Transcript
Page 1: Digital Heritage, Knowledge Networks, and Source Communities: Understanding Digital Objects in a Melanesian Society

digital heritage, knowledge

networks, and source

communities:

Understanding Digital Objects in aMelanesian Society

GraemeWereuniversity of queensland

abstract

This article investigates digital heritage technologies from

a Melanesian perspective. It explores—in the context of

New Ireland, Papua New Guinea—the types of values

placed on digital surrogates as a means to engage critically

with recent debates on “digital” or “virtual” repatriation. It

raises the question as to whether digital knowledge

resources such as 3D digital objects are really seen as sec-

ondary or “second best” to the original or whether digital

technologies reproduce, in new form, an economy of

objects that sustains knowledge and revival practices. As a

way to address this, the Mobile Museum pilot project was

launched in January 2012 to help support the Nalik people

of New Ireland reconnecting with and researching their

cultural heritage in Queensland museums. This article

demonstrates, in contrast to recent calls for an ideological

return to the status of the museum object as put forward

by Conn (2010), how ethnographic objects should be

understood in terms of their performativity, mobility, and

virtuality, which render them operative far beyond the

physical realms of museum institutions. [digital heritage,

digital repatriation, ethnographic collections, cultural revi-

talization, Melanesia]

Increased accessibility to digital technologies and

mobile telecommunications in rural and remote loca-

tions has radically transformed the ways in which

source communities access and engage with ethno-

graphic collections for the purposes of cultural revi-

talization (Phillips 2013; Srinivasan and Huang

2005). The transfer of ethnographic collections into

digital formats together with the launching of digital

platforms such as interactive websites, virtual exhibi-

tion walkthroughs, and online catalogues and

archives has made hundreds of thousands of objects,

films, photographs, sound recordings, and archival

documents available online and on demand to those

with access to a computer and the Internet. While this

reflects the participatory culture of current museum

projects (e.g., Ames 2003; Herle 2003; Phillips 2013;

Weil 2007), and in some cases leads to a sense of

“completeness” through the recovery of lost objects

(Rowlands 2004), critics argue that digital heritage

technologies simply replicate the dominant power

structures of collecting institutions and of technology

whereby curators control the release of digital content

and the original objects remain firmly within the col-

lecting institution.

In this article, my concern is to investigate these

assumptions through an exploration of the new econ-

omy of digital heritage objects in rural and remote

areas of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea (Figure 1),

and reveal the dynamics at play.1 Using my involve-

ment in a digital heritage project as a focus, I discuss

the values placed on digital surrogates as a means to

engage critically with recent debates on “digital” or

“virtual” repatriation. I ask whether digital knowl-

edge resources such as 3D digital objects are really

seen as secondary or “second best” to the original or

whether digital technologies reproduce, in new form,

an economy of objects that sustains knowledge and

revival practices. I will show how, among the Nalik

people of New Ireland, 3D digital objects provide a

resource to re-create a sense of order, one situated in

localized discourses on modernity, development, and

governance. This article demonstrates, in contrast to

recent calls for an ideological return to the status of

the museum object as put forward by Steven Conn

(2010), how ethnographic objects should be under-

stood in terms of their performativity, mobility, and

virtuality, which render them operative far beyond

the physical realms of museum institutions.

Digital Technologies and Source

Communities

The rapid growth of affordable, portable digital imag-

ing technologies, such as 3D scanners and high-qual-

ity digital cameras, has redefined the way museums

provide access to and engagement with ethnographic

collections that may otherwise have remained con-

demned to life in the controlled environment of a

museum storeroom. Digital technologies allow for

new ways of knowing about cultural heritage, offering

opportunities for education, regeneration, and com-

munity empowerment (Christen 2006; McTavish

2005; Ngata 2012; Parry 2007; Simpson 2009). The

museum anthropology

Museum Anthropology, Vol. 37, Iss. 2, pp. 133–143© 2014 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.DOI: 10.1111/muan.12058

Page 2: Digital Heritage, Knowledge Networks, and Source Communities: Understanding Digital Objects in a Melanesian Society

“recoding” of the museum, according to Parry

(2007), signals not just an institutional shift that is

inclusive of digital technologies, but it significantly

reframes the museum as a site for the digital encoding

of cultural works.

