Bøker av Stiftung Humboldt Forum

The Naga form a minority in Northeast India and the northwest of Myanmar - and consist at the same time of thirty different ethnicities: three to four million people, with numerous languages. How do they manage to preserve their traditional history and integrate into altered ways of life? How do fit that together with modern tattoos, fashion, and social media? What role does Christianity play? Authors among others from Naga Land describe various facets of their contemporary and current culture and make the Naga collection of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin appear in a new light, supplemented with contemporary objects. The artist Zubeni Lotha shows the life of the Naga today in impressive photographs.

Francis La Flesche (1857-1932) lived between two worlds: as an Umonhon (Omaha), he fought for their rights, and as a scholar he researched his own culture. He is regarded as the first indigenous ethnologist of North America and stands representatively for the many indigenous protagonists without whom ethnological collections would never have come into being. We are no longer familiar with most of these individuals, since the focus until today has been on European and North American collectors. Francis La Flesche is an exception: his work provides insights into indigenous agency and their resistance to racism and colonialism as well as their active participation in the trade with objects. The book presents La Flesche's records of the objects, the collection of which he contributed to what is today the Ethnological Museum in Berlin in 1894-an impressive testimony to his successful efforts to preserve the culture of the Omaha for future generations.