War Canoes Research Articles

Jack London's “Mauki” and the Colonial Pacific

Jack London's “Mauki” and the Colonial Pacific

Chieftaincy Institution and Military Formations in the Eastern Niger Delta of Nigeria

This paper showed the military formations in the Eastern Niger Delta prior to Nigerian independence which the British colonial government tried to destroy in the wake of the establishment of the Protectorate of the Oil Rivers and Consular paper treaties. The Chieftaincy institution in the Eastern Niger Delta dates to at least 1000 years ago. After the migration story had been completed, the various communities that made up the Eastern Niger Delta commenced the early political and economic institutions with the ward or wari system of government and the long-distance trade with their neighbours. In the early fifteenth century, the Asimini ward in Bonny and Korome ward in Kalabari produced their early kings. The Chieftaincy institution assumed a greater relevance in the kingdoms of Bonny and Kalabari with the emergence of King Perekule of Bonny and King Amachree of Kalabari respectively. These two kings introduced the war canoe house political system in response to the slave trade which had increased tremendously with the entrance of Britain. The risks and the competitions among the City-states of Bonny, Kalabari, Okrika and Nembe-Brass to procure slaves necessitated the acquisition of war canoes to equip and constitute the military arm of the states. The war canoes provided security for the trading canoes and goods. Opobo City-state, the last in the Eastern Niger Delta in the last quarter of the nineteenth century lunched as many as sixty-seven war (Omuaru) canoes and other small units (kalawari) chieftaincy houses before the 1940s.

Collections Support Services (CSS) - 25 Years of Improving Access and Care to our Nation’s Collections

Originally formed in the early 1980s as the Move Crew to move museum collections to the newly opened state of the art Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Support Center, Collections Support Services has evolved into a team of highly skilled museum professionals recognized as trusted experts, innovators, project managers, and problem solvers in all aspects of collections stewardship. We have packed, moved, and stored MILLIONS of objects across Smithsonian museums including the National Museum of Natural History and several of our art museums; the Freer Sackler Gallery, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and National Museum of African Art. Our vast experience with Natural History collections has been with objects ranging from microscopic invertebrates, fragile bird eggs, 40’ war canoes, whale skulls, giant squids and EVERYTHING in between! Many of these collections came from overcrowded and dusty attics, basements, and warehouses prone to flooding, pest infestation, and poor climate control. We have spent the last 25 years moving these collections into our climate controlled storage pods furnished with new metal cabinets designed for long term preservation. Some of the unique packing and transportation methods we will highlight in this presentation are “airbags” that encompass fragile bird skeletons and uniform shipping containers made of ethafoam planks and old wooden drawers. In addition, we have designed and constructed aluminum pallets for oversized collections, specialized elephant skull pallets, and plaster jackets for paleo fossil specimens. These storage solutions have greatly improved access to collections by allowing researchers to study specimens with minimal handling necessary. This presentation will specifically demonstrate these and other dramatic improvements that we have made as well as highlight innovative solutions we developed to safely transport, store, and provide better access to our Natural History collections for future generations.

A Whakapapa of Tradition: 100 years of Ngāti Porou Carving, 1830-1930

A DECADE AGO I asked one of our leading Ngāti Porou artists about his views on tradition and modernity. This was his reply: ‘Traditional art and modern art. For me there’s no such thing. It’s about continuum of movement because tomorrow my art will be tradition. I have frequently pondered that statement and its implications, seeking to find its resonances and deeper meaning in the many histories of indigenous negotiations in this country and beyond. For me, A Whakapapa of Tradition provides one of the most recent instalments relevant to this statement, contextualised in a discussion of how Ngāti Porou art and architecture underwent ‘radical’ change in the century from 1830-1930. Focusing on the Iwirakau school of carving based in the Waiapu valley, Ngarino Ellis (Ngāti Porou and Ngā Puhi) argues that during this time Māori art in Ngāti Porou territory underwent a radical transformation, in which the dominant forms of waka taua (war canoes), pātaka (decorated storehouses), and whare rangatira (chief’s houses), were replaced by whare karakia (churches), whare whakairo (meeting houses), and wharekai (dining halls).

