Guess where this is?
posted by The Other Front at 7:43 AM
August 09, 2013
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4 Comments:
This reminds me of an interesting story.
Are you absolutely sure of the soruce of the photo (is this your own?), and if so of the antiquity of the house and poles? There are extremely specific forms parallel to the Southern Part of the NW Coast- Vancouver Island, Bella Coola, Kwakwakiwak, rather than Tlingit, Haida or Tshimshan.
The situation is exactly parallel to rapidly disappearing Ainu people on Hokaido. Their art has remarkable parallels with SE Alaska First Peoples, but not, I don't believe the poles. This is interesting enough that if it's not mentioned academically, I know who to contact.
I took the picture when I was there last week.
One possible explanation - these tribes have been under tremendous cultural pressure for over 100 years: Japanese from 1895-1945, encroachment of Chinese culture since then.
It's possible so much has been lost that there's been some "borrowing" to fill in the gaps of lost cultural memory.
So it's definitely there, but I just don't know how authentic it is, or can be.
Yeah - more on this here:
Objects may have been initially borrowed from other cultures but later adapted by Taiwan aborigines. As traditions have largely disappeared, two turning dates can be identified that help evaluate authenticity. The first of these is the departure of the Japanese from Taiwan in 1945. It is not that what was made after 1945 is inauthentic, but these objects have to be considered with the utmost caution. The second date is the beginning of the 1970s, a turning point in aboriginal life as the last roads linking the most remote villages were opened. That's the time when the last authentic objects came down from the mountains.
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