According to Ramesh Srinivasan (2012), critical

studies of digital technology use among source com-

munities remain largely underdeveloped. This could

be due, as Abungu (2002) explains in relation to

Africa, to the lack of digital connectivity in rural and

remote areas. This appears to be changing quite rap-

idly, however, as is suggested by an expanding body

of literature within anthropology, museum studies,

and information studies that has begun to explore the

creation of digital archives, virtual museums, and dig-

ital knowledge resources by source communities to

safeguard their cultural heritage (cf. Basu 2011; de

Bruijn et al. 2009; Hennessy 2009). These studies

demonstrate how source communities are appropri-

ating digital technologies to support cultural self-rep-

resentation by creating and managing websites, video

projects, and so forth (Srinivasan 2009a, 2009b). One

of the most well-known examples is the Reciprocal

Research Network (RRN) in Canada. The RRN, co-

developed by a group of First Nations groups and the

University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthro-

pology, facilitates online access to and research of

museum collections originating from First Nations

people from the Northwest Coast and British Colum-

bia. It has enabled stakeholders to build their own

collections, collaborate on shared projects, record

stories, upload files, hold discussions, research

museum collections, and create social networks. This

collaboration—described as a “Partnership of Peo-

ples”—has established a system of governance that

ensures the needs of the source communities as well

as museums are taken into account at all stages of the

development (Phillips 2013; Rowley 2010).

Critics have questioned the capacity of digital

technologies to adequately encode the complexities of

cultural forms. Some, such as Brown (2005), cite

issues of governance as problematic: the Internet may

infringe on community values and access protocols as

it is built on the Western liberal ideology of open

access for all. Others question the cultural compati-

bility of digital technologies to indigenous knowledge

systems. Verran and Christie (2007) raise this issue in

their discussion of the performative dimension of

knowledge among indigenous Australians. They

claim that Aboriginal narratives about the landscape

do not transfer easily into digital formats because

indigenous knowledge has to be performed in order

for it to become operative. This, they assert, poses

challenges for digital technologies that are structured

as representational systems. These cases raise obvious

questions about the constitution of indigenous

knowledge, how digital technologies codify knowl-

edge, and the manner in which such knowledge is

transacted.

Other scholars view digital technologies in a more

positive light. They stress that through community

collaboration and consultation, museums are able to

design digital platforms that are “respectful” (Chris-

ten 2011) to cultural protocols by taking into account

gatekeepers and managed access to knowledge (cf.

Harrison 1992). In elaborating on her own research

in the Great Lakes region of North America and the

establishment of the Great Lakes Research Alliance

for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Cultures (GRA-

SAC), Phillips claims that digital technologies offer

new opportunities for research and cultural revitali-

zation and mitigate “the separation of people from

heritage and the enforced losses of traditional knowl-

edge that continue to have serious consequences for

Figure 1. Map of Papua New Guinea with New Ireland to the northeast of

the mainland. (Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Papua_-

New_Guinea_map.png, accessed March 27, 2014.)

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Aboriginal identity” (2013:295). Such approaches

characterize the collaborative and community-needs

driven approach of digital heritage technologies that

set out to meet the requirements of indigenous and

source communities. Kimberly Christen (2006)

describes how, in Australia, a digital archive was

established in collaboration with Pitjantjatjara com-

munity members who were living in dispersed loca-

tions. Through a consultation process, the archive

was designed to operate within cultural protocols for

the viewing and circulation of objects and images in a

manner that satisfied the needs of the community

who wanted to gain access to historical photographs

and images of museum objects. For example, Chris-

ten (2006:58) describes how varying levels of access

and editing rights are assigned to community mem-

bers. Using a password, knowledgeable people can

add, edit, or delete informational units considered to

be particularly sensitive. Christen’s work emphasizes

how digital archives and websites are considered

accessible and adaptable to remote locations and

culturally appropriate for the digital return of some

cultural material held in museums. “Digital” repatria-

tion, proponents claim, can help safeguard cultural

heritage for future generations, especially when it is

unfeasible to return physical objects. Moreover, Phil-

lips (2013:287) explains how digital repatriation is

not intended to replace the physical transfer of the

original object. Rather, digital return supports new

knowledge and understanding of cultural heritage

through the “first-level” repatriation of image and

text.

