On the occasion of the publication of Dr Ok-Kyung Pak’s The Jamnyo of Jeju, The Womend Divers of Korea and Neo-Confucianism, a Dual Mythology, a large number of activities have been organised.

PARIS, MUSÉE CERNUSCHI, 2 October 2018

Dr Ok-Kyung Pak gave a lecture at the Musée Cernuschi in Paris on 2 October 2018.

GENEVA, THÉÂTRE LES SALONS, 8 October 2018

On 8 October 2018, at the Théâtre les Salons in Geneva, a round table discussion moderated by the journalist and sailor Catherine Chabaud brought together numerous specialists such as the anthropologist Ok-Kyung Pak, the researchers Pascale-Marie Milan, author of The Na of Lijiazuiand Guigone Camus, author of Tabiteuea Kiribati, both published by the Musée Barbier-Mueller Cultural Foundation, the freediver Aurore Asso and the filmmaker Roselyne Segalen, who directed the film on the jamnyo women divers screened during the evening.

The participants spoke about jamnyoculture while addressing the themes of ocean pollution, freediving and matrilineage, which are all closely linked to it.

Haenyo(jamnyo) women freedive every day, risking their lives to fish and support their families. They have great economic power, live under the matrifocal system (transmission from mother to daughter) and respect nature by practising a circular economy. They preserve shamanic traditions and practice symbolic rituals in favour of goddesses to ensure their protection.

Dangerous freediving and pollution of the seabed are threatening both the livelihood and culture of the haenyo(jamnyo). Girls who are now in school no longer want such a difficult and dangerous life.

GENEVA, MUSÉE BARBIER-MUELLER, 9 October 2018

Dr Ok-Kyung Pak presented her research and publication to the Amis du Musée Barbier-Mueller, at the museum on 9 October 2018.

GENEVA, QUAI GUSTAVE-ADOR, 12-31 October 2018

Thirty pictures of women jamnyodivers taken by the renowned Korean photographer Hyung Sun Kim were exhibited outdoors on huge panels along the Quai Gustave-Ador in Geneva from 12 to 31 October 2018. Born in 1965, Hyung Sun Kim is a graduate of the Seoul Institute of the Arts and has show his work in various cultural institutions around the world. He has captured, in his words, “the extreme duality of women: their extreme strength combined with their human fragility. They are presented as they are, tired and out of breath. But they show mental and physical strength beyond limits, crossing the line between life and death every day.”

Inspired by a tale told by the jamnyo women divers of the island of Jeju, Korea, to Ok-Kyung Pak, adapted for children by Pascal Montjovent and Pascal Conicella, illustrated by Helder Da Silva

The daughter of a jamnyo diver, Bada sees her mother disappear into the ocean every morning and bring back wonderful brightly coloured shells to feed her and her family. Then one day, the little girl decides to dive like her mother. She sees a shell at the bottom of the water that is brighter than the others and tries to get close to it but runs out of breath.

For children from 6 to 10. 44 pages.

French edition only.

An educational part presents the jamnyo women divers of the island of Jeju, strong women holding a key position in families and society in Jeju.

The Series

Lola is a young explorer. She never misses an opportunity to go in search of mysterious events happening in remote regions of our beautiful planet. After each of her experiences, she comes back to tell us about her discoveries.

To be published in the same series:

• Sona Lamu, petite fille intrépide du lac Lugu. Among the Na of Lijiazui in China
• Bouéré et les monstres de la forêt. Among the Yaure of Central Côte d’Ivoire

On the publication of the foundation’s book on the island of Tabiteuea – a victim of global warming – which highlights the worrying reality of cultures threatened with extinction, a round table led by journalist and writer Patrick Poivre d’Arvor was organised to present the foundation’s activities in the Théâtre Lévi-Strauss of the Musée Quai Branly.

Five researchers presented their fieldwork among the Na of Lijiazui, China, the Jiye of South Sudan, the Altaians of Siberia, and the Bati of the Molucca Islands, Indonesia, as well as in Tabiteuea, Kiribati Islands. After the debate, Morad Aït-Habbouche’s film SOS Kiribati was screened to raise awareness of the problems linked to climate change. The round table was the opportunity to bring together the members of the foundation’s council and scientific committee, who came from all over the world. Erik Orsenna and Yann Arthus-Bertrand were among those attending.

He was surrounded by the seven members of the foundation’s governing body and the fifteen members of its scientific committee, who had just been appointed.

He said: “The foundation’s anthropologists will have the task of studying the culture of hitherto-neglected populations that are in danger of disappearing. The aim is to collect their oral traditions, memories, myths and ancestral stories before it is too late. This approach aims to ensure that nothing that is the work of humanity is lost”.

A professional code of ethics prohibits investigators from acquiring or receiving artefacts from the populations studied.

Through the adventures of its blue-haired heroine, the young goddess Tarara, the tale reveals aspects of the culture and mythology of the inhabitants of the Republic of Kiribati (formerly the Gilbert Islands) in Micronesia. Illustrated with relevance and poetry, it encourages readers young and old to question the devastating effects of global warming that is condemning the world of Tarara and thus the Kiribati people as it struggles to preserve its identity.

