Hello and welcome back to our series Objects of Crisis
in which we look into health, climate, political,
social crises of the past and of other parts of the world
in this moment of a pandemic to understand
how other people in other circumstances have lived up to challenges,
how they've come on top of it, prevailed and sometimes faltered.
Today I have the great pleasure of welcoming my distinguished colleague
Lissant Bolton, who is the keeper that is the head of the department of
Africa, Oceania and the Americas, it's wonderful to have
you Lissant and I'm very curious to learn which
object you have chosen for this series.
Thank-you Hartwig and thank-you for inviting me.
I thought about this for a long time and
I nearly did choose an object related to
a major volcanic eruption and then I thought every crisis is
experienced personally and when you think about a crisis
there's all things going on in the world but
for many people it's it has an immediate and personal effect and I thought that
many people who've been in lockdown or perhaps even still are in lockdown
have experienced loneliness and feeling cut off
and that reminded me of a story that I was told when I was doing my
doctoral field work in a country in the South Pacific called Vanuatu.
Which was a story about these issues and which relates to a particular kind of object.
So I looked in our collection to see if we had one such object because they're very rarely collected
and I found that we had one quite badly photographed I'd have to say
because it's been photographed only with its underneath
showing and folded but I thought nevertheless I would
tell the story and friends of mine have have one in their own
private collection so they very kindly sent me a photograph.
So I thought I might begin with a little introduction
about where I'm talking about because people may not know.
That would be most welcome.
So I'm talking about a country in the South Western Pacific
called Vanuatu. It used to be known in the colonial era as
the New Hebrides or Nouvelles-Hébrides, it was jointly
administered actually, never a colony, by Britain and France
and then in 1980 it became the Republic of Vanuatu
it's an archipelago of more than 80 islands
which lies in the South Western Pacific about a thousand kilometres east of
Australia in the north of this country is an
island called Ambae and I had the really amazing privilege in my life
to spend a year living on Ambae in '91 '92.
So the the object you're talking about
is an object you encountered in that first moment of field work in that work that you did?
It's a kind of object that I encountered
not the object, it's a textile made of
plaited Pandanus so plaited because each thread is
individually passed over or under the next thread and
it's made of fine ribbons of dried Pandanus.
Pandanussometimes known as cabbage tree palm in this country has many different
varieties and the varieties that are in
Vanuatu produce these beautiful, when properly prepared
and processed, produce beautiful long thin ribbons which are
then plaited together and on and by they make quite a number
of different plateau Padanus leaf textiles which
to an Ambaean are very easy to tell apart
like we could tell a scarf from a tea towel, you know they're both
squares of cloth roughly the same size but we don't have any doubt
which is which. And often the way you tell them apart is
by the side fringes and also only certain designs
appear on the different types so if it's got this kind of design on that's also a
way of telling and what does the design tell you
does it tell you who made it or does it refer to what does it refer to that's
the sort of question that a museum based anthropologist is very likely to ask
and people say 'it's the sun' you know or 'it's pig's toes' which is one of the
sub-designs for most of the textiles, the design
doesn't matter there are some special restricted textiles where the design
matters a lot but for this kind of textile which is known as a Qana Vulvulu
there isn't any significance.
You said at the beginning that
this is a story about an object that became
meaningful for you in a particular situation?
well when I was first living in the hamlet where I lived the
I was working with someone from the cultural center and then I can't,
to be honest my field notes are locked in the british museum at the moment and
I can't get in there to read them and remind myself of this story
there may be a little rose-colored memory applying here
but anyway something happened early on in my time living in this
village which made me a bit miserable and not to
say teary and the women in the village or in this
cluster of hamlets would be better way of putting it,
they kind of saw that I was feeling sad and so
they came and sat every night in the house with me and told me the fables
and stories and histories that they tell in that house
at night traditionally and there was a woman
one of the senior women in that cluster of hamlets was
a lovely, lovely person called Madeleine.
She told this particular story about a young man who was out of his place.
So what I have to explain now is that in the past
people lived very much on their own land in their own district
and they were frightened really to go far afield
and that was still so much the case that if
when I went to the north of the island and sometimes took someone from where
I was with me they might never have been to
even 10 kilometres away on the north side of the island.
