museums, colonialism, and identity: a history of naga collections in britain. andywest. london:...
TRANSCRIPT
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
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
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