Gegen den Strom

Katharina Erben: Gegen die Gewohnheit.

Anna Schäfers: Der Podcast zu neuen Formen der Zusammenarbeit im Ethnologischen Museum und im Museum für Asiatische Kunst Berlin. 

Wynema Morris: This is the only museum that has reached out and collaborated with the cultures of origin.

Ilja Labischinski: Yeah, I think this was also, for us the life changing project because it shows so much what an ethnological museum can be.

Anna Schäfers: Ich bin Anna Schäfers, Kuratorin für Text und Sprache beim Projekt „Das Kollaborative Museum“.

Katharina Erben: Und ich bin Katharina Erben, freiberufliche Kulturredakteurin. Herzlich Willkommen.

Anna Schäfers: Die Museumskooperation, die wir euch heute vorstellen möchten, hat mit einer ganz besonderen Sammlung des Ethnologischen Museums zu tun, der Sammlung von Francis La Flesche. Der hat nämlich Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts im Auftrag des Ethnologischen Museums in Nebraska cultural belongings seiner eigenen Kultur, der Omaha, gesammelt und sie nach Europa geschickt.

Katharina Erben: Damals hatte man die Befürchtung, dass die Omaha aufgrund von kolonialer Gewalt und Assimilationsdruck ihren Lebensstil verlieren würden, und die cultural belongings sollten ihn für die europäische Nachwelt dokumentieren.

Anna Schäfers: Übrigens, wenn wir von cultural belongings sprechen, meinen wir das, was ihr vielleicht Objekte, Exponate, Kulturgut nennt. Unsere internationalen Partner*innen haben uns gebeten, den Begriff „Objekt“ nicht zu verwenden, sondern – zumindest im Englischen - von cultural belongings zu sprechen. Denn für sie sind die, nun, Gegenstände oder Dinge viel mehr als Objekte.

Katharina Erben: Viele Gegenstände wurden speziell für die Sammlung von La Flesche angefertigt. Zusammen mit der Beschreibungen ihrer Verwendung wurden sie lange in den Archiven des Museums aufbewahrt, bis sich das Ethnologische Museum rund 120 Jahre später erneut an die Omaha in Nebraska wandte: dieses Mal mit einer Kooperationsanfrage. Das Wissen darüber, dass sich viele historische cultural belongings der Omaha in Berlin befinden, war zu diesem Zeitpunkt bei den Omaha selbst schon verloren gegangen.

Anna Schäfers: Zusammen erarbeiteten die Stiftung Humboldt Forum, das Ethnologische Museum und das Nebraska Indian Community College oder NICC die Ausstellung „Gegen den Strom. Die Omaha, Francis La Flesche und seine Sammlung“. Sie wurde 2022 als Teil der neuen Ausstellung im Humboldt Forum eröffnet.

Katharina Erben: Drei Kurator*innen dieser Ausstellung haben mit uns über diese Zusammenarbeit gesprochen und auch darüber, was sie für das Ethnologische Museum, das Humboldt Forum und für die Omaha bedeutet. Wir haben das Gespräch auf Englisch geführt und unsere Gäste gebeten, sich selbst vorzustellen:

Vanessa Hamilton: Umonhon izhazhe wiwita-the Mimite. My name is Vanessa Hamilton. I am Omaha and Yankton. Honga wau bthin. I work at Nebraska Indian Community College as a staff member, and I'm also a student.

Wynema Morris: I'm Wynema Morris and I'm Omaha. I also teach at the Nebraska Indian Community College, teaching Native American Studies, particularly with an emphasis in Omaha history, Omaha culture, Omaha tradition. And then everything else that has to do with Native Americans.

Ilja Labischinski: Ilja Labischinski. I am provenance researcher at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and curator of the exhibition „Against the Current“ in the Humboldt Forum.

Katharina Erben: Zunächst die Frage, um die es in unserem Podcast geht, nämlich die nach dem gemeinsamen Ziel der Zusammenarbeit:

Wynema Morris: I think that the common goal was to build bridges of understanding not only our past, but also what are the implications for the future. So it was a real blessing and a challenge all at the same time to know that there was somebody that wanted to know about us from us. I tell my students that you can learn about things. But if you can learn from things, that's a significant difference. And this has afforded us to be able to teach from and to be able to share with our tribal membership things of our cultural past and our history from the collection of Francis La Flesche. I think going forward with our partners now, we've got a really good framework and a really good foundation to probably go in any direction.

