indigenous culture | Pandaemonium

UBIRR AND BURRUNGGUY: ART THROUGH THE AGES

October 22, 2017 by Kenan Malik

Ubirr is to Australia as Chauvet and Lascaux are to Europe – perhaps the finest rock art on the continent. It lies in Arnhem Land in the far north, on the edge of the Nadab floodplain, in the traditional lands of the Gagudju people. Today, it is part of the Kakadu National Park. The art at Ubirr spans a period of perhaps 40,000 years from the Paleolithic to virtually the present. None of the art has been carbon-dated, so all […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Human • Tags: aboriginal art, art, australia, burrungguy, indigenous culture, nourlangie, rock art, ubirr

WHAT VOICE FOR INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIA?

September 11, 2017 by Kenan Malik

An excerpt from my latest column for the International New York Times on the debate about Indigenous rights in Australia. It was published under the headline ‘The New Voice for Indigenous Australia‘: The debate about Indigenous peoples seems – at least to me, an outsider – to take place on only two registers: on one hand, silence; on the other, a romanticization of indigenous life. It may seem odd to speak of silence in a nation where the issue of […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: australia, colonialism, indigenous australians, indigenous culture, noel pearson, racism, romanticism, uluru, uluru statement

ULURU AND KATA TJUTA AT FIRST LIGHT AND LAST

August 24, 2017 by Kenan Malik

Nothing quite prepares you for your first sight of Uluru. Amid the vastness of the arid landscape of Australia’s red centre, fringed by ill-shapen hills and mountain ranges, there is something wondrous and almost magical about this monumental slab of sandstone, most of which actually lies beneath the ground. The monolith was created more than 500 million years ago, and is a remnant of a vast mountain range formed during the creation of the Australian continent. Much of the surrounding […]

Categories: International, Photos • Tags: australia, indigenous culture, kata tjuta, photography, uluru

A CATHEDRAL OF MANY CULTURES

October 9, 2016 by Kenan Malik

In the recent wonderful British Museum exhibition on the historical cultures of Sicily, the curators described 12th century Norman rule as a ‘Golden Age’ , an ‘Enlightened Kingdom’ in which the ‘coexistence of Western, Islamic and Byzantine cultures created what was probably the most progressive court in Europe.’ From the perspective of the time, the relationship between different peoples in Norman Sicily, as in Moorish Iberia, was remarkably tolerant. There was, of course, nothing equal in the relationship between different peoples; […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Photos • Tags: architecture, byzantine, christianity, indigenous culture, islam, monreale, religious art, sicily

BATTLES OVER ANCIENT BONES AND MODERN IDENTITIES

June 24, 2015 by Kenan Malik

Last week a paper in Nature by Rasmussen et al threw new light on the question of the genetic origins of Kennewick Man, a 8,500 year old skeleton whose bones were discovered in July 1996 by two teenagers in the Columbia River, near Kennewick, Washington State, in north-west USA. It was a rare find, nearly a complete skeleton, and one of the oldest human discovered in North America. The bones became the focus of an intense, fractious battle, both scientific and […]

Categories: Science & Technology • Tags: anthropology, cultural ownership, cultural repariation, david hurst thomas, human remains, identity politics, indigenous culture, kennewick man, nagpra, native americans, racial science, unesco, vine deloria

SCIENCE, MYTH AND HISTORY

December 21, 2012 by Kenan Malik

This is the third in a series of extracts that I have been running from my book Strange Fruit. The extracts tell the story of ‘Kennewick Man’ and explore what the debate around a 9000-year old skeleton reveals about current ideas of culture and race. The first extract looked at questions cultural ownership, the second at the issue of race. This third extract links the two in a discussion of the relationship between science, myth and history, and the way […]

Categories: Science & Technology • Tags: anthropology, clovis, creation myths, human origins, indigenous culture, jonathan marks, kennewick man, native americans, paul martin, racial science, racism, romanticism, vine deloria

THE BATTLE OF THE BONES

December 15, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I published recently a transcript of a radio documentary I had made that explored the question of ‘Who owns culture?’. Perhaps the most fractious of recent debates around this question has been over ‘Kennewick Man’, an ancient skeleton found on the banks of the Columbia River in America’s Washington State. The 9000-year old skeleton became the focus for two major controversies: What is race? And who owns history? I tell the story of Kennewick Man in my book Strange Fruit: […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Science & Technology • Tags: anthropology, creation myths, cultural ownership, cultural repatriation, culture, david hurst thomas, human origins, human remains, indigenous culture, kennewick man, nagpra, native americans, unesco, vine deloria

WHO OWNS CULTURE?

December 11, 2012 by Kenan Malik

I mentioned in my last post the attempts by the UN, UNESCO and WIPO to give certain groups, particularly indigenous groups, control over traditional culture, and of the dangers inherent in such an approach. I am publishing here the transcript of a BBC Radio 4 Analysis programme that I wrote and presented in 2004 which explored the issue of ‘Who owns culture?’. You can listen to an audio of the programme, too. ‘Who owns culture?’, Analysis, BBC Radio 4, 29 July […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: anthropology, british museum, broadcasts, cultural ownership, cultural policy, cultural repatriation, culture, human remains, indigenous culture, museum of london, museums, neil Macgregor, unesco