The last few years have seen increasing calls for German institutions to change their approach to collections from colonial contexts. Concomitantly, pressure has been put on museums to digitize and open up collections to new audiences, which has been further exacerbated by access issues due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This article addresses developments at the Ubersee-Museum Bremen as it seeks to re-examine, reorganize and reconnect its Oceanic (in particular Samoan) collection in partnership with the National University of Samoa (NUS). Through a collaborative approach that involves a curator and an academic intern of Samoan descent working in the museum in Bremen, the Ubersee-Museum is revamping its museological practices and interpretation as it develops its first digital project on Oceania. Through workshops with partners in Samoa, the team develops topics and plans content informed by Samoan perspectives. Working across disciplinary boundaries, the exhibition highlights novel insights into fluid configurations of cultural practices and environmental cosmologies based on the interplay of material collections. This article examines some examples of the ways in which interpretative authority on the part of the curators in Bremen is relinquished and shifted towards Samoan perspectives on measina (treasures) within museum spaces, both physical and virtual.
This article examines the remarkable permanence of fa'asamoa, Samoan custom, throughout the upheavals of history. The strength of this permanence lies in a particular configuration of what brings the community together at meetings when an important decision has to be taken: an equality of positions in the community circle where everyone faces one another, in the sense that everyone is seated at the same level. But this equality is maintained by a bond of higher value, sometimes called the 'country', 'custom' or even 'God'. This is what the Samoans call the 'sacred circle'. Each time, this hierarchy of references makes it possible to find a way not to ignore but to position the conflict at an 'encompassed' level, leaving the community value at the 'encompassing' level. The article describes how this works through historical examples, from German colonization via the construction of independence in the 1960s to the latest national elections in 2021, which saw fierce competition between two political parties, as well as considering the way in which consensus is favoured over majority voting.
The Samoan world opens with the notion of nu'u tofi, in which every person is assigned a place or position that resonates with culture, polity, citizenship and governance. Tofi (or tofiga) places Samoans according to their ancestral connections within the order of the Samoan world, as 'the reference point of political action and motivation' (Tui Atua) - for instance, matai (chiefs) sitting in front of the you (posts) of the fale (house). Connecting people and land, tofi creates belonging through fa'asinomaga (placement) and tulagavae (demarcation of places) at the centre of the nu'u (political unit). This positionality, codified in the fale you (house posts) and the bodies on the malae (an open space in the centre of a settlement), is carried anywhere, irrespective of location. If 'Samoanness', at home and abroad, has connections with artifactuality and spatiality, it would be in the house, both real and imaginary. This article explores the role of tofiga, as materialized in Auckland Pacific communities' fale since the 1980s.
Approximately 25,000 Nubians live in Kibera, Nairobi's largest slum, which they consider their ancestral home. As descendants of African soldiers in Britain's colonial armies, they have faced marginalization and de facto statelessness. Joh Sarre's dissertation examines their overlooked experiences, focusing on the negotiation of contested notions of belonging, inclusion and exclusion. The study is structured around three interrelated perspectives: conceptual, methodological and empirical. The first major chapter explores the historical entanglements of land, ethnicity and politics in Kenya, which forms the background against which Nubian claims to belonging are negotiated. Joh Sarre examines how powerful discourses around land-ownership and ethnic identity influence Nubian (non-) belonging to Kib(e)ra and the Kenyan nation. In three empirical chapters, Joh Sarre analyses the spatial practices through which Nubian belonging is being performed and negotiated. The first of these chapters discusses contested place names in Kibera, showing how Nubians use oral history and naming practices to assert Nubian firstcomer claims. It is this chapter that this article expands upon. The second empirical chapter in the book explores Nubian weddings and wedding processions as performative acts of belonging. The third empirical part focuses on burial practices at and negotiations around the (re)naming of the 'Kibra (Nubian) Muslim Cemetery', highlighting how religious and cultural norms determine belonging, inclusion and exclusion in death. The final part of the dissertation synthesizes findings within the broader context of politicized ethnicity in Kenya. The study concludes that belonging is a practical negotiation of identity, and that space/place serve as key frameworks for analysing these dynamics. By exploring land, ethnicity and social practices, the study contributes to discussions on identity formation, marginalization and recognition in Kenya and beyond.
In the afterword to the collection Christine Winter contextualises collecting and museum collections within wider histories that explore the impact of Samoa and the Pacific on German speaking lands and Germany during the ninetennth century. She links theories of the Global South and South-North relationships with ethical considerations for museums today: holding Pacific collections these institutions are to be spaces that welcome Samoans and benefit from enduring relationships.