The Ngāruawāhia Tūrangawaewae Regatta: Today's Reflections on the Past

The 118th Ngāruawāhia Tūrangawaewae Regatta was celebrated on the 16th of March 2013. First held on the 17th March 1896, it is the second oldest regatta in New Zealand behind the Auckland Regatta of the 1870s. Renowned for the majestic fleet of ornately carved waka taua ‘war canoes’ on parade, crowds still flock to Ngāruawāhia today to watch the waka taua make their annual salute to King Tuheitia, the 7th monarch of the Māori King Movement, and his dignitaries. This narrative details my journal observations of March 2013 from the Waikato River banks, before delving into historical information detailing the advent of the Regatta, the Māori King Movement’s historical capital base and relocation, and the significance of these to Regatta. The next section speaks of the Waikato River connection, along with early Regatta features, and the promotion of kotahitanga ‘embracing togetherness’ within the Ngāruawāhia community, the Waikato Region and more generally across Aotearoa/NewZealand. The article concludes with a comparison of early Regatta and that of 2013.

Allergen of the Month—Western Red Cedar

Allergen of the Month—Western Red Cedar

War Canoes or Social Units? Human Representation in Rock-Art Ships

Scandinavian rock art may in general be regarded as idealized depictions of a social world, not a direct description of concrete social matters. Even so, rock art does convey important social information that calls for more thorough comment. This study concerns almost 1700 ship depictions from western Sweden that include human representations. The average ship is depicted with a crew of six to thirteen individuals and these craft may have represented prevailing ideals about the crewing of ships. The large ship images with numerous crews in clearly defined positions may be depictions of war canoes, staged for special maritime events. The study shows that the visual proportions of the rock-art ships are similar to those of the prehistoric war canoe from Hjortspring, Denmark. It is argued that the praxis of pecking ships into the rocks could have served to manifest the agency of the maritime social world and, to some extent, to make this ideology more dominant.

Unclassified and Controvertible: The Edward Curtis Project and Beyond Eden in Vancouver, 2010

Unclassified and Controvertible: The Edward Curtis Project and Beyond Eden in Vancouver, 2010 Beverly Yhap (bio) Odd, unintended refractions can happen when cultural events are staged against high-profile international sports extravaganzas. It's tempting to find tenuous links between the dramas of competitive ranking in wintry settings with parallel cultural efforts to challenge artistic hierarchies. Such was the case around the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver when Beyond Eden, co-produced by the Vancouver Playhouse and Theatre Calgary, and The Edward Curtis Project, produced by Presentation House Theatre, examined the uneasy legacy of two would-be apologists for Aboriginal culture. In Bruce Ruddell's Beyond Eden, a conflicted anthropologist journeys to the Queen Charlotte Islands in 1957 to rescue priceless Aboriginal artifacts. In Marie Clements' The Edward Curtis Project, a contemporary Aboriginal woman's journey morphs into a river of parallel inquiries. One of these is Rita Leistner's photo exhibit of contemporary First Nations individuals and communities. The images of the exhibition form a contemporary record of resistance to Curtis' historic monument to "vanishing peoples." At the outset of the project's inception—taking on the work and influence of a prodigious image-maker like Curtis—Clements involved a like-minded artist with a contemporary lens. The results of each form of enquiry—Clements' drama and Leistner's photographic exhibit—bear the title of The Edward Curtis Project, which in turn also enfolds both shows within one named experience. 1 Complementary exchange and overlap occurred between the creators of both stage productions: Bruce Ruddell composed The Edward Curtis Project's score, 2 while Marie Clements developed the Watchman role eventually performed by Tom Jackson in Beyond Eden. (During the final week of January—with productions running concurrently—it was possible to compare shared and divergent approaches.) Each company acknowledged the stagings on traditional First Nations territory: explicitly as welcome ceremony at the opening of The Edward Curtis Project, implicitly in Beyond Eden's staging of floating Haida war canoes among the audience. Moreover, each show tackled preservationist strategies: in Beyond Eden, the museum's right to plunder tribal cultures in the name of [End Page 105] conservation formed the crux of Lewis Wilson's dilemma. In The Edward Curtis Project, the calcifying gaze of Curtis' monumental photographic project was set against a contemporary Aboriginal woman's trauma. To some extent, each show enacted a kind of exhumation: received ideas of culture and privilege—of who occupies and creates any given artistic "canon"—were brought to light and held up to account. Click for larger view View full resolution Prelude, The Edward Curtis Project: the modern picture story unfolds in snapshot introductions. Tamara Podemski (Angeline) standing. Photo by Tim Matheson Set in 1957, Beyond Eden takes a critical yet not unsympathetic view of white preservationist rationale. The show's germination began with composer Bruce Ruddell's friendship with Haida legend Bill Reid. Through Reid, Ruddell learned of anthropologist Wilson Duff and the two friends' life-altering journey to Haida Gwaii in 1957. His attempts to dramatize their momentous voyage consumed the better part of two decades. Originally conceived and performed as an opera at UBC's Museum of Anthropology in the late 1990s, Beyond Eden's present form as music theatre portrays its fact-based story in broadly fictionalized, schematic strokes. Lewis Wilson, Duff's stand-in (played by Spirit of the West's John Mann), leads an expedition up the West Coast to remove the last extant totem poles from the deserted Haida village of Ninstints. Predictably, he faces not inconsiderable odds. The challenges of the voyage—treacherous seafaring conditions no less than the reluctant cooperation of Aboriginal guides—are bluntly conveyed largely in song. Having been "adopted" by the Haida during a potlach ceremony, Wilson ("Yaatzexaadee") understands the profound cultural tensions aroused by the expedition. By contrast, Wilson's fellow archeologists—self-avowed "grave-robbers"—tout conventional acquisition rationale against the two Aboriginal guides' warnings of supernatural reprisal. Caught in between are Wilson's wife and son and mixed-race photographer Max Tomson, the Bill Reid stand-in. In a prelude to the physical journey, we meet Wilson enacting a ritual dance using a traditional mask whose...

