Reclaiming Culture Indigenous People and Self

Representation First Edition Joy Hendry download

https://ebookname.com/product/reclaiming-culture-indigenous-
people-and-self-representation-first-edition-joy-hendry/

Get Instant Ebook Downloads – Browse at https://ebookname.com

Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

Understanding the Self First Edition Eden Joy Pastor

Alata

https://ebookname.com/product/understanding-the-self-first-
edition-eden-joy-pastor-alata/

Reclaiming Representation Contemporary Advances in the

Theory of Political Representation 1st Edition Mónica
Brito Vieira (Editor)

https://ebookname.com/product/reclaiming-representation-
contemporary-advances-in-the-theory-of-political-
representation-1st-edition-monica-brito-vieira-editor/

Out Online Trans Self Representation and Community

Building on YouTube 1st Edition Tobias Raun

https://ebookname.com/product/out-online-trans-self-
representation-and-community-building-on-youtube-1st-edition-
tobias-raun/

Research in Economic History Volume 22 Volume 22 1st

Edition A.J. Field

https://ebookname.com/product/research-in-economic-history-
volume-22-volume-22-1st-edition-a-j-field/
Clinical Supervision Activities for Increasing
Competence and Self Awareness 1st Edition Roy A. Bean

https://ebookname.com/product/clinical-supervision-activities-
for-increasing-competence-and-self-awareness-1st-edition-roy-a-
bean/

NUTRITION FOCUSED PHYSICAL EXAM FOR ADULTS 2nd Edition

Unknown

https://ebookname.com/product/nutrition-focused-physical-exam-
for-adults-2nd-edition-unknown/

The Deepest Roots Finding Food and Community on a

Pacific Northwest Island Kathleen Alcalá

https://ebookname.com/product/the-deepest-roots-finding-food-and-
community-on-a-pacific-northwest-island-kathleen-alcala/

Languages Objects and the Transmission of Rituals 1st

Edition Sabina Crippa

https://ebookname.com/product/languages-objects-and-the-
transmission-of-rituals-1st-edition-sabina-crippa/

Statistical Methods And Calculation Skills 4th Edition

Edition Isabel Willemse

https://ebookname.com/product/statistical-methods-and-
calculation-skills-4th-edition-edition-isabel-willemse/
Protein Families Relating Protein Sequence Structure
and Function 1st Edition Christine Orengo

https://ebookname.com/product/protein-families-relating-protein-
sequence-structure-and-function-1st-edition-christine-orengo/
 Recl aiming Culture
reclaim’, v.t. & i, & n. Win back or away from vice or
error or savagery … civilize (COD until 1990)
This page intentionally left blank
Recl aiming Culture
Indigenous People
and
Self-Representation

Joy Hendry
RECLAIMING CULTURE
© Joy Hendry, 2005.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2005 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS
Companies and representatives throughout the world.
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom
and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European
Union and other countries.
ISBN 1–4039–7018–1
ISBN 1–4039–7071–8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hendry, Joy.
Reclaiming culture : indigenous people and self representation /
Joy Hendry.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1–4039–7018–1 (alk. paper)
ISBN 1–4039–7071–8 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Indigenous peoples—Ethnic identity. 2. Indigenous
peoples—Ecology. 3. Indigenous peoples—Education. 4. Racism in
museum exhibits. 5. Cultural property—Protection. 6. Cultural
property—Repatriation. 7. Culture and tourism. I. Title.
GN495.6.H46 2005
305.8—dc22 2005049182
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: October 2005
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
For Keith and Phyllis, with thanks
This page intentionally left blank
 Contents

List of Figures viii

Note on Spelling and Terminology ix
Prologue x

Introduction 1
1. Museums are Transformed 28
2. Aboriginal Tourism and that Elusive Authenticity 56
3. Indigenous or Alter-Native Forms of Cultural Display 81
4. Language and Formal Cultural Education 105
5. Arts, Architecture, and Native Creativity 131
6. Land Claims, Archaeology, and New Communities 156
7. International Links, Cultural Exchange, and
Personal Identity 178
8. Conclusions: What We Can Learn 200

Epilogue 218
Index 221
 List of Figures

(Photographs by Joy Hendry, except 1.1)

