Samoa Journal #5 – Up for Grabs
In my stupider younger days, I thought of museums as peaceful, somewhat boring, places where everything was static, objects were inert and free of controversy, and nothing changed. Hah. These days, museums are – and rightly so – flashpoints for every hot topic, from gender to racism and everything in between. Today I was interested to get a glimpse into how ÜM grapples with these questions.
The whole team was at the National University of Samoa (NUS) campus to give a presentation about what we’re doing here and introduce the museum. It was a good, pithy talk, and I enjoyed seeing them get passionate about the things they care about.
During the question/answer session, the inevitable question came up: Can you restore the materials from Samoa to Samoa?
There it was – the elephant in the room. Yesterday was about ownership of land and people. Today pushed us to think about the ownership of things. And this question brings up different burning questions for all of us: What about the British crown jewels? Do they belong to India and Persia? What about Native American artifacts taken from sacred lands? It all harks back to the very shameful days when museums actually exhibited human beings. Like the South African woman Saartjie Baartman, who was put on display in London in the early 1800s as an exhibit. Just to add insult to terrible injury, she was named the Hottentot Venus. We shudder (I hope) to think of this now, but is it so very different from sacred objects that contain living spirits for the people who made them?
Our team answered the question well, no doubt having heard it many times before, essentially saying this is a worthwhile question, an important question, and we must keep discussing and debating. They mentioned the fragility of some objects and how difficult it would be to move them. They mentioned the importance of showing German people evidence of their colonial past. It all made sense, but it would also have made absolute sense for someone in the audience to stand up and say, “Hey! That is still our stuff; give it back!” And then it would have made equal sense to have a deeper discussion of how complicated this issue is, not because the objects are important to Germany but because when you start looking at provenance, it’s simply not true that all collectors were exploiters and all colonized peoples were hapless victims. And it’s impossible to imagine that if a museum in Apia had artifacts from, say, the Vatican and the Vatican asked to have them back, the debate wouldn’t be very different.
It is indeed a discussion worth having. We do need to think carefully about whose interests we put at the center of the discussion. What matters more: a German family having access to a traditional ie toga, or a Samoan family bringing their ancestral object home?
My childhood view of museums also didn’t take into account how wildly creative the people who curate exhibitions can be. I would never have imagined that I’d be with a group of senior, knowledgeable museum directors who were happily knocking back steins of beer, for “research.” The Übersee-Museum’s Samoan collection needs examples of 21st-Century objects, so of course our dedicated team went and bought some local beer. And it’s difficult to take full bottles back, so of course we went above and beyond the line of duty and drank it all.
They are also committed to ask artists to work with them in unusual ways. Like the poet who collaborated with the museum to make a statement about a particular object: a belt from Pohnpei. When she was asked what the belt reminded her of, she said smells: of a baby, of dead fish, and of ylang ylang. Undaunted, Übersee-Museum staff came up with smelling stations for visitors to experience the poet’s vision. Sound mad? It is mad – wonderfully, wackily mad, mad enough to rock you off balance a bit.
So no, museums are anything but static, when they are really doing their job. Those displays are full of life and memories and histories and joy and terror. Museums have to grapple with responsibility, accountability, the spirit of the past, present and future, and rock your world a bit while they do it.
Samoa Journal #6 – Take Me to the River
Young scientists in fern tiaras, concentrating on measuring the pH of the river water at Aloa. This was the scene in the citizen science field trip today.
Fourteen students came for the sample collection field trip, and you would have been forgiven for thinking they were internationally renowned explorers, with the paparazzi following: a camera, a videocam, even a drone. The place was gorgeous, the Samoan myzomela darted above the scene along with the drone, and we were off.
One of the fascinating things about this trip has been to see the dynamics between cultures. Today, Diana had a plan to gather the group inside the flowing stream, and then talk to all of them at once. But put a bunch of Samoan teenagers in the river, and they can’t be contained. So she wisely didn’t take it personally, let them wander off with their protocol sheets, boards, and clips, and it turned out very well as within minutes they were all engaged.
On one side, a group splashed and laughed while they staggered around with a tape measure figuring out the width of the river at one spot. Elsewhere, Kush pulled out a stopwatch, and the student scientists tossed a leaf in the water and timed how long it took to get from Point A to Point B. Little did we know, when we did this as children, that we were conducting empirical research.
The German team, along with NUS faculty, did this exercise to introduce the students, again mostly girls, to citizen science. They took a transect (representative section), and conducted physical, chemical, and biological (multi-habitat) sampling.
The students began with filling out general observations and identifying habitats – rocky bottom, silt on one side, big rocks, little rocks, organic matter.
“What do you see?” asked a professor.
“I see a river!” Everyone cracked up at the joke. It would take a real effort not to be cheerful in such a beautiful spot.
They estimated depth. They measured velocity. They filled in their sheets. They took out the official box of toys --- sorry, chemical test kit --- and measured oxygen saturation, nitrates and phosphates. Happily, this section of the Vaisigano seems very healthy – moderate pH, minimal nitrates from sewage or agriculture, very low phosphate levels. Good for the river, good for the ocean where nitrates kill coral.
Tuaimoana is in her first year at National University of Samoa. She loves rivers. She lives near a river and in her short life has seen it get more polluted, which saddens her. She is sure she will have a career in science. She’s unusual, as most of the students don’t have much prior knowledge or interest in rivers.
It’s all serious work, but also rather fun. One group finds time to make a quick TikTok video. One group wanders around with nets, catches specimens, and happily pours water from their bucket into plastic bags. Audrey from the other day is really fascinated by this. Mitiana takes two or three different ferns and skillfully weaves tiaras out of them, and by the end of the morning most people, professors, students, camerapeople, scientists, are wearing fern tiaras. A whimsical touch of Midsummer Night in the proceedings. It seems appropriate somehow, since Übersee-Museum is after all a cultural institution. Art and science, beauty and facts.
Speaking of which, let’s take a moment to remember again why a museum is doing citizen science. Kush puts it very well: “We want to help them become familiar with the tools and equipment, some level of scientific discussion. It’s outreach for the museum. You can’t always show the object and tell a story; you have to go out and make it alive. It’s an extension of the role of the museum. It’s also a real-time application of the museum’s knowledge. Otherwise, it’s just stagnant knowledge.” And there is no baseline survey of freshwater species in Samoa, so every little bit helps.
Did anything surprise you, I ask the German scientists?
“I was surprised by the velocity of the shrimp,” said Michael. The myzomela made another crimson loop above our ferny heads and it was good to be alive on a sunny day in Samoa, pondering speedy crustaceans.