Appropriating Successive Colonial Experiences to Represent National Culture: A Case Analysis of the Revival of War Canoes in Palau, Micronesia

Appropriating Successive Colonial Experiences to Represent National Culture: A Case Analysis of the Revival of War Canoes in Palau, Micronesia

Playing primitive: “In the land of the headhunters” and/or “war canoes”

Edward Curtis's 1914 film of the Kwakiutl of British Columbia is analyzed from the perspective of early (primitive) cinema and the avant‐garde. The original film, In the Land of the Headhunters, is recontextualized and compared both to Nanook of the North and fiction filmmaking of the silent period; the restored film, In the Land of the War Canoes, is considered from the perspective of ethnographic spectatorship and native reappropriation of colonialist texts. As an allegory of the “salvage paradigm,” Curtis's ethnography is positioned within a postmodernist discourse on cultural representation.

In the land of the war canoes

Edward Sheriff Curtis was a man of genius: pioneer photographer, author, and motion-picture maker. In 1914, he made a full-length f i lm--the first of its k indabout the aboriginal life of the Kwakiutl, a spectacular maritime people of the Northwest Coast, vastly different from the tribes of the mountains and the plains. Titled In the Land of the Head-Hunters, the film had a short burst of critical glory and then, for unknown reasons, faded from sight. Between 1967 and 1974 we restored the Curtis motion picture, edited the original footage, added a second track, and changed the title to In the Land of the War Canoes. During production, Edward August Schwinke, one of Curtis's chief assistants, made his own private record of the filming. With a 1903 Eastman Kodak camera, Schwinke shot Edward Curtis behind his movie camera; George Hunter, megaphone in hand, directing the actors; and the actors themse lves , re laxing be tween takes. Schwinke's photographs, combined with prints made from frames of the film itself and Curtis's own photographs of the Kwakiutl, offer an exciting view of an early ethnographic film venture.

Edward S. Curtis in the Land of the War Canoes: A Pioneer Cinematographer in the Pacific Northwest

Edward S. Curtis in the Land of the War Canoes: A Pioneer Cinematographer in the Pacific Northwest

"Making All the Crooked Ways Straight": The Satirical Portrait of Whites in Coast Salish Folklore

IN THE FIRST PART OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, a visiting anthropologist arrived among the Coast Salish of the Olympic Peninsula to hear and collect their folklore. That white visitor was treated to the tale of the native war-making venture of the century-or so it would appear. In that tale, numerous and magnificently-carved war canoes came down from the North to do battle with the local people amidst much bloodshed and treachery. From the way in which this tale was enjoyed, one might well envision a culture whose military exploits were of paramount importance to it-and a fortunate anthropologist to have come upon so telling a tale in this respect.