Katharina Erben: Es gehe also darum, das Wissen, dass in diesen Gegenständen steckt, ihren Student*innen und tribal members zugänglich zu machen, eine Brücke von der Vergangenheit in die Zukunft zu schlagen.

Ilja Labischinski: Well, I always answer this question with a story that Wynema doesn’t like so much. Because I remember it so vividly when Elizabeth Seyerl, my colleague, and I were sitting in my kitchen late at night calling Wynema for the first time, and one of the first things she told us was “Oh please! Not another white guy to tell our story.” This set the tone for our collaboration on this exhibition. When we were working together, it was clear that we, as curators in Germany, we wanted to create a space where Omaha people from today can tell their own story, and it's not us who explain something about the cultural belongings or the story of Francis La Flesche. Our task was more to create a space where people from today can tell their story on Francis La Flesche, on the cultural belongings, and on the Omaha history and present and future.

Anna Schäfers: Die Berliner Kurator*innen wollten die Zusammenarbeit eher als Gelegenheit nutzen, den Omaha einen Ort einzuräumen, an dem sie ihre eigene Geschichte erzählen können. Um nicht die white guys zu sein, die die Gegenstände und ihre Bedeutung „erklären“, sagt Ilja Labischinski.

Katharina Erben: Zentral für das Projekt ist die Figur von Francis La Flesche, der Omaha-Ethnologe, der die Sammlung für das Museum im 19. Jahrhundert zusammengestellt hat. Was war das eigentlich für ein Typ und was bedeutet er für die Neugestaltung der Ausstellung?

Wynema Morris: Francis La Flesche was the son of one of our last chiefs of the Omaha. He was educated to be an ethnologist, and he was asked to collect so many – we would call them objects then or articles or materials – from the Omaha people, his own people that he grew up with, to represent who the Omahas were, both in the past and who they were at the time. This was all completed and gathered in 1896, 1898 somewhere. He gathered all of these things and he interpreted for himself and for, I think, for us later on in the future that he understood what all of these cultural belongings really were. If you have someone else to come in and explain the importance of a particular ceremony, the interpretation is going to be foreign to us and they may not get it right. They won't understand why, they won't be able to explain much. But Francis was able to do this. Had he not done so and described it, I can tell you that we would not know half of the cultural knowledge that we are able to keep and cherish and learn from. So in a sense, we regard him as the first American Indian ethnologist at the time.

Anna Schäfers: Francis La Flesche hat also nicht nur Gegenstände zusammengetragen, sondern auch ihre Herstellung, Verwendung und Bedeutung dokumentiert und beschrieben. Das Wiedersehen mit diesen Artefakten war ein emotionaler Moment für unsere Kooperationsparter*innen.

Wynema Morris: So when we came, one of the first things we did was to go see the collection, the cultural belongings. And every one of us, we felt this – I don't know what you call it – but it was instant contact with our pasts and to know that Omahas, this is how we used to live. They let us touch them. Of course, we were gowned and we were masked and gloved and everything to be protected. But I lifted up one of the moccasins and I could see the footprints, and that still affects me today. I looked at that and I said, “An Omaha from that time walked in these moccasins.” From there then I became really committed because before that, it was just a collection. I mean, this is how we were conditioned to think about things – that museums are just old, dry, dusty stuff that nobody really sees. Or if you go through, you can read a little placard about “this is this and used by the Omaha” and then you see “circa 1890” or whatever the year might be, and then you move on and there's no real connection. But when we saw these things in person, they weren't on exhibit. The emotional response to that –I still recall it and I can still relate in that way.

Katharina Erben: Die Gegenstände sind ein Zeichen für die Kontinutität des Omaha-Lebens, aber auch für die Veränderungen, die seit damals eingetreten sind, berichtet Wynema Morris.

Wynema Morris: It's very emotional. Why? I think for me it's that we didn't learn about these things. It's a reflection of how Indian people in general were forced to assimilate brutally by the United States. I mean, you either conform and follow this, or you die. Your great grandfather was hunting buffalo in 1876 and then he was suddenly told he couldn't go on hunt anymore because there aren't any more buffalo. He changes from a buffalo hunting warrior to someone who is confined on a farm, who knows nothing about farming. We were independent, we were healthy, we were strong, and none of us were poor. Once they became farmers, then we became quite literally cash poor. We didn't understand how money was to work, and so we understood that we had to farm and then you had to sell it. We are collective people, so to work for just yourself was totally foreign. And then we became poor.