This tale was inspired by the disappearing oral traditions of the Kiribati people, which have been collected and scientifically studied by the anthropologist Guigone Camus. Her research was published by the Barbier-Mueller Museum Cultural Foundation in 2014.

Author: Jean-Marie Hosatteaka Abaddan, is a journalist, writer and photographer. After having made numerous documentaries and reports for various French television programmes, he has devoted himself mainly to the written press. He worked for Le Point, Charlie Hebdo and Paris Match before moving to Jerusalem. For the past twenty years, Hosatte has criss-crossed the African continent, from Sudan to Gabon and from Egypt to South Africa.

Illustrator: Helder Da Silva is a graduate of the École des Arts Décoratifs in Geneva. He initially designed watch prototypes. Today, his freelance work includes graphic design, illustration, design, photography and cartography. For many years he has collaborated with the Barbier-Mueller Museum and Cultural Foundation, for which he has also carried out photographic fieldwork. Helder Da Silva devotes his free time to painting; to preserve the memories of his travels in Africa, Asia and South America, he produces illustrated notebooks

French edition only.

First in a series Tooksipa et le tabouret d’or is an ethno-tale based on the oral traditions of the Gan people of Burkina Faso, which are threatened with extinction. These traditions along with the mythology and the political, social and religious organization of the Gan people have been studied by the anthropologist Daniela Bognolo whose survey was published by the Fondation culturelle Musée Barbier-Mueller in 2010. Let us remind you that the Foundation aims at backing financially the anthropological surveys of little-known peoples in the world. The publications of these surveys bear witness to the believes, traditions and lifestyles of communities which are fast disappearing due to social and economic developments as well as climate changes.

Abaddan, the ethno-tale’s author, drew his inspiration from the survey carried out by Dr Daniela Bognolo to tell the story of Tooksipa, a boy who is grappling with some aspects of his community traditions to become an adult.
The expressive drawings by Helder Da Silva liven up the tale shrouding some of its parts in a dramatic atmosphere and others in a cheerful one, never departing from a benevolent touch denoting a deep understanding of the Gan culture.

The nature of the tale gave the author the freedom to distance himself from the scientific survey and tackle a major problem in Africa: the persecution of albinos. Unfortunately albinos in many African countries are killed due to superstition or ignorance about the skin condition that is caused by a complete lack of pigmentation. Albinos are considered as special targets for “magical” rituals.

This ethno-tale is not only a fun read but also an educative tool which encourages children and adults to be interested in other cultures and to share human and universal values.

Together with

In the cold mountains of Sichuan (Liangshan) in China, about fifty kilometres from the Lugu Lake region subjected to the glare of the media, the author conducted an up-close ethnographic study of the Na. More than two years of fieldwork allowed her privileged access to the underside of the social fabric.

Her immersion in the ordinary life of the Na and her participation in various everyday activities allowed her to shed the anthropological exoticism in which explanations of the group are generally couched. Songs, dances, myths, rites, and mutual aid and exchange all provide windows on to the emotional tenor and logic of the Na system of thought. They make possible an assessment of contextualized practices, based on the justifications the villagers give from within their historical, economic, political and ideological constraints.

PRESENTATION OF THE NA BY PASCALE-MARIE MILAN, THE AUTHOR’S BOOK

The Na live in territories in the foothills of the Himalayas, on the border of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces: Lugu Lake, the Yongning plain, the Liangshan mountains and the county of Ninglang. They are better known today by the name “Mosuo”, despite constituting a disparate group with respect to the semantic divisions of the historical ethnonyms (Nazé, Nari, Nahing, Naru). [1] Widely discussed by anthropologists because of their matrilineal kinship system and their matrilocal residence, they appear to be a special case in the ethnological landscape, since they do not marry and practice a type of free sexual union, called Séssé. [2] Their social organization into a matriclan confers on the Mosuo certain particularities no longer found among the neighbouring Naxi of Lijiang, such as the transmission of property and filiation through the women.

Na girls wearing wool-and-bead head coverings made by their elders. Photo Pascale-Marie Milan, 2013.

The Na in the literature
The history of the Na dates back to the most remote times of imperial China, via a long written tradition recorded in the Chinese administrative annals. Among other things, we know that the regions populated by the Na resulted from a migration of the Qinghai plateaux. Some say that the Na are mentioned for the first time in the annals under the Eastern Han Dynasty (Dong Han, 25–220), in narratives relating the superiority of the women and the matrilineal system in the region. [3] Others say that the first writings date to 225, with the appearance in the Chinese annals of the ethnonym Mo-sha to refer to the inhabitants of the Yanyuan region.[4] Traces of this people are also found under the Tang Dynasty (618–907). [5]. A few sources written by explorers or missionaries satirize them. [6] But the systematic study of the Na began only with the launch of a classification project in 1956, whose aim was to control minorities. For a long time, however, they had escaped the historical administrative control of imperial China, [7] because they lived in craggy and largely inaccessible territories. [8] Despite these sources, the history of the Na as they themselves experienced it is still veiled in obscurity, since there are no endogenous written sources. The Na are in fact a people without writing, whose oral history was transmitted for centuries through myth and song.
Considered a “primitive”, “uncivilized” and “exotic” population by the Chinese, they were granted the status of minzu, being officially categorized as Naxi in 1958, during the ethnic classification project.