Ironically, the rise of interest in digital heritage

technologies on the part of source communities raises

important questions about the status of museum

objects and their primacy in terms of originality and

authenticity. In many parts of Melanesia, the attitude

toward physical objects housed in museums is often

deeply ambivalent if not fearful, especially if an indi-

vidual has physical or visual contact that is considered

too close (e.g., Kingston 2007; Wright 2008). In these

contexts, digital objects as a form of digital simulacra

may not be seen as a poor substitute for the authentic-

ity of the “real thing” but as an independent source of

potential potency manifested through their capacity

to be transformed into physical objects through acts

of remaking. Although digital heritage technologies

intend to impart a life-like experience of the actual

object with their use of high-resolution photography,

3D environments, and image handling tools to pro-

duce a kind of “total documentation” (and thus can

be distinguished from photographs), this experience

is perceived as being different, in a beneficial way,

from that of engaging with the tangible object itself. I

argue that among the Nalik people of New Ireland,

3D digital objects are perceived in a distant and less

threatening manner than would be shown toward the

object because the digital objects cannot be touched

or sensed in the same way as tangible objects. This

distancing, I argue, allows the possibility for the

image to be internalized and hence facilitates the rec-

lamation, recovery, and reintegration of cultural

knowledge. Moreover, given that New Ireland is an

image-based society in which cultural knowledge and

political rights are transacted through the managed

display of ritual images (Kuechler 2002), the return

and reintegration of ancestral images in digital for-

mats has added value and effect. I show how renewed

access to images offers tangible opportunities for the

Nalik people to re-create a new social order, one that

is embedded in localized discourses about develop-

ment, modernity, and governance. I demonstrate this

through an analysis of the Mobile Museum pilot pro-

ject, which I have been involved in with the Nalik

community.

The Nalik People of Northern New Ireland

The Nalik people of northern New Ireland are a group

of around five thousand Austronesian speakers who

live along the coastal region of the island. Nalik soci-

ety is organized around an exogamous matrilineal

clan system named after local species of birds. The

region is famous for a complex set of funerary rites

known as malangan that may take many years to

complete. These rites involve feasting and competi-

tive exchanges to honor the dead. As well as referring

to funerary rites, the term malangan also denotes the

carved wooden sculptures and woven effigies that are

displayed during the culminating period of ritual

events. The sculptures and effigies are believed to

arrest, contain, and release the souls of the deceased

toward the ancestral domain and are thus perceived

to be instrumental in finalizing the work for the dead

(see Kuechler 2002; Lewis 1969; Were 2010). The

carvings—through the integration of locally recog-

nizable forms and totemic emblems—also make

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mnemonic reference to clan histories and the land-

scape and are crucial to rights of succession and the

transmission of cultural knowledge.

Specialist carvers (aitek) in the communities are

commissioned by land-holding clans to produce the

malangan carvings for use in mortuary ceremonies.

The carving appears to the carver in the form of a

dream, which he then reproduces frommemory while

in ritual seclusion. The finished carving is kept in a

secret location until the final events of the mortuary

feasting cycle, when carvings are revealed to partici-

pants who have congregated in the village hamlet to

partake in the ritual events. Once the carving is

revealed from behind a specially constructed leaf

enclosure, people walk toward the carving, inspect its

design, and lay shell money at its feet. At no point do

they touch the carving. Susanne Kuechler (2002)

describes how the revelatory act is seen as the sym-

bolic death of the carving because after its display, the

carving is removed from public display and then left

to rot or is burned. Kuechler (1997) states how the

carvings were also sold to Western collectors as

another way to “kill” the carving, explaining the large

number of malangan in ethnographic museums. The

ritual killing of the figure leads to the shedding of the

image as it is internalized by those present as a record

of social events and clan relationships. The carving

may be revealed again later, when it is remade and

displayed at another mortuary feast. Significantly,

according to Kuechler, value is not attributed to the

carving but to the memory of its imagery and to the

right over its reproduction, which is transacted in the

exchanges.