So people, people were afraid of sorcery, they were afraid of warfare and
killing and so you could go
quite easily far from home that's the first point, the second point is that
in those societies you are related to everybody
there's nobody that you aren't related to because the kinship structure
constantly ramifies so when I joined when I moved there people
someone adopted me and then I became part of a family and then everybody knew
what they were in relation to me by analogy
so if I was his daughter then I was her father's, sister's son
their father, sister's daughter or something like that. Everyone knew.
So this story is about a young man who was out of his place
and he came to a village and it was night
and he said to somebody, I need something to sleep in, gets cold at night there
and he said well I've got I've got ten Qana vulvulu and I lie in five and I cover myself up with five
so I can't give you one.
and so he went to someone else and he
said I've got nine qana vulvulu I have I sleep on five I cover
myself up with four so I have none to give you yeah and
so it went down through the numbers till one and that
man said I have one qana vulvulu, I lie on half and I cover
myself up with half which is in fact how people often sleep.
The qana vulvulu has fringes all along the length of it
and if you put one on top of each other the fringes immediately tangle
and they hold themselves in place so then when you lie in it
you don't lose your bedding in the night it it stays
in place, so the young man was quite despairing and he went away
out of the village out of the inhabited space into
what is known in Bislama as the bush, dark bush or
we might call it jungle but it's halfway between the two really and
and he covered himself up in dry banana leaves
and he died of exposure and Madeleine finished that story, which she told all
the way through the numbers ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, and then
she said I I always felt so sorry for that young man.
It's a story about not being in relationship.
It's a story about being alone, not being connected, being isolated,
being uncared for and that's why I thought about it in relation to our
current situation- the pandemic, the lockdown, because
there are people who are feeling very isolated and alone and
no longer connected which is not a... which is not a global crisis,
it's just a personal trouble
In a way now listening to you they they gave you their
stories as blankets to to cover you, to give you some kind of protection.
Yes...I never pushed it quite that far but you you you could you know kind of in a kind
retelling although anthropologists aren't supposed to do that
It is strengthening the notion and
making you understand that you are community, you are in the community...
The interesting thing is that in our society we think of the
individual, we think of ourselves as a sort of bounded individual we don't
think of ourselves we think of ourselves having
relationships but it's sort of an individual.
In Ambae or certainly in Ambae 30 years ago,
people didn't really think of themselves as an individual they thought of
themselves more like a node in a network they
thought of themselves as constituted by their relationships
and as being who they are because of their relationships and they were so
secure in those relationships that people would change their name
through life to mark the different stages of their
life you can only change your name if everybody still knows who you are
yeah yeah what I mean so to be without relationships in that
society is just devastating and so this young man who no one
would give quan vuvulu to to sleep under was was really cut off so one could say
he died, I mean it's a fable so let's not get
over analytical, but you could say that he died of exposure or you
could say that he died of sorrow and alienation and separation.
What has grown out of that intimate relation that you've had living with that community
are you still linked with them, do you go back, do they
do they come and see you at the british museum?
Yes and yes and yes and I'm supposed to be there now.
so i'm supposed to be on Ambae roughly around now which is
extremely frustrating but Jean Tarisesei my very dear friend and sister
has come here a couple of times.
When she comes over to see you here in the past
she would study textiles and other objects in the collection?
She came and she went through all the textiles in the collection in fact the
textile that I'm showing you was mis-attributed to another island and
she was like 'what's this? this isn't, this is qana vulvulu from Ambae'
so having her say that was lovely.
It's also important for the records, it's
also important the the object is on collection online.
It's extremely important, it's crucial and
that's why I mean we for that project we did that a lot, we
brought people from different parts of the Western Pacific to look at our
collection with us and to to give us advice and we also took
photographs, so I took photographs of the collection
back to Ambae as well but it's one thing to take photographs but it's another thing to have
have the great, good fortune to be able to bring people here.
The museum is a convening place for this you know for this renewal, for this constant work.
I feel very strongly that in AOA (Africa, Oceania and the Americas) we are always building relationships,
sharing, having the privilege of of knowing people and having the
privilege when they're willing to of learning what they know
about our collections and then also sharing our collections
it's a constant work, but it's a good work.
I think it's really wonderful that you chose an object that relates so directly to you,
I think that's really powerful.
Thank you for watching.
We very much look forward to welcoming you back at the British Museum very soon.