Transcription
Hello everyone. I'm Tommy Iso from Kwan AC Cultural Center, and I will be talking about the Choir Archive Project. Um, which has been going for a long time. But first, I would like to acknowledge our ancestors, past, present, and future, for the amount of work that has been contributed to this project.
But before I could talk about our current project, um, I would like to invite Dr. David Aiken, who is my colleague. He will, um, briefly talk to us about the history of this Choir Archive before I can continue on the project, our current project, and the future, and some of the challenges that we face. Thank you.
David Aiken: Thanks, Tommy. As Tommy said, I'm just going to give you a brief background so you can know what this Choir Archive Project came out of. It's actually part of what's a 40, now 43-year project in Choir. Um, it started in 1979 when people in the mountains of East Choir initiated the Solomon's first community-run cultural center, called the Kwayo Cultural Center at Nganinasuru, behind Sinalongu Harbour. And the project includes schools and a women's club and an arts project and many other things. But most relevant to us here is that it began a community-run archive of written and audio materials. The latter materials included things that were collected from knowledgeable men and women, really anyone who wanted to contribute, including oral histories, ancestral myths, genealogies, musical performances. A key center goal was to strengthen Choir custom, both in the sense of preserving enduring Choir ways, but also in the political sense of strengthening, um, biocultural, economic, and political autonomy, which was a major concern of people who were behind the center. The archival work was closely tied to the choir schools, which were at the center of the project, because audio recordings collected for the archive were transcribed and then used to make school books, which allowed the community to take part in the educational project, which people really liked. Unfortunately, in 1986, the center was destroyed by Cyclone Namu. But copies of the archived material were preserved. And yet, because of political conflicts, the cultural center never really reopened in Animosuru. Even though center schools kept operating further into the mountains.
Um, to jump over a long story, in 1995, I started discussions with Choir people about re-establishing the Choir Archive to hold not just the previous archive, but also most of the field materials of anthropologist Roger Keesing and myself, which represents over 12 years of fieldwork. And also, there were large collections of archival photographs and documents that I'd collected, writings about the Solomons. So really, this is material collected over across 60 years by Keesing and myself, mostly. Um, I'd been discussing this project and the possibility of re-establishing the archive with older Choir people for a long time. But at this point, there were now a lot more young men and women who are interested, which changed the dynamic of making it happen. There was this huge obstacle, and that there was no place to put everything. In the Choir mountains, the mountain environment is, for those of you who work in Melanesia, as you know, is unkind to paper. There were no permanent buildings. And after, but after several years and several meetings, the community determined to build an archive building, and they built it at Koinasi, which is a regional meeting center in the central bush. And the key thing that had changed to make this happen, to make this possible, was that there were now alternative energy sources available in Solomon's. They were just starting to become available, and they offered solutions to these big problems of how to get materials to Choir and how to preserve them once they were there.
Um, long story short, the new Choir Archive finally opened, formally opened at Koinasi in 2016, and it's fully digital. It's wind and solar powered. Um, there's now, there are now about a quarter million files in the archive, and it's still growing. One of the great things is, one reason is that it's growing is because Choir people are collecting materials for it, including a lot of photographic and video files. We've also been working with the Chu'un Archive from Melanesian Studies at the University of California in San Diego. They're nurturing a long-term relationship we have with them, and, uh, their archivist, Christela Garcia Spitz, will talk about that cooperative work in more detail tomorrow in the sort of a second part of the talk about the Choir Archive. So with that, Tommy, I think I'll pass it back to you to take up where I left off.
Tommy Iso: Thanks, David. I will continue from there, but I will, um, use a PowerPoint just to, um, give you some photos while I am talking about what we are currently doing, just taking on from David.