Anna Schäfers: Wie viele andere Native Americans wurden die Omaha gezwungen, ihre Art zu leben, aufzugeben. Aus den unabhängigen Büffeljägern sollten sesshafte Bauern werden, obwohl sie nichts von der Landwirtschaft verstanden. Auf einmal mussten die Omaha mit Geld umgehen, was für sie bis dahin völlig ohne Bedeutung gewesen war.

Wynema Morris: This is when disease hit us. Infant mortality was extremely high. Diseases like tuberculosis, diphtheria, flu– just the common cold put people in the ground. And it was a very, very dark time, what I call the time of transition. I try to make my students and myself realize: You're not going to go on the buffalo hunt. Last year we went. It wasn't that good anyway. But now we can't. The land we used to be on where the buffalo were, it's all fenced up. It belongs to someone else. What does that mean? So, this was the story that I wanted to tell and it was so, so great for me that we would get to voice that kind of opinion. We would get to be able to interpret for ourselves and through us be able to share with the world. And as far as I know, this is the only museum right now that has reached out and collaborated with the cultures of origin. And yes, granted, ours is slightly different because we willingly, through Francis La Flesche, participated. I'm so glad we did because we can make that real clear and strong connection with our own past and our history.

Anna Schäfers: Es lag den Omaha-Kuratorinnen also sehr am Herzen, von den Veränderungen zu erzählen, die seither eingetreten sind, von der erzwungenen Aufgabe des alten Lebensstils und der Armut, die damit einhergeht. Ebenso war es ihnen wichtig, die Verbindung zur eigenen Vergangenheit herzustellen durch die von Francis La Flesche gesammelten cultural belongings, die zum Teil heute noch in genau dieser Form in Gebrauch sind, wie Vanessa Hamilton erzählt.

Vanessa Hamilton: In 2019, tiníha, my aunt here, invited me to come to see the collection. I accompanied one of our other aunts over here, and we walked into the place where they had everything laid out. I usually get the heebie-jeebies when you go to a museum because it's so sterile and you see all this stuff. But when I walked in there, it was like you walked into your grandparents' home… instantly felt at home. Like we said, we were gowned up, gloved up, masked up – the whole thing. I walked over, and I saw these moccasins, and I picked them up and I started looking at them. And this lady comes over and she said, “Well, I noticed you looking at those moccasins.” And I said, “Yeah.” And she said, “Well, what about them?” I said, “Well, they're Omaha.” And she said, “Well, how do you know that?” And I said, “Because I have a pair just like these in my hotel room.” And she said, “Well, how do you know about moccasins?” I said, “I can make them. We've had that same pattern for forever. We still make them the same exact way.” Like I said, nothing about the collection scared me. It was more like even though I hadn't seen these things before, somehow they were familiar.

Katharina Erben: Zusätzlich zu den von Francis La Flesche gesammelten Gegenständen befinden sich seit Oktober 2023 auch zeitgenössische cultural belongings in der Ausstellung. Sie dokumentieren aktuelle Entwicklungen und begründen neue Traditionen.

Vanessa Hamilton: Well, tiníha asked me last year if I would help with the collection. She said, “We want to do an updated version.” We jokingly called it Omaha 2.0 because we didn't know what else to call it at the time. But me and my cousin, my cousin-sister, Lani, we went and got things together that represented contemporary life. There's a ribbon shirt that my grandson wore, and he wore it at his Head Start graduation. And he also wore it out in the arena, in the Pow Wow arena. We pass that on to our children as the tiníha passed that on to her children, and now we're passing it on to our grandchildren. So in 50 years if my grandson comes over and he sees something from the exhibit, he can say, “Oh, there's my shirt from when I was in Head Start.”

Katharina Erben: Um die Traditionen, die Zusammengehörigkeit, aber auch die Kämpfe der Omaha in die Ausstellung zu übersetzen, wurde den Gegenständen eine Medieninstallation an die Seite gestellt, in der die Omaha selbst zu Wort kommen und ihr heutiges Leben beschreiben.

Ilja Labischinski: The first time and also the second time that our partners came to Berlin in 2018 and 2019, they made it very clear that this exhibition isn't only about these cultural belongings or isn’t only about Francis La Flesche. Francis La Flesche is also only one part of the story, but these cultural belongings were made by Omaha people and it was just Francis who sold them to the museum. And they made it very clear that this exhibition has to be about social, political topics, questions of the past, present, and future of the Omaha people. This changed a lot. We were listening a lot to their stories, as you just did, and that was not an easy task to somehow translate that into an exhibition because these stories don't fit in a classical museum text. So our idea was to create a space where we don’t, as German curators, have a say. Together with the designers and a filmmaker, we decided to create this media installation with ten or twelve people interviewed, telling their stories, starting with the belongings that Francis sold to Berlin. But they were free to talk about whatever they wanted and about the idea to create a dialog between the 19th century Francis La Flesche and today's Omaha people around the belongings that are now in the Berlin museum.

