THREE Marianas community organizations are highlighting their efforts to connect Micronesian communities with museum artifacts stored in collections across Europe — and hope to bring a CNMI resident to one of these collections in Germany.
According to a news release, the groups Micronesia Climate Change Alliance, Fanachu! Podcast, and Tahdong Marianas are currently hosting a podcast series “focused on collections from colonial contexts.”
The podcasts center on community members from the Marianas and broader Micronesia who are interested in the types of artifacts housed in European museums. According to the release, cultural belongings, ancestral human remains, and biological specimens were collected from across Micronesia and are still held in countries far from their places of origin.
In the podcast series, titled “Waves of Return,” hosts and guests explore how “[the artifacts] have the potential to incite renewed pathways of stewardship, maintain or revive cultural practices, and promote research that is grounded in Indigenous values and beliefs.”
As part of their work to “bridge” Marianas communities to these collections, the organizations are also calling on the public to support efforts to send Frances M. Sablan —a cultural practitioner and former CNMI school vice principal — to visit collections housed in the Berlin Ethnological Museum and the Berlin Natural History Museum.
Sablan told Variety that the trip offers a chance to see the collections up close and even handle some of the items. The trip is scheduled for Aug. 25-28.
“We might have to don lab coats, gloves, and some masks, but the curators are excited to welcome us — and I’m excited to discover and possibly contribute some knowledge that is not yet in their archival database,” she said.
Sablan added that she has been working with Andrew Gumataotao and Samantha Barnett, members of Tahdong Marianas, to help make the Berlin trip possible. Gumataotao and Barnett have spent years in Germany conducting research on these collections. Based on their findings, Sablan said some of the items housed in Berlin include pandanus weavings, traditional bamboo traps, sinahi, kåmyo, wooden sheaths, slingstones, mats, clothing, bird skins, and other scientific specimens from the Marianas.
Also joining the tour is Guam-based cultural dance group Inetnon Gefpå’go. Alongside Tahdong Marianas and Sablan, Inetnon Gefpå’go will participate in a cultural workshop in Berlin, where the Marianas artifacts will inform their contributions. Sablan said that interacting with these materials could help cultural practitioners like herself and Inetnon Gefpå’go “revitalize” their knowledge of their ancestors and homelands.
“The title of the workshop is ‘Waves of Return,’ and so we explore, of course, the physical restitution of belongings — but also how cultural performing arts, music, and dance have been vital in returning knowledge,” she said. “We are returning to these belongings in a way, both youth and elders, with these ancestral belongings. This is also significant, I think.”
To support the fundraising efforts, visit Tahdong Marianas’ GoFundMe page: https://tinyurl.com/FrancesSablanBerlin
Fanachu! Podcast’s Waves of Return episodes are available on Apple and SoundCloud, with additional livestreams on Fanachu Podcast’s Facebook page.
Frances Sablan and Tahdong Marianas are raising funds for cultural collaboration work in Berlin.
From left, Frances Sablan, Andrew Gumataotao and Samantha Barnett attend a performance during the 2024 Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture.