With over a century of Methodist and Catholic

missionary influence and activity in New Ireland,

however, Naliks say that the malangan tradition has

become dissipated and claim that elements of it may

have been lost altogether. The elaborate resources

devoted to malangan feasting are no longer a feature

of ritual activities in contemporary society (see also

Lewis 1979); rather, Naliks use the expression sotka-

tim kastom—or shortcutting kastom—as a way to

describe how ritual protocols and proceedings are

now pared down to a set of key ceremonies in the rites

for the dead. The term kastom—widely discussed by

Melanesian anthropologists—in the New Ireland

context relates to traditional practices that are under-

stood to derive from the precolonial past, whether

invented, idealized, imagined, or revised. People may

live according to kastom, but they may also reflect

upon, evaluate, discuss, dispute, and modify it (Har-

rison 2000:663).

In Nalik society, any reflection and innovation of

kastom is clearly conveyed in the expression sotkatim

kastom. In the case of funerary rituals, this phrase

refers to the hire rather than the commission of new

carvings. This contemporary practice now entails that

carvers hold on to a small collection of malangan

carvings that they lend to organizing clans for a fee

during mortuary feasting. This reduces the financial

resources committed to the carving of malangan fig-

ures (i.e., sotkatim or shortcutting), as described by

anthropologists (e.g., Kuechler 2002; Lewis 1969).

Because there is a reduced demand on the commis-

sioning of new malangan carvings, it is inevitable that

there is less work for specialist carvers to undertake.

Although museum collections contain a variety of

different types of malangan carvings from the late

19th century onwards in the form of figures, birds,

friezes, and canoes (see Gunn and Peltier 2006),

declining production means that only a limited range

of carvings are now produced by specialist carvers.

Many of the malangan carvings found in museum

collections are no longer produced. Even when some

carvings are produced anew, they lack the highly

incised style of the past. As a result of these changes,

there is serious concern among Naliks that some clans

may have forgotten how to reproduce their malangan

carvings as well as the stories and songs that accom-

pany their display.

Dangerous Heritage

In the Nalik community, there have been many dis-

cussions about how a return or display of museum

collections would help sustain traditional knowledge.

One approach they explored, which has been repeat-

edly discussed since I first began conducting field

research in the Nalik community in 2000, was the

possibility of establishing a local museum or cultural

center that could showcase New Ireland culture and

provide a community focus for reinvigorating carving

traditions among the younger generation. At one

stage in 2008, the provincial government even pro-

vided money to develop a site for a museum, but the

money mysteriously disappeared, much to the frus-

tration of the National Cultural Commission in

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Papua New Guinea as well as the Nalik community.

Indeed, so problematic and contentious has any pro-

posal been to establish a museum that a split occurred

between two key Nalik supporters of the project,

which meant that any further discussions have

reached deadlock.

Yet, behind the veneer of politics lies the crucial

question about the display and safekeeping of malan-

gan sculptures. Many senior Nalik men revealed in

conversation that any physical return of malangan

would be entirely problematic for the communities.

Given that most museum artifacts lack details of

provenance, the Nalik community claimed that it

would be difficult and problematic to return carvings

without knowing the rightful clan owners. Clan lea-

der (maimai) Martin Kombeng was interviewed on

Australian SBS World News and related the problems

of returning malangan carvings to the Nalik people.

He explained, “Most of the originating clans who

own those [malangan] masks, maybe they cannot

remember. Now you might as well leave them where

they are.”2

Malangan carvings are vessels that are supposed to

disappear after their public display (Kuechler 1997).

Many Naliks stated how the current generation no

longer knew how to manage carvings produced a cen-

tury before because the carvings were potentially

powerful entities. In one instance, after viewing an

image of a tatanua mask, collected by the colonial

officer Romilly in the late 19th century, some senior

men were adamant that the mask should never touch

New Ireland shores again. It was far too potent, they

explained, as it came from a time when ancestral

power was considered especially powerful. I witnessed

this reaction again when two senior Nalik men viewed

the dozen or so malangan carvings in the New Ireland

collections at the QueenslandMuseum in Australia in

November of 2012. Adam Kaminiel, a malangan car-

ver from the Nalik-speaking area, remarked, “I still

have goose-bumps.”3 For the duration of his visit,

Kaminiel refused to handle any of the artifacts,

explaining that because these artifacts were from

ancestral times, they had hidden powers. A similar

scenario is described in Sean Kingston’s (2007) illu-

minating essay about a cultural center in southern

New Ireland. Calling museum objects “dangerous

heritage,” Kingston points out that objects that have

been ceremonially killed are supposed to remain

absent. The Nalik people are not equipped to deal

with the return of carvings from the past that they

assume to be potent, and any project to establish a

museum naturally appears to stall. Such malangan

carvings, at least in the context of the Nalik-speaking

area of New Ireland, are best placed in museums in

Australia, North America, or Europe.