Anna Schäfers: Yeah, I really like these installations where you have to follow the person who is telling a story from one screen to the next. I regularly go back inside and see, “Ooh, that's a story that I haven't heard” or “Hm, that's Wynema again.” And I see other people in the exhibition who are not paid to be there also follow the characters, the people through the exhibition. I've cried at several of these stories. I think it's important to not only do scientific research and talk about “this is what those people did a long time ago”, but to say, “These are people who live today and there's a connection to you and to politics that are still happening or have happened.” I think if an exhibition can bring us closer to people, that's a great thing.

Vanessa Hamilton: Us Omaha people are still here. That's the main thing that we want to get across because even in our own country, in the U.S., people will say, “Oh, you're Indian?” They act like we should have died off 100 years ago.

Katharina Erben: „We’re still here“, sagt Vanessa Hamilton, wir sind immer noch da, wir sind nicht ausgestorben, sondern haben uns weiterentwickelt. Bedeutet das, dass die Omaha ihre vor 120 Jahren durch das Ethnologische Museum erworbenen cultural belongings jetzt zurückfordern? Immerhin wurden sie im 19. Jahrhundert ohne Zwang und für gerechte Bezahlung an das Museum geliefert. Gespräche über Rückgaben gab es durchaus.

Ilja Labischinski: For us, it was very interesting for me. I learned a lot about restitution and repatriation in these discussions. We were ready to talk about restitution and repatriation when you came to Berlin because it was clear that this topic would come up, but it was where our guests from the NICC said, “Wait and don't rush.” What I learned is that it also takes a lot of responsibility to take things back. So who is capable of taking care of it? Or to take the responsibility of taking care of it? I think it is sometimes forgotten how much talk and listening and discussions it needs on all sides to discuss these topics like restitution or repatriation. And I think we are in good talks, moving things forward and now are looking for possibilities to keep on working together on both sides of the ocean.

Anna Schäfers: Anders als bei vielen anderen cultural belongings, die im Ethnologischen Museum ausgestellt sind, werden die Gegenstände also nicht von ihren Nachfahren zurückgefordert, sondern die Nachfahren der Künstler*innen möchten die Gegenstände dazu nutzen, in Europa ihre aktuelle Situation zu beschreiben. Und sie sind selbst ein bisschen überrascht, dass ihnen so viel Gehör geschenkt wird.

Vanessa Hamilton: I remember when I came over in 2019, they asked us, “How do you want these things presented?” And we literally had a bulletin board with Post-it notes. We would arrange things like “everyday life”, “ceremonial”, “childhood”, that kind of thing. I remember thinking at the time, “They're actually asking us and they're actually listening to us.” For me, that was kind of like, “Whoa, they really want our opinion.” I was blown away by it because it was like the first time that I've ever heard of anybody actually doing that for us.

Katharina Erben: Durch die gemeinsame Arbeit mit den cultural belongings soll eine langfristige Beziehung aufgebaut werden.

Ilja Labischinski: Yeah, I think that’s also for us the life-changing project because it shows so much what a museum can be. I think it also shows the potential of an ethnological museum in the 21st century because why do we have these kinds of museums? Why do we have these anymore? And I think these projects show not just for us in the museum, but also for the visitors that this is about relationships. I think Wynema at one point said, “This project is about relationships.” And this is something that our museum can be and hopefully can be more in the future. So we are very thankful to you.

Wynema Morris: Oh, absolutely! Our thanks right back because it's not just me or my niece here or those of us that worked on, but it's the Omaha people. And I think that's what Francis felt deeply in his heart. I can't read his mind. I don't know him – only through his work but I think that he wanted to preserve as much of who we were as a people. Because at the time Native people were expected to die off. His work, I think, was something like, “Here's these books about a people who used to be here” and of course, we're not. We're still here.

Katharina Erben: Das war „Gegen die Gewohnheit“, der Podcast zu neuen Formen der Zusammenarbeit im Ethnologischen Museum und im Museum für Asiatische Kunst. Produziert von speak low im Auftrag der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin.