Latest news with #PeabodyMuseumofArchaeology&Ethnology
The Guardian
05-03-2025
- The Guardian
Brazil fights Harvard to reclaim African rebel's skull after 190 years
In January 1835, wearing religious robes and carrying amulets inscribed with prayers and passages from the Qur'an, hundreds of African Muslims staged the most significant urban slave revolt in the more than 350 years of slavery in Brazil. About 600 Malês – as Muslims of Yoruba origin were known – attempted to seize control of Salvador, the capital of the Bahia state and then the country's second most important city, but were ultimately defeated by the police, who killed 70 rebels. Shortly afterwards, the skull of one of the fallen rebels was taken to the US, where, after being used in eugenics studies that sought to prove so-called 'scientific' racist theories, it ended up in Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, where it remains to this day. Now, 190 years later, the skull – believed to be that of an unidentified leader of the uprising – may finally return to Brazil. 'He is our brother and deserves to be buried under Islamic rites,' said Sheikh Abdul Hameed Ahmad, 74, leader and founder of the Bahia Islamic Cultural Centre. 'It doesn't matter if it's a skull, if it's part of a body; he's a Muslim, and we must honour him,' he added. Ahmad is part of a group called Arakunrin, meaning brother in Yoruba, that has been working on the repatriation for the past two years. The skull's existence was only revealed in 2022 in a book by historian Christopher DE Willoughby and an article in the Harvard Crimson, which reported that the university holds the human remains of at least 19 individuals who were likely enslaved in the US, the Caribbean and Brazil. A Harvard committee admitted that 'skeletal remains were utilised to demonstrate spurious and racist differences to confirm existing social hierarchies and structures', and recommended they should be returned to descendant communities or repatriated. The leading researcher on the Malê revolt, Brazilian historian João José Reis, contacted former colleagues at Harvard, where he had taught as a visiting professor in 2012. 'But over the past two years, the Peabody Museum has systematically delayed the repatriation negotiations,' he said. Reis, Ahmad and the other researchers in the Arakunrin group then turned to Brazil's ministry of foreign affairs, which joined the negotiations with Harvard at the end of 2024. 'That's when the talks finally started to move forward,' Reis said. Everything known about the skull comes from the man who removed it from a hospital in Bahia and took it to Boston: Gideon T Snow. In a brief yet heavily eugenicist text, he wrote that the it belonged to a 'genuine African, of the Nagô tribe [as the Yoruba were also known in Bahia], esteemed above all other blacks for their tall stature, breadth of shoulders, symmetry and strength of limb, united to an intelligence not usually found among the blacks of other tribes. This was the tribe which revolted here last January (1835), and this was one of the chiefs in the affair. He was killed after a most desperate contest, the courage of this tribe being fully equal to their herculean strength.' According to historian Bruno Veras, also an Arakunrin member, Snow was a US diplomat who was also involved in the Brazilian sugar trade, which depended on enslaved labour. 'From the clues in the documentation, it appears that he stole the man's head from the hospital while it was still 'fresh,'' said Veras. Once the skull is returned, researchers plan to conduct a DNA test to verify whether he was indeed of Yoruba origin. 'A grave robber is hardly a morally reliable person, right?' said Reis. The condition of the skull is still unknown – whether it has teeth, for example, which could be helpful for the DNA test – because Harvard has refused to share images with the researchers. A spokesperson for the university said they would not discuss the repatriation and that 'as a matter of policy, we do not share images of any remains'. The Malê skull is not the only Brazilian one in the university's possession: even less is known about a second one – only that it consists of 'cranial human remains from an individual … exhumed from the 'streets of Rio de Janeiro'', according to the Harvard committee. In meetings, the university has stated that it intends to send both skulls together under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. For this, Harvard has requested clarification on which legitimate descendant community will receive the remains – something that is clear in the Malê case but not for the other skull. As a result, there is no timeline for when the repatriations might take place. However, the Arakunrin group members remain optimistic that the skulls will be returned this year, coinciding with the 190th anniversary of the revolt. 'The Malê Revolt is important not only for Muslims or for Brazil, but for the world because it is a story of resistance to slavery,' said Sheikh Ahmad, who is of Yoruba origin, born in Nigeria, and living in Bahia since 1992. Hannah Romã Bellini Sarno, a researcher of Muslim identity and another Arakunrin member argues that there is a much greater symbolism in giving the Malê skull a religious funeral. 'During the period of slavery, funeral rituals were denied not only to him but to so many other Africans who were in Brazil and died without the spiritual care they deserved,' she said.
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
A photographer's fantastical portrait of rural China during Lunar New Year
Editor's Note: A version of this article was first published on February 10, 2024. In photographer Zhang Xiao's images of the Shehuo festival, an ancient celebration still observed in parts of northern China during the Lunar New Year, rural life comes alive with something altogether more fantastical. Villagers dressed as cranes, roosters and mythical lions pose for portraits standing amid crops or in fallow farmland. Costumed performers parade past brick houses against hazy backdrops, the eyes of their masks seemingly lost in thought. In a harvested wheat field, a group of almost a dozen men line up to hold aloft a colorful dragon puppet. In his book 'Community Fire,' Zhang said he wanted to capture the surreal 'disconnect' between people's everyday lives and the mythical personas they assumed. 'Their characters seemed to come from the sky itself, and … formed a huge theatrical stage that transcended the confines of reality, transporting a collective of sleepwalkers to a dreamworld,' he wrote. 'I wandered among them and photographed them quietly, because I did not want to wake them up.' Rooted in millennia-old agricultural practices of worshipping fire and the land, the folk rituals of Shehuo (often translated as 'earth and fire') traditionally entailed praying for good fortune and bounteous harvests, or to drive away demons. Festivities vary between regions but now typically see various performers, from stilt walkers to opera singers, parading through the streets or staging shows. Today, celebrations coincide with the Lunar New Year, which starts Wednesday. As such, they have come to encompass many of the traditions — such as temple fairs and lion dances — practiced around China during this period. (Lunar New Year celebrations usually last more than two weeks, with Shehuo festival taking place on the season's 15th and final day.) Shehuo celebrations have been recognized by the Chinese government in its UNESCO-style list of 'intangible cultural heritage.' But the festival's place in a rapidly urbanizing country remains under threat, said Zhang, adding that most of the performers he encountered had migrated to cities and only returned to their villages for the holiday. 'The significance of traditional customs can no longer meet the needs of modern lives,' the photographer told CNN via email. 'Today's young people are more concerned about the internet and games. They are not even willing to try and understand traditional cultures. I think that's sad.' Hoping to document the festival's disappearing traditions — and the costumes and props associated with them — Zhang spent over a decade photographing Shehuo events at villages in Shaanxi and Henan provinces. A selection of the images, which were shot between 2007 and 2019, also went on show in the US at Harvard University's Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology (and over 100 of them were published in 'Community Fire'). As well as capturing rites, rituals and folklore, the photos speak to the proliferation of mass-produced paraphernalia that has transformed the festival since the turn of the 21st century. One image depicts a stack of expressionless plastic masks; a set of 12 eerie pictures shows smiling prop heads hanging from trees in flimsy carrier bags. Several pages of Zhang's book are dedicated to screengrabs of Alibaba-owned shopping platform, Taobao, where Shehuo items can be purchased at bargain prices. They range from an elaborate two-person lion dance costume, offered for just 360 yuan ($50), to a selection of headdresses priced under 17 yuan ($2.40). The rise of cheap goods and e-commerce has been a mixed blessing for these villages. Some of them — including Huozhuang, in Henan province, which features heavily in Zhang's project — have taken advantage of the opportunity. The photographer visited and documented several small family workshops that buy semi-complete products in large quantities online before hand-finishing them and selling them on platforms like Taobao for profit. 'In some villages, virtually the entire population has been mobilized to produce and sell Shehuo props,' the photographer writes in his book. But with economic opportunity comes a loss of traditional skills and customs. Materials like paper and bamboo have been replaced by cheap wire frames, plastic and synthetic fabrics, said Zhang, who grew up in a rural area of China's Shandong province but is now based in Chengdu, one of the country's largest metropolises in the southwest. A third-generation prop maker told Zhang that, in the photographer's words, that he 'lamented the gradual disappearance of traditional crafts.' But most of the villagers the photographer encountered were indifferent to the loss of cultural heritage, he claimed. And while Zhang, as a documentarian, assumed the role of a 'quiet spectator' while on assignment, he nonetheless expressed regret at the festival's rapid commercialization. 'People are not focused on how to improve product quality and craftsmanship,' said the photographer, who is currently working on a documentary about life in rural China. 'Instead, they are obsessed with how to manufacture these products as quickly as possible, and at the lowest cost, so as to gain an advantage against the competition. This has led to a gradual decline in product quality, and the entire industry has fallen into a vicious cycle of price wars.' 'Community Fire,' published by Aperture and Peabody Museum Press, is available now.