Like other ethnohistorical projects in Melanesia

(e.g., Bell 2003; Wright 2008), books containing

images of museum objects as well as reproductions of

old black-and-white photographs capturing local

people in a variety of poses or activities during the era

of colonial science raise much speculation in terms of

identifying people and traditional artifacts from New

Ireland’s past. One issue for the Nalik community,

however, has been the limitations on accessing these

cultural resources. Books and photographs are rarely

circulated among the community and generally stay

in the houses of those who take on custodian duties.

The high humidity and salt content in the air makes

printed matter last only a few years before its eventual

decay. In addition, people in the Nalik community

often complain that photographs are “not enough,”

as the static form of representation does not allow for

a full understanding of the topological nature of the

carvings. As Kuechler (1999) states, what is important

about the form of the carving is not just the motifs

and totemic emblems revealed on the surface but also

the negative space in between, the intertwining planes

of the figure that reveal the memory of contractual

relations over the land.

It was during a visit to the Nalik community in

2009 that discussions about a digital heritage project

emerged as a way to provide the Naliks with access to

cultural resources and an opportunity to conduct

their research and support cultural revitalization in

the community. The recent establishment of a mobile

telecommunications network across New Ireland—allowing mobile phone connections and Internet

access for the first time—helped foster this discus-

sion. Several senior Naliks who comprise a cultural

elite, many of whom have worked in urban centers

and returned to the rural communities to take on tra-

ditional roles, were aware of the capacities of digital

imaging technologies and were interested in develop-

ing new ways to gain access to their cultural heritage

residing in ethnographic museums worldwide. As a

way to find a culturally appropriate solution, the

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Mobile Museum pilot project was launched in January

2012 to help support the Nalik people reconnecting

with and researching their cultural heritage in

Queensland museums.

TheMobile Museum Pilot Project

The Mobile Museum pilot project was initiated as a

collaboration among the University of Queensland,

the Queensland Museum, and the Nalik community.

Its principal aim was to build a culturally appropriate

digital application that would allow the Naliks to view

3D digital objects relevant to their cultural heritage.

Senior Nalik men and women wanted to utilize the

availability of digital technologies to create a platform

that allowed for remote access either using a mobile

phone or a laptop computer. As a pilot project, we set

out to produce 3D scans of ten Nalik artifacts.

Ortelia, a Brisbane-based digital design company

specializing in 3D imaging, was contracted to

develop the digital platform for the project. The

company was selected on the basis of its experience

working in cross-cultural environments. Three New

Ireland artifacts were initially photographed at the

Queensland Museum to develop a prototype plat-

form for demonstration purposes in the community.

The imaging technique involved taking multiple

stills of artifacts at incremental angles then stitching

the images together to make a 3D composite before

mounting the digital object within a 3D environ-

ment. The images only required a small amount of

computer memory even though they offered high-

resolution detail, and they were designed to be used

on computer operating systems that would be con-

sidered out of date by Western standards. The pro-

totype of the digital platform allowed digital objects

to be viewed on a computer screen—available in

Nalik villages either by accessing computers in the

local high schools or using laptops in people’s

homes (Figure 2). The prototype version included a

menu of tools enabling viewers to rotate, zoom, and

pan the objects in high-resolution 3D to achieve a

sense of depth and realism (Steinbach 2011).

The project employed a participatory methodol-

ogy to design, build, and implement a culturally

appropriate digital platform suitable for use and

application by the Nalik community. To achieve this,

the project was structured to accommodate several

stages of design consultation and collaborative devel-

opment. The first stage involved running a series of

collaborative design workshops with Nalik commu-

nity members to test the prototype. Ortelia software

designer, Lazaros Kastanis, accompanied me on two

visits to New Ireland.

The first design workshops ran in New Ireland in

June 2012. These workshops took place in collabora-

tion with senior men and women in eight hamlets

along the east coast of the island. They coordinated

the timing of the workshops in their hamlet and

invited their community members to participate.

