Source materials

Melanesia is a group of islands in the Pacific and the British Museum has had about 20,000 objects from the region for about 100 years. The items have never been researched, let alone displayed.

But this is changing because of a project being run in partnership by the museum and the University of Cambridge that is enabling research into the collection for the first time.

Among the objects being looked at are God Stones (Yam). "That's all the records say," says Julie Adams, the project's research fellow. So to shed some light on the historical significance of what have become museum artefacts, the British Museum turned to François Wadra, an expert from New Caledonia, a series of islands in Melanesia.

Wadra is a member of the Kanak, an indigenous people from the region. He had worked with Lissant Bolton, the head of the British Museum's Oceania section, in the 1990s and it was through this link that Wadra was invited onto the current project.

Wadra tells Museums Journal that the Yam Stones were used when praying for the yam feast. But even though the stones are missing in his country, the ritual still continues.

As well as researching the objects, the Melanesia project also aims to reconnect the collection with its source community. That doesn't mean repatriation, but within its five-year lifespan (to 2010) it will bring New Caledonia's people closer to the objects through the work of Wadra, and also through exhibitions within the communities using photographs of the collection.

In addition, Wadra is also working with National Museums Scotland and the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, which both hold Melanesian material as well.

"I'm really happy to rediscover these objects that were confiscated. We are trying to make the connection again," says Wadra.

Initiating contacts

Museums have always reached out to source communities or indigenous groups. But relationships have moved from individual ones based on contact between source communities and the museum anthropologist to more institutional arrangements, says Jeremy Coote, the editor of the Journal of Museum Ethnography.

Len Pole, a consultant in museum ethnography, formerly at Exeter's Royal Albert Memorial Museum, says the links with communities outside of the UK are becoming more thought through and less ad hoc than in the past.

The British Museum's Melanesia project is among them: "The feeling is that a number of projects have been undertaken that make sensible and considerable contact with source communities in the last decade."

But what appears to have remained the same is the tendency for the museum to instigate the relationship. Even though a community may show an interest or request information on objects, it is the museum that has to be open and willing to form a relationship.

There are no guidelines on how to work with indigenous groups and there are different and equally valuable approaches. But it is quite common, particularly with the larger museums, to make contact with the source community and then invite a representative to the UK to bring to life the objects in question.

And often, when an exhibition is one of the collaborative outcomes, the museum invites an indigenous artist to create a work in public in the museum.

Developing trust

The Horniman Museum in south London has a long history of working with overseas indigenous artists. Back in 1966, Fred Stevens, a Navajo medicine man, was invited to the Horniman by the then director of the museum, David Boston. Stevens and his wife stayed in Boston's home.

"Initially at breakfast time there was deep silence," recalls Boston. Stevens spent a week in the museum creating a sand painting on the floor of the museum. Once complete, the tradition would be to perform a ritual and destroy the sand structure.

But during the week, trust grew between Stevens and Boston and the artist edited out a feather or a leaf from the painting so to him it was incomplete and therefore could remain in the museum. The Navajo Sand Painting still hangs in the foyer of the museum today. "The key is developing mutual understanding and respect," says Boston.

Rosanna Raymond is a New Zealand artist of Samoan descent living in the UK who has carved out a career as a curator, researcher and artist working closely with museums. Raymond has been involved with the British Museum, the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich, the Cuming Museum in London and Cambridge University's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology over an eight-year period on exhibitions relating to Pacific cultures.

Recognising expertise

Her involvement began when she realised that many academic writings on her culture were inaccurate. But she also saw that academia and scholarship had a lot of information that the source communities had little or no access to. She began visiting museums for artistic inspiration and as a replacement for the loss of her home community while living in the UK.

Raymond worked at Cambridge from 2004 as co-curator on an exhibition showcasing New Zealand artists called Pasifika Styles that was held at the university's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology from 2006 to 2008.

She says the curators told her she had saved them years of research. However, an experience on a research project with Goldsmiths College and University College London, where she was told she wasn't allowed to speak at events because she wasn't an academic, gave her the momentum to try and change things. "It instilled the need for more platforms that equalised the artist of the community," she says.

Raymond sees the work she did in Cambridge as a sort of blueprint. "The voice of the communities went right through the project," she says. She worked with the museum on the research grant bid, the actual research and through to the exhibition and performance - gaining an insider's understanding of museum policy and practices. But she said it is "still very much at the invitation of the host museum".

It is clear that the main benefit to the museum in working with indigenous individuals or groups is to bring authenticity to the collections. Objects can be brought to life through performance or artists' interpretations, or information-provision and research assistance on the historical meaning and use of an item.

Finbarr Whooley, assistant director of the Horniman Museum, says relationships with source communities help to "move away from the exotic". He says interaction "allows the museum to challenge its own views on artists - what they are like and who they are".

For Raymond, the importance of engagement is what she calls the living dynamic. "Without the living dynamic, these museums are mausoleums housing a bunch of objects."

The importance of providing a space for the community to be among the objects is often overlooked by the museum, she says. As François Wadra puts it: "We cannot disassociate the objects, the people or the sites."

A matter of record

Chantal Knowles, principal curator of Oceania, Americas and Africa at National Museums Scotland, has worked with the Tlicho people of north-west Canada on projects related to Tlicho material held by the museum.

The items were collected by Scottish fur traders in the mid-19th century. The relationship led to Extremes, an exhibition held last year that looked at how the Tlicho community adapts to the remote environment it lives in.

Knowles says there is more longer-term thinking now in museums and, as long as there is a record of the contact with indigenous communities in the museum, relationships can be continued and renewed. "In the past we didn't always think about that as part of the process. We saw it as being of the moment."

For Wadra, the most important reason for making the connection with western museums is to set the record straight. "Our material culture has been misinterpreted and there is still time for us to make the correction." He will be contributing a chapter on the Yam Stones in the forthcoming British Museum book on the Melanesian objects.

Wadra says he is honoured to be invited by the British Museum to spend time talking about the objects and how they relate to his culture. And he notes: "It's no longer the object they are going to get, it's the people with the knowledge."