Story by David Akin, University of Michigan
Two members of the Atoifi Health Research Group have returned to Kwaio from a month-long trip to the United States and Australia. Chiefs Jackson Waneagea and Esau Kekeubata, who work with the Biodiversity Conservation Project, and other initiatives based at Atoifi Hospital, arrived on 30 January in San Diego, California, where they visited the Tuzin Archive for Melanesian Anthropology at the University of California’s Geisel Library. Hosted by Katherine Creely, who oversees the Archive, they examined archived materials collected by anthropologist Roger Keesing, who studied Kwaio from 1962–1993. Copies of many of his papers, provided by the Tuzin Archive, are now held also by the Kwaio Archive, located at Kwainaa`isi in the Kwaio mountains. Another highlight of this leg of their trip was a visit to the world famous San Diego Zoo.
From San Diego, Waneagea and Esau traveled by car with Creely and David Akin to Santa Fe, New Mexico via the Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, Wupatki National Monument (site of several pueblo ruins over 900 years old), Petrified Forest National Park, the Painted Desert, and the Grand Canyon. A Park Ranger who tracks nationalities of park visitors told Waneagea and Esau that to his knowledge they were the first Solomon Islanders ever to visit the Grand Canyon.
In Santa Fe they attended the Annual Meeting of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania (http://www.asao.org/) where they took part in the special session “Second Lives: Archiving Anthropological Field Materials” organized by Creely and Akin. Esau spoke to the group about the Kwaio Archive project and its importance for the Kwaio community, and expressed thanks for support it has received from Creely and the Tuzin Archive, and for the work of archivists generally. ASAO’s Pacific Islands Scholars Fund helped fund their travel to the conference. Anthropologist Christine Jourdan, long a friend of the Kwaio community, also helped, and while in Santa Fe she worked with Esau and Waneagea on documenting Malaitan marriage practices.
From Santa Fe they flew to Ann Arbor, Michigan to spend two weeks with Akin and his wife Terre Fisher. There they delivered two lectures to University of Michigan anthropology students—about shell money, and Kwaio marriage—and a third lecture at the UM Medical School about health research projects and practices at Atoifi Hospital. They also visited the UM School of Music Library with ethnomusicologist Kelly Askew and information technology specialist Tom Bray to see how the library has cataloged the newly acquired Sarkisian Collection of African Music, to get ideas for managing the Kwaio Archive’s musical holdings. Later they visited the exhibit “Medicinal Plants and Gardens” at the UM Museum of Art, and also the UM Matthaei Botanical Gardens, which provided a warm respite, since, during their stay in Ann Arbor, Waneagea and Esau enjoyed the second-coldest February in southeastern Michigan since 1875.
Tufala traveled home via Cairns, where they worked with research partners in the Tropical Herbarium at James Cook University and met with Atoifi Health Research group colleagues to plan the Inaugural Health Research Symposium (12 March 2015).
Photo (L-R): Esau Kekeubata, Waneagea Jackson & David Akin visit the Grand Canyon (photo by Kathy Creely)