During the workshops, participants—comprising

men, women, and children of all ages—expressed

their desire to be able to see malangan carvings in 3D

with high-resolution detailed “hot spots” of key parts

of the carvings that were of interest to them. By click-

ing the hot spot with a computer mouse, a high-reso-

lution detail would appear. For many Naliks, this tool

was especially important in understanding the

detailed design of malangan carvings. For example,

many senior men who had knowledge of malangan

were interested in seeing details of incising along the

edges of the carving as well as the “ears” of the figura-

tive sculptures. Other classes of malangan carvings—such as tatanua masks—included leaf materials, and

the men were eager for the application to contain

detailed images so that they could identify the plant

materials. During the design workshops, a number of

Naliks suggested that the application allow for two

artifacts to be compared side by side so that users

could analyze stylistic similarities. Nalik participants

also wanted museum documentation to be included

in the digital platform so users could learn about the

object’s collecting history and contextual informa-

tion. They also felt that an annotation tool was

important to allow users to click on features of objects

Figure 2. Adam Kaminiel views a malangan carving using theMobile

Museum prototype. (Photo by GraemeWere.)

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and add their own notes. An open text field was

added, and the software allowed this information to

be shared among users. A final concern was the issue

of scale. How were users to know the size of the arti-

facts in the virtual environment? As a solution, a

matchbox—familiar to everyone in the community

—was placed at the foot of each artifact.

Although Srinivasan (2012) has stated that local-

ized debates on digital heritage technologies have

developed from focusing on issues of access and

infrastructure to debating the ethics and cultural sen-

sitivities of providing access, in the Nalik community,

both issues appear to apply. For instance, Lazaros

Kastanis discovered that the reliability of the Digicel

mobile network coverage was one limitation to the

infrastructure in New Ireland. Some areas of the com-

munity had a strong signal while others could not

receive any coverage at all. The local high school had

no signal whatsoever, and because Naliks had tar-

geted school children as key users, it was therefore

decided to develop a CD-ROM based digital platform

with 3D digital objects preloaded on the disk rather

than a web-based platform. In consultation with the

Nalik community, it was agreed that other 3D digital

objects could be uploaded in the future through an

Internet connection and then distributed on CD-

ROMs. It was also stipulated that no restrictions were

to be placed on accessing the digital platform and the

CD-ROMs should be freely distributed to everyone.

The second stage in the consultation process

involved a visit in November 2012 by two senior Na-

lik men, Adam Kaminiel and Martin Kombeng, who

spent ten days in Brisbane working with the collec-

tions at the Queensland Museum and the University

of Queensland Anthropology Museum (Figure 3).

The two men spent several days studying the New Ire-

land collections, working alongside curators from the

two institutions, and selecting objects on the basis of

their Nalik provenance. Their chief concern was to

locate malangan carvings. They chose another ten

objects for imaging in 3D: nine malangan carvings

and one fish trap. The nine carvings were the entire

holdings that the two men had identified as coming

from the Nalik area.4 They selected the tenth artifact,

the fish trap, on the basis of its unusual conical design

and their recognition of its Nalik provenance.

In March 2013, the final digital platform was

delivered by the digital design company Ortelia. The

software was then distributed to key people in the Na-

lik villages along the east coast of the island who

would act as distributors within their respective com-

munities. The handover of CD-ROMs containing the

3D digital objects and digital application took place

at ceremonies throughout the region and was

described by Kaminiel as a form of poxai. Poxai is a

Nalik term to describe a context where one person is

put into a reciprocal relation to another person. In

publicly handing over the digital application, Kamin-

iel made sure that each recipient was poxai to him.

This meant, according to Kaminiel, that if any prob-

lems occurred in the installation or operation of the

software, then the recipient would seek help from Ka-

miniel (Figure 4).

Figure 3. Martin Kombeng inspects some of the malangan carvings from

the storage of the Queensland Museum. (Photo by GraemeWere.)

Figure 4. Adam Kaminiel presents theMobile Museum CD-ROM to

senior man Momos in the Nalik community of Lugagun as other community

members test the software. (Photo by GraemeWere.)

digital objects in a melanesian society

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Use and Application of Digital Heritage

From her groundbreaking research, Deidre Brown

(2007) has argued that detailed 3D digital images of

Maori artifacts are understood by some Maori people

in the same way as the actual physical objects: both

are said to be imbued with ancestral power and are

thus considered taonga (treasured possessions).