Séssé

The majority of the Na practice Séssé, in which men visit nonconsanguineous women at night. A furtive activity, the Séssé for those who engage in it is a modality of noncontractual, nonobligatory and nonexclusive sexual life9] that belongs to the Na matrilineal kinship system, so much so that it anticipates both the principle and the foundation of the cultural values that give meaning to the life of the Mosuo. [10]. It is a historically dominant mode of identification “practised by all the Na”. [11]

The region of Lugu Lake, very exposed following the spectacular rise of tourism there, [12] is the principal focus of research on the group. Yet the Na are geographically dispersed. They also populate the Sichuan region of the Liangshan mountains, especially the Muli Autonomous Tibetan County in the hinterland of Lugu Lake. These Na, dispersed in mountain villages (the village of Lijiazui, for example, where I conducted my research), are officially categorized as Mongols. The Nazé of Lijiazui attribute various images to themselves. They claim, for example, to be the possessors of a certain “tradition”, unlike their Lugu Lake neighbours, who now call themselves Mosuo. Their rich oral literature is in danger of being lost, as a result of an ever-increasing Sinicization. Having become a minority in the region over the course of time, they face various pressures (economic, political, ecological and so on) resulting from different interactions and social reconfigurations.

Séssé, a historical practice and the nexus of Na society, [13] still remains at the root of what allows the Nazé to constitute a society and to define itself as a unique ethnic group. The practice is explained in a range of myths and songs that are being forgotten, given the strong tendency toward Sinicization and the Chinese state’s efforts to rewrite these works, which are sometimes judged indecent. [14] In view of that threat, it was urgent to collect this corpus through audiovisual media (recordings, videos, and so forth). It was also necessary to document and analyze the practice through observation, interviews, and photographs, but without engaging in the typical idealized caricature, as has occurred at Lugu Lake, where the tourist industry has largely used it to ensure local colour.

This practice is accompanied by rites of passage that needed to be brought to light, contextualized and situated. For example, the transition to adulthood, the birth of children and the end of sexual life are all markers in the lives of the Nazé of Guabieka. They have been documented and analyzed, inasmuch as they belong to social and symbolic life and allow for the ethnography of local customs.

Na children and their aunt. Photo Pascale-Marie Milan, 2013.

Aim of the study
The aim of this study, then, is to provide further data about the Na living out of the media spotlight of the Lugu Lake region, through the use of a preexisting body of literature centered primarily on the Na/Mosuo of Lugu Lake, in line with the anthropological studies of Eileen Walsh, Cai Hua, Chuan-Kang Shih and Christine Mathieu. Its purpose is to gain an understanding of the local interactions and structures that maintain the Nazé social fabric in a lasting manner.

NOTES

[1] These divisions are a result of the richness of the oral Na language (Michaud 2008).
[2] Cai 1997, Shih 2000, 2001, 2010.
[3] Cai 1997, p. 14. 14.
[4] Yanyuan is a town located east of Lugu Lake in Sichuan Province, in the heart of the Liangshan mountains, where Stevan Harrell conducted a number of studies. Mathieu 2003, p. xxi.
[5] McKhann 1995, p. 48; Shih 2010, p. 23. 23.
[6] Cordier 1908; Rock 1947.
[7] This statement needs to be put in perspective, given the complex relations between Naxi and Mosuo. Nevertheless, it seems that the Mosuo were less inclined toward Sinicization because of the inaccessibility of the Lugu Lake region, which even today is marked by climatic constraints (landslides, snow).
[8] Cai 1997, pp. 51-52; Mathieu 2003, p. 2. 2.
[9] Shih 2000, p. 697. 697.
[10] Shih, 2000, p. 701. 701.
[11] Cai Hua 1997, p. 143. 143.
[12] Walsh 2005.
[13] Shih 2000, p. 701. 701.
[14] Trebinjac 2008.

The book on the Gan, a population located in the south-west region of Burkina Faso, guides us through the history of that small kingdom, where the relationship to the sacred took root with its founding near the end of the sixteenth century. For the Gan, every form of power is legitimized by its relation to a traditional and official state system of cults dedicated to a pantheon of supernatural entities, associated in particular with the spirits of the dead who held princely rank during their lives. The cult objects and symbols identifying these entities – spectacular animal figurations in bronze – turn out to play a determining role in the procedures for relating the present to the past, to the point of constituting formidable “objects of memory”. Alongside their mediating function and powerful representativeness, they are key material signs for reconstituting the history and symbolics of this kingdom from the standpoint of the oral tradition.

Showing that ethnohistory and the anthropology of art can complement each other, this richly documented essay presents the historical and organizational foundations of the Gan monarchy through the symbolics and aesthetics of the major cult objects that make it unique and that contribute toward memorializing and transmitting its past and its modes of thought and action.

Mercredi 10 novembre à 12h30 au musée Barbier-Mueller