[Music]
I am involved with this project since 2014, with a realization for the need of this important work to continue because there is a need to preserve and maintain Choir knowledge and the environment. And so we, we kind of, um, shift a little bit on by collecting, um, like historical, um, information. But we also wanna, um, record some information about plants and animals and how people live and their connection with their environment. And more importantly, we know that the traditional knowledge is disappearing due to changes of education in the way of life. And many Choir people have a lot of knowledge about custom medicine from the forest. And the Choir Archive Project is collecting historical and cultural records across many research that can be used by Choir people. And so we realized that this is, this is a very, a great place to start and expand on the work. And so in 2014-2016, we were able to do a small project, which is documenting indigenous plants and the knowledge to strengthen conservation management in Choir. Soul knowledge. So the project basically is to build capacity on how to preserve and photograph and press plant specimens, and also archive in, in Koinasi Cultural Center, a company with the Choir Archive Project. And so we had some support from the CPF, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and also James Cook Uni, and the Australian Tropical Herbarium also supported us with providing training of how to do photography and plant specimen. And so this has attracted some institutions, and we also expanded our network and collaboration.
And so in 2016 to 2019, we start working with the Australian Museum and also James Cook University to continue with the work on the Marmal Project. And so we did some work around conservation work, mainly documenting plants and animals around our areas, how they link with the environment, and how it is special for us to preserve those animals because they are rare, which we don't know about it. And so this involves work around Marmal surveys, bird, snails, and insect and frog surveys. There are other works that, um, that involve mapping reforestation because we see that these are very important work that is really important to the environment that we should be doing. And so it also in 2020 until now, we are continuing on this important work, um, especially supporting the community development and also working directly with the tribe on this project.
So some of the outcomes that we achieved during our work, we had some cultural exchange program. We visited, um, Australian Museum and we visited their archive in, in Sydney, and it was an eye-opener to us to see how this, um, important work about archiving and museum that we, we really wanted to do in the future. We also established four conservation areas in the mountains. And currently, we have established three cultural schools where they teach basic English and writing, and also Choir language. Um, and also we had some training from David Aiken in, um, on computer training in 2017 and 18. And not only that, but, um, with our current what we have, we were able to establish some local, national, and international collaboration network with, with other institutions. Um, we have also published four papers on conservation on international journals. And now we have established the Bar Conservation Alliance as a body that coordinates and manages most of their conservation work on the ground.
And the wonderful news, um, about all of this work is that all the data collected from all our work will be archived and maintained, maintained in the Choir Archive, and it's expanding now and then. However, there is much to be happy about and proud of here, but we're still facing significant challenges at a logistic, technical level. Although it is easier to protect few laptops, computers than thousands of paper files, the tropical environment is hard on computers, and they must be replaced on a fairly basis. This is expensive. Also, there is also no internet up at the mountain, and we cannot afford a satellite dish. We hope we will change before too late, which we saw, which will solve many logistical problems. Though many, uh, the other challenge that we face is the many files in the archive in the Choir language, and the audio and visual materials are accessible by all. Many thousands of our files, particularly archival files, are in English, and few people in the mountains can read. We need to better establish enduring relationships with institutions like the Chu'un Archive to continue with the work that we are doing right now. Our connection abroad depends too much on personal relationships. What will happen to our project if the individuals depend on the United States or Australia, all leaders most involved within Choir are no longer around? And so therefore, building more institutional continuity is very crucial. As the collection, um, grows, it becomes clearer that we badly need to find training for Choir people in skills needed to better organize and catalog the archive and sustain it.
The other, the other challenge is the Choir community is diverse. And there are revolutions between coastal Christian and non-Christian mountain people. Also, it is, it is all too easy for any project to be pulled into central despite best efforts. These are factions on the coastal Choir community and a few in the mountains who oppose, um, the Choir Archive Project in principle, and some have done their best to undermine it. On this, so on this score, things are improving slowly. We have established sections of the archive devoted to each of the different chatters in Choir, and many people on all sides are coming to accept and admire the project. But we have a long way to go before everyone comes to see it as something for everyone's benefit, and easily, and especially for every child. Sets political challenges to projects are not, of course, unique to Choir.
And so moving on from there, um, what we want to continue to do is we wanted to expand on documentation and trainings. We want to do more awareness programs about the archive work and its significance. We wanna also wanted to encourage more collaboration with other institutions, like, as I've said, we need to better establish enduring relationships with institutions like the Chu'un Archive. And one of our, our designer goal is to build a good infrastructure and a Choir museum that we can keep all of the archival material and also our art and craft, that our work can be expanding.
Thank you very much. Um, if you have any questions or if you want to know more information about the Choir Archive work, feel free to contact myself on the email or David Aiken for any questions, or if you want to know more about our project, Baolebaiter. And thank you very much.