Unlike for the Maori, for the Naliks, digital objects

are innocuous. Rather, returning objects in the form

of digital images alleviates the problem of Naliks hav-

ing to manage the physical object, as discussed previ-

ously. Naliks use the phrase bringim bek (bringing

back) to refer to the return of the images. Their return

was met with much anticipation and excitement

because, as many Nalik people stated, it is the poten-

tial of the images to become transformed into physi-

cal objects through re-creation that gives them their

value in digital return. Thus, 3D digital objects—through their handling and possession by Naliks—are tangible assets. Having access to images is to have

malangan. Having malangan is to have kastom, and

to have kastom is to possess a culture: it is something

to hold on to. This is especially important given the

politicization of kastom in New Ireland and its com-

plex role in acquiring status and resources in the

region (seeWere 2010; see also Foster 1992).

To make this point, I want to describe how the

return of 3D digital objects was considered to be a

form of divelomen (development), a resource—once

delivered to the people—that could be utilized to

strengthen community life. This connection between

digital heritage and development became apparent

even before theMobile Museum pilot project had been

formally launched. In early discussions on setting up

the digital heritage project, senior Nalik men immedi-

ately set about imagining how the digital images

would bring new resources to the region and re-create

a sense of order. One event that took place in Novem-

ber 2011 illustrates this point clearly. The New Ireland

Provincial Government had arranged a two-day

workshop focused on re-invigorating the traditional

leadership system in the region because they were

alarmed about a perceived decline in the moral and

social fabric of New Ireland society. They invited all

the New Ireland maimai from the Tigak-, Kara-, and

Nalik-speaking areas to attend and set forth their plan

to establish a Council of Chiefs. The Council of

Chiefs, they proposed, would administer kastom

through regional bodies divided according to linguis-

tic groups. The provincial government would offer

finances and resources to support them.

Senior men from the Nalik-speaking area were

quick to suggest that they hadmore kastom than other

maimais from northern New Ireland. They pointed to

the fact that they had already established their own

executive committee for the administration of kastom

together with various subcommittees to oversee edu-

cation, training, language, and land. They indicated

that they were resourceful—they were working on

ways to recover cultural knowledge through their

engagement with digital technologies. They claimed

that their activities were “modern” and that this was

characterized by the global movement toward endors-

ing digital technologies. Referring to digital technolo-

gies as a form of “divelomen,” the senior Naliks also

added that because these digital images would be “out

there,” the maimais needed finances and resources to

manage and safeguard the images with the purchase

of computers and phones.

The provincial government representatives were

supportive of the project—without offering any assured

financial assistance—stating how they understood the

benefits of utilizing digital technologies for community

development. They saw theMobile Museum project as a

tool to aid the maimais in their role in re-invigorating

kastom within the communities and to help strengthen

civil society by re-instilling traditional values in the

people, especially the younger generation.

The Tigak and Kara senior men replied that while

the Nalik proposal should be commended, their ka-

stom was different from that of the Nalik community

and so they should receive their own independent

financial support from the provincial government

separate from any payment to the Naliks.

Digital heritage was repeatedly referred to as a

form of development in many different contexts.

During the consultation workshops in 2012 to 2013,

the return of malangan carvings in the form of digital

objects was seen as restorative and as an outcome of

divelomen. For many Nalik people, they hoped the

return would help re-invigorate the traditional order

—which was perceived to be under threat—and

instill Naliks with a renewed moral personhood, with

due respect for kastom and for the land.

In regard to Sierra Leone, Paul Basu (2011) sees the

value of digital heritage in terms of its potential for

digital objects in a melanesian society

140

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cultural remittance: dispersed digital objects accessible

outside Sierra Leone offer the possibility for cultural

development in Sierra Leone through the return of

cultural knowledge. In contrast, among the Naliks, it

is the use of digital technologies locally that offers the

possibility of creating a new sense of order and a

means to tap into gavman (government) and financial

resources. Indeed, even though the digital heritage

project had yet to be started, the claims of senior Nalik

men reveal how members of the community had

begun strategizing for the arrival of the images not

only to re-invigorate cultural practices but also to tap

into New Ireland Provincial Government funds

through their claim of possessing kastom. It also dem-

onstrates how new bureaucracies and regimes of gov-

ernance are established to manage images, much like

in the Solomon Islands where White (2013) describes

how, on Santa Isabel, the revival of cultural traditions

has been met with bureaucratization and has led to

traditional chiefs orchestrating connections to wider

spheres of state and governmentality.