1.1 Model of Baldwyn Spencer in Bunjilaka
(reproduced courtesy of Museum Victoria,
photograph by John Broomfield). 39
1.2 Gus-wen-tah, the two-row wampum, in the
Woodland Cultural Centre. 41
1.3 Iroquoian ironworkers display at the
Woodland Cultural Centre. 42
2.1 Leonard George in the offices of
Historical Xperiences. 72
2.2 Greeting for visitors at the Maori Arts and
Crafts Institute. 73
2.3 Men’s Fancy dance at the Grand River
Powwow, Ohsweken, Ontario. 76
3.1 The Woodland Cultural Centre, formerly
the Mohawk Institute. 88
3.2 Keith Jamieson in the Library at the
Woodland Cultural Centre. 88
4.1 The First Nations University of Canada
building, Regina, Saskatchewan. 122
4.2 Students of the Aang Serian School
in Arusha, Tanzania. 124
4.3 Bernadette Wabie talks to a Grade 3 class. 126
5.1 The Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre,
Noumea, New Caledonia. 134
5.2 The Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre
in Dawson City, Yukon. 140
5.3 The Emily C. General School, Ohsweken, Ontario. 142
5.4 “The Great Tree” carving by Stan Hill. 154
6.1 Iqaluit cathedral, Nunavut Territory, Canada. 165
 Note on Spelling and
Terminology

I mulled for sometime over the question of whether to write

appellations such as Aboriginal, First Nations, Indigenous, and Native
with capital letters or not, and, indeed, how and when to use the
terms in this book. Some of the people who are referred to by such
terms find the very words unacceptable, others like a capital letter to
be used in reference to themselves. My own first inclination was not to
use capitals because the peoples I am describing are clearly all of these
things in their own contexts; indeed it is by defining them as such that
I chose my subject matter. The people I worked with all claim first sta-
tus in the lands where they live, and I respect their claims. However,
in the end, I decided for two reasons to use the capital letters. First,
because it seemed that it would be more offensive to people who like
their use not to use them than it would be to my sense of English
grammar to use them. Second, it provides a way of emphasizing the
shared context within which all the peoples I talk about exist. If, to
some people, the use of the terms themselves is offensive, then I apol-
ogize unreservedly. Part of the very movement I am describing is that
people around the world are regaining pride in their Aboriginal/
Native status, and I use the terms always in that context, rather than
in any derogatory sense they have acquired in the past.
Another concern was whether I should use capital letters for places
of spiritual importance, notably the “longhouse,” and I decided to
use the capital for its use in that context, but not when it describes a
place of residence (as in the past), or learning, as at the University of
British Columbia.
As for the spelling of tribal names, this is also difficult, because
sometimes several different conventions have been adopted. Here I
have as far as possible used the spelling preferred by the people with
whom I have worked.
 Prologue

Our Culture was not lost, only silenced for a while . . . but not
any more.
Nika Collison, Haida, “Communicating Who We Are”

In the summer of 1971, when traveling around Japan, I visited a place

in Hokkaido described as an Ainu village. It contained a couple of rows
of houses, built in a fashion that was said to be traditionally Ainu, and
a bear was tethered in the middle of the street. In some of these
houses, accoutrements of daily and ceremonial life had been arranged
for the visitor to examine, and in others, craftspeople were to be found
carving wooden bears, very often holding a salmon in their mouths.
Those working in the village were wearing garments that one assumed
to be Ainu, but when asked if they were actually Ainu people, they
shook their heads and explained that they were students from Tokyo
engaged in summer employment. One of them went on to tell me that
the Ainu people had died out, or become assimilated into mainstream
Japanese society, but that if I went with him I might meet the last
remaining Ainu man. The person in question was also carving, but he
was clearly very old, with a long white beard, and I felt privileged to
have met him, though deeply saddened by the situation he portrayed.
Some years later I attended an anthropological conference and
heard a middle-aged man, who described himself as Ainu, addressing
the audience. He was speaking in Japanese, the language of the assem-
bly, but to my astonishment, he spoke with a strange accent, almost
foreign-sounding. Could it be that this man’s first language had actu-
ally been Ainu, the language that was supposed to have died out with
its people? As I listened to his talk, I became aware that there were
other Ainu speakers remaining, and some had agreed to offer classes
and even to speak on the radio in a special early morning slot that
would not—he explained somewhat ruefully—interfere with the
regular Japanese language broadcasting. A move was clearly afoot to
revive at least the Ainu language.
My next ‘Ainu experience’ took place in England, when I was asked
to help entertain a group of Ainu dancers who were coming to Oxford
to perform. They knew little English, but it was assumed that they
 Prologue xi

