnoarchaeology, there is evidence that the

material culture of different Naga groups is linked

to their history of migration, conquest, and absorp-

tion of smaller groups into larger ones, as well as

the founding of new villages and clusters that went

on to develop their own repertoire of designs to

assert a separate identity. The process is ongoing,

and the coalescing and breaking up of groups has

continued.

Taking as a given that the effort was to collect

mostly “traditional” items, West claims that colonial

collections do not reflect change that was occurring at

that time. However, collections made by Mills and

Hutton in the Pitt Rivers Museum contradict these

claims. I have come across artifacts (in display cases

and in storage) that have been made from new

material and are experiments in design: for example,

there are textiles made from imported dyed yarn,

cloths that show new experimental motifs; necklaces

made out of a broken enamel plate; plastic buttons

and colored paper used for decorating accessories;

and wooden tobacco pipes that were inspired by a

French pipe that a Phom Naga man had seen during

his time in the French Labour Corps in the First

World War. The design of the pipe was replicated by

many, and examples of it are in various museums,

including the Horniman (Figure 6.4). As an informed

reader, I was disappointed that the bust of Nihu (on

cover and p. 51) did not prompt the author to find

out more about this person. Nihu was the head inter-

preter and one of the 13 signatories of the letter that

was sent in 1929 to the Simon Commission demand-

ing an independent status for the Naga people. These

oversights and omissions highlight the fact that more

research is needed that combines museum ethnogra-

phy and fieldwork.

Overall, the book gives useful insights into the

history of collecting and provides helpful informa-

tion to curators who have artifacts classified under

the Naga category. The information on collectors

and corresponding museums that hold the collec-

tions could have been made more accessible in tab-

ular form in the appendix. Absence of an index is a

major drawback for a reader or researcher, which I

hope will be rectified in any future editions. Finally,

there are a couple of factual errors that need correction:

the river Sutlej flows in both India and Pakistan, and

the majority of Kauffmann’s object collection is in the

Museum der Kulteren Basel (Zurich has his photo

collection).

Body and Spirit: Tibetan Medical Paintings. Laila

Williamson and Serinity Young, eds. NEW YORK:

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY IN

ASSOCIATION WITH UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS,

SEATTLE, 2009. 234 PP.

Barbara Gerkehumboldt university of berlin

Body and Spirit: Tibetan Medical Paintings is an

exhibition catalogue, picturing and documenting one

of several existing sets of 79 Tibetan medical scroll

paintings, called tankas, painted by the Nepalese artist

Romio Shrestha and his Tibetan, Nepalese, and Bhut-

anese students. This set of tankas is a recent copy of

an older set from Lhasa, which was painted between

1687 and 1703 during the time of the Fifth Dalai

Lama.

Readers interested in Tibetan medicine will proba-

bly be familiar with the larger and more elaborate

two-volume publication of the Buryat set of the 79

tankas (Parfionovitch et al. 1992) or Jampa Thinle’s

(1994) publication of the Lhasa set. Body and Spirit is

a shorter—and more affordable—version without

detailed summaries of the texts but nevertheless with

an English translation of the Tibetan inscriptions of

each tanka, which was prepared by Lozang Jamspal

and Serinity Young.

What makes these paintings outstanding and cap-

tivating is Shrestha’s unique artistic style that adheres

to tradition as much as it incorporates originality,

thus making it another distinctive set of this rich

Tibetan medical heritage. The set was exhib-

ited between January 25 and July 17, 2011, at the

book reviews

87