Concluding Thoughts

This study of the Mobile Museum pilot project in the

Nalik community asserts the ongoing and performa-

tive dimension of ethnographic objects that become

operative far beyond the static edifices of museum

institutions in the West. It underlines the complex

ways in which digital images pose challenges to

understandings of the object world and the value sys-

tems in which these objects are placed. Among the

Nalik, to reiterate, it can be dangerous to come into

contact with malangan carvings. Therefore, access to

the image of the carving provides a safe way to return

knowledge of these materials; to possess the image is

to have the capability to re-create the object (even

though it is in a museum somewhere). In addition, to

possess knowledge of malangan images allows senior

men to fashion themselves as ancestral (kastom) and

thus tap into financial benefits handed out by govern-

ment bodies—in New Ireland at least. Reclaiming

digital images of one’s own carries the potential of

reproducing objects, thereby legitimizing one’s clan

history and land while at the same time operating

within the governmental sphere (as well as a tradi-

tional sphere).

If museums are going to provide access to ethno-

graphic objects in the form of digital images, then one

needs to understand how these images are politically

utilized and deployed. In this sense, what is interest-

ing in debates about ethnographic objects and digital

repatriation is that even though objects remain

behind lock and key in institutions, digital heritage

carries the potential to unmoor images from their

material forms and surroundings and thereby offer

novel forms of revitalization, reintegration, and pos-

session (Phillips 2013). This unmooring can see

images of objects re-articulated as inherently political

possessions, as the New Ireland example suggests, and

demonstrates how digital technologies are implicated

in social, political, and economic environments.5

Yet, perhaps in the wider schema of debates in

museums and heritage studies, this discussion raises

the vital question: “Do museums still need objects?”

Conn’s (2010) response is to call for an ideological

return to the status of the object inmuseums and a rec-

ognition of the object’s power in fostering civil society,

which echoes Bennett’s (1995) earlier work on exhibi-

tions as a form of cultural technology. However, as we

enter the second age of museums, characterized by col-

laboration, co-curation, and partnerships (Phillips

2005), Conn’s words remind us how museums still

cling to ideological notions of the object rooted in

terms of its originality and authenticity. Indeed, if

museums continue to hold on to ethnographic objects

in their collections, then perhaps an alternative per-

spective is to suggest that the second age of museums

will be defined as the era when ethnographic objects

take on a more performative dimension again, re-ani-

mated through their circulation as digital objects and

expressions, offering a more tangible and significant

presence in their virtual guise than those locked away

inmuseum storage all over the world.

Acknowledgments

My research was funded by the University of Queensland

Collaboration and Industry Engagement Fund. I would

like to thank Mike Rowlands and Johanna Zetterstrom-

Sharp for comments on earlier drafts of this article.

notes

1. New Ireland is the largest island of New Ireland Province. It

lies to the northeast of New Britain and the New Guinea

mainland and is located in the Bismarck Archipelago.

2. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ_gdA0dNcE,

accessed September 9, 2013.

digital objects in a melanesian society

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Page 10: Digital Heritage, Knowledge Networks, and Source Communities: Understanding Digital Objects in a Melanesian Society

3. Adam Kaminiel, interview, November 7, 2012.

4. There are over one hundred artifacts from New Ireland

Province in the Queensland Museum and over one hundred

in the University of Queensland Anthropology Museum.

These artifacts include a range of weaponry, baskets and

containers, body ornaments, and tools, in addition to ma-

langan carvings.

5. A comparative example that illustrates this point well is the

digital images of Evans-Pritchard’s collection from South

Sudan, which were digitized by the Pitt Rivers Museum’s

Southern Sudan project (http://southernsudan.prm.

ox.ac.uk, accessed September 9, 2013). The images

became engaged in Anyuak land claims and demonstra-

tions of Ethiopian human rights abuse during the 2003

insurgence into Gambella.

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