would know Japanese, and indeed we were able to communicate quite

well. They had presented themselves as Ainu, so I asked them if they
also considered themselves to be Japanese. They answered without
hesitation, “We are the first Japanese.” There is a collection of Ainu
objects in the Pitt Rivers Museum, and I suggested that we make a
tour and see what was in the display. I was unprepared again, particu-
larly for their laughter, and I felt embarrassed to discover that an item
used by the Ainu in a sacred ceremony for the soul of a slaughtered
bear was displayed upside-down. I’m not sure how they felt about the
sometimes quite old and decrepit representations of their culture that
were on display, but at least I was able to arrange for the poor bear’s
skull to be set up the right way.
About ten years later, and over thirty years after my first visit, I
made another trip to Hokkaido. This time I encountered a splendid
culture center run entirely by Ainu people, including Masahiro Nomoto
whom I had inadvertently entertained in Oxford. There I observed
carefully produced representations of Ainu activities, past and present,
and I learned much about Japan’s “first peoples,” all against the back-
drop of the beautiful northern scenery that characterizes their home-
land. I also visited two well-stocked museums, one that had been put
together by the man I had heard talking at the conference, none other
than Shigeru Kayano, who has written some 80 books about his
people. I stayed in a hostelry run by an Ainu family, headed by a local
Ainu councillor, and I talked to a large number of other people who
were happy, once I had described my intentions to their satisfaction,
to talk about themselves and their situations as Ainu people.
What then has taken place during this 30-year period? How could a
people described by university students as virtually extinct be flourish-
ing again? Where were the people I met on my recent trip 30 years
ago? They were certainly not all descended from the one old man
I met. For one thing, he lived in a different, distant part of Hokkaido,
and in any case, many of them were well over thirty years of age. No,
these people have been there all along. Presumably, they have been Ainu
all along. How can it be, then, that university students, wearing Ainu
clothes and working in a village set up to represent an Ainu way of life,
were describing them as extinct? And what, mercifully, has changed?
This book is dedicated to answering questions such as these.

Reference
Collison, Nika, 2002, “Communicating Who We Are: The Qay’llnagaay
Heritage Centre Preliminary Content Development Report, Phase 1,”
Qay’llnagaay Heritage Centre Society.
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction

For the longest time I didn’t know what to say when someone asked
if I was “really Indian.”
Deborah Doxtator, “The Home of Indian Culture
and Other Stories”

T his book, and the study on which it is based, were inspired by the
transformation described in the Prologue. It is not specifically about
the Ainu people—there are Ainu working on their own representation
now, and there are growing sources of information in various media.
But the Ainu are not the only contemporary people who were almost
obliterated from the consciousness of the wider public, and I was fur-
ther guided into devising the project by the words of an Ainu woman
who sought to account for the growth in her people’s confidence. She
explained, with an expression of some content,

We discovered that there are other peoples in the world who had been
largely erased from their country’s memories. We are in touch with
each other now, and we are all learning to feel pride in our ancestry
again.

This book, which builds on several years of research, recounts a

whole range of exciting ways in which people in different parts of the
world are doing that learning. It focuses on the reclaiming of cultural
identity, and at the same time sets out to explain the importance to the
world at large of the movement they are engaged in. My intention
here is not to speak for these people. Like the Ainu, they are happily
there to put their various views for themselves. My job, as I see it, is to
create as fine and textured a picture as I can of the extraordinary diver-
sity that was almost obliterated, to demonstrate the breadth and depth
of its vibrancy, and to explain why this should matter in a world that
had almost forgotten that real people made the objects they admire in
2 Recl aiming Culture

museums. My book may also guide readers to visit for themselves

some of the many interesting new public outlets that have sprung up
around the world as part of this movement of resilience and renewal.
I also want to deal with the embarrassing question of how I and
many other members of the ‘educated’ world were duped into believ-
ing that whole groups of our fellow human beings had been wiped
out—perhaps even exterminated—or had at least completely lost their
cultural heritage. Political and economic explanations abound, and
readers in all kinds of circumstances will recognize local factors as they
crop up. A larger aim here is to uncover some of the less obvious fac-
tors, however, big global factors that have influenced the broad views
of the world that many of us learn, and some of us disseminate.
Despite opening the book in Japan, my initial context is actually the
amorphous, but almost ubiquitous ‘Western’ world. This is not only
because of the frightening power its members have exercised (and still
exercise) in appropriating any number of other people’s ideas, but also
because, perhaps paradoxically, I believe it is this same context that has
made possible the cultural renewal that I describe.
The book suggests that many of those involved in the ‘wiping’
actually had intentions that were quite benevolent. Often enough,
they believed they were preserving cultural heritage on behalf of the
people whom they thought had lost it. Museum curators, novelists,
filmmakers—ethnographers like myself—who became fascinated by
the cultural forms of other peoples, created splendid images of those
peoples that impressed our audiences. We believed (and some of us
still believe) that we were ‘educating’ those who consumed our work.
Indeed, those consumers who take their children to museums, who
make a point of keeping up with educational films, and who study
anthropology in university, undoubtedly think they are being edu-
cated. In practice, I am going to try and show how our very represen-
tations have been part of the imprisonment at a point in their past of
the people whose cultural features we were trying to ‘save’.
An important aim of the book, then, is to reverse the idea that
anthropologists, museum curators, and ethnographic filmmakers,
among others, work to ‘salvage the past’, or to record ‘disappearing
worlds’. Instead, our work on the understanding of diverse peoples,
with varying ideas and ways of thought, is a highly relevant contem-
porary issue. It is also vitally important if we are to prevent the world
of knowledge from being swamped by another branch of the same
aggressive Western hegemony that presently threatens the economic
and ecological makeup of our globe. The diversity we work with is far
from disappearing; it continues, and it grows, and it is more complex
 Introduction 3

than scholars in many other disciplines have ever realized. Numerous

peoples who had been relegated to the past are alive, quite well, and
fostering individuals who speak forcibly for themselves. It could be
the anthropologists, curators, and ethnographic filmmakers who are
threatened now, but only if we keep excluding the people we work
with from our larger discourses.
For years social scientists in various disciplines predicted the disap-
pearance of cultural difference. They were sometimes called conver-
gence theorists. They expected that the spread of systems that their own
societies had invented would obliterate all other systems, and they
devised theory to bolster that view. They talked of ‘modernization’ as if
this were a phenomenon that would displace cultural and social variety
at the same time as spreading knowledge about technological achieve-
ments. They looked to philosophical ideas formed during a period in
eighteenth-century Europe, that became known as the Enlightenment,
literally to enlighten all people everywhere about the advantages of the
social systems they saw as superior. They tried to demonstrate the
rationality of the ‘sciences’ that were developed at the time to lead
others in their ‘progress’ toward that same ‘development’. A powerful
reinforcement came in the nineteenth century when ideas about
the evolution of societies toward the model they felt their own
exemplified were bolstered by biological ideas about the evolution of
all species of life.
Social scientists even reported this trend they had predicted, noting
the increasing similarity in commercial outlets throughout the world,
the spread of familiar brand names, and the seemingly unstoppable tide
of capitalist endeavor. They thought that people would become more
and more alike in their thinking, along with their consumerism, and
the first large body of material that became known as ‘globalization
theory’ put this case. It was followed by any number of other stud-
ies that emphasized instead examples of local difference, phenomena
sometimes described as ‘glocalization’, though some saw this as a
temporary matter too, perhaps again to be salvaged as the world
became more ‘Westernized’ or Americanized. Japan was often described
as a ‘late developer’, for example, when it seemed to hang on to clear
differences in ways of behaving despite astonishing technological
accomplishments (Dore 1973). Others responded to the inaccuracy
clearly evident in their first sociological predictions by devising whole
new bodies of theory they called ‘postmodern’, which included some-
thing they described as ‘fragmentation’.
This book documents a totally conflicting movement, already
well recognized by Indigenous people in widely separate parts of the
4 Recl aiming Culture

world (see, e.g., Tuhiwai Smith 1999). These are the people who are
concerned with recording and displaying their cultural difference, not
as a salvage exercise, but as a blueprint for the future of their descen-
dants. They are people actively involved in dismissing and dismantling
the way they have been portrayed as extinct, or peoples of the past,
perhaps merely offering historical and archaeological color to the
nation that exhibits them. Instead, they are building constructions of
their own cultural identity as part of the ongoing education of their
children. This book portrays the results of some of their efforts, and
examines them in relation to past depictions. It explores the rationale
for, and the meaning of, these new displays, both for the contempo-
rary people involved, and for the wider public that has for too long
been misinformed about the rich diversity that our world has to offer.
It also tries to communicate some of the fascinating complexity that
has been sorely missing.
My use of the word ‘culture’ here is taken directly from the pre-
sentations that I have been looking at, in ‘culture centers’, for example,
and from the discourses about the need for its reclamation and its
healing power. There have been many discussions among social scien-
tists about this notion of ‘culture’, and one sociology textbook offers
five different definitions (Bocock 1992: 231–34), but the differences
outlined there largely express changes in its use in the European intel-
lectual context outlined above. In American anthropological debates,
the plethora of publications addressing the subject of ‘culture’ often
belittle its value to those who are reestablishing an identity for them-
selves by ‘reclaiming’ it, so although I plan to address these