The island of Malakula in northern Vanuatu is renowned for its complex megalithic cultures and ritual 'art' forms associated with initiation, grading and status rituals, certain types of 'hidden' societies and elaborate funerary rites. The above quote, in Ninde language from the Mewun area of Malakula's South-west Bay, was given to Kirk Huffman by Chief Sarawo'h Bahap of Nemel Loh'toh and Mun. It encapsulates the essence of the kind of work that Huffman has been doing in Vanuatu over a period of nearly 30 years and links with his time at the Australian Museum as Visiting Leo Fleischmann Fellow and Visiting Collections Fellow in Anthropology since July 2000.
Malakula is Vanuatu's second largest island - it is 2069 square kilometres in area with a population of 23,700 people that speak 35 different languages and an as yet unknown number of sub-dialects. In most museum collections from Vanuatu, approximately half of the material originates from Malakula. Most overseas academics and museum curators looking at these early collections tend to assume that traditional cultural and ritual activities on the island have almost ceased and are a thing of the past. But this is not the case. Although the last major group of traditionalists in the southern interior mountains converted to Christianity in 1989, much of southern Malakula remains the centre of a superbly complex spiritual world attuned to respect for ancestral and other spirits. The material and spirit worlds continue to be connected through sacrifice, ritual, song, dance and the production of innumerable 'art' forms.
The last thirty years or so have shown the resilience of many southern coastal Malakulan cultures, who are redefining the former splits and oppositions between their cultures and Christianity by using their traditional rituals to please their ancestral spirits and enrich Christianity by making it more relevant to them.
Anything to do with southern Malakula is incredibly complex, not just in its profound ritual and spiritual life. Twenty-one languages (again, often with sub-dialects) are spoken there today by a population of only 8800 people and each language area has its own major cultural differences from its neighbours. Linguistically and culturally, it is probably the most complex spot on the face of the earth.
Kirk Huffman first visited the island of Malakula in the then New Hebrides (becoming Vanuatu after independence in 1980) in 1973 and since then he has supported, however possible, the survival of aspects of the island's rich cultures. Since 1976, he has been a Research Associate of the Australian Museum and for six months during that year was Temporary Assistant Curator of Anthropology at the Australian Museum. At the end of 1976, he travelled to Malakula on behalf of the Museum (which now has one of the world's largest collections of early objects from the island) to make an official collection of art and material culture from the fully traditional and non-missionised Mbotgot and Ayiaulian-speaking peoples of the island's southern mountainous area. This collection of 122 objects is held by the Museum for future generations of these peoples.
During the time Huffman was Curator of the National Museum section of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre from 1977 to 1989, a close relationship between the Centre and the Australian Museum developed. This included repatriation of a large and rare south Efate Tetuki wooden slit drum collected by P.G. Black in 1895 and a painted Nema Neyorwi barkcloth from the island of Erromango to the Cultural Centre. In 1989, a team from the Australian Museum helped the Centre catalogue its collections and, in 1995, the strong connection between the two institutions was formalised with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding. That same year, at the opening ceremonies for the new National Museum building of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, Dr Jim Specht (former Head of the Museum's Anthropology Division) announced the forthcoming repatriation of a rare north Pentecost/Maewo Island woven and dyed pandanus mat from the Museum's collections - it arrived in Vanuatu in 1996.
The objectives of Huffman's visiting fellowships were to pursue work on art, material culture, ritual, social and cultural change in the southern half of Malakula and to re-activate the connection between the Australian Museum and Vanuatu Cultural Centre. Having advised and assisted the Museum and the Director of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, Ralph Regenvanu, the Memorandum of Understanding has been brought up-to-date and is nearly ready for re-signing. Several visits by colleagues from Vanuatu, including providing them with access to items from Vanuatu that are held in the Museum's collection as well as photographing objects for an exhibition at the Cultural Centre later this year, have been facilitated.
An analytical article on aspects of social, ritual and cultural change in southern Malakula over the last century but particularly over the last 30 or so years as well as referring to older and more recent material from Malakula in the Australian Museum's collections, has also been prepared. Respect, in many forms, is an absolutely fundamental aspect of all of Vanuatu's cultures and Huffman, too, has to follow the traditional laws of respect in what he is able to write - many things are sacred and taboo and are not permitted for 'outsiders' or non-initiates to know, so many things cannot be written about.
At all times during the period of the fellowships, Huffman has kept in regular contact with the Vanuatu Cultural Centre and various areas of Malakula. All of these efforts have certainly helped to put the Australian Museum back on the 'Vanuatu map'.
In the customary way of respect, Huffman would like to dedicate his past year at the Australian Museum to the ancestral spirits of southern Malakula and to three very young Ni-Vanuatu of the new generation: small Kailabnalit of Melsemboa, a Mbotgote-speaker from south-central Malakula; young Clovis Brewster Kapere of the Kwamera area in south-east Tanna; and the newest of them all, Ambong Lel'n'biau of south-east Malakula, born in Port Vila at the same time that his father was attending major initiation rituals in the interior of south-eastern Malakula on 1 and 2 February 2001.
Kirk Huffman
*In Vanuatu it is not deemed polite to talk in the first person; it is considered impolite and flas (the Bislama word for 'flash'), so Kirk has written this text bearing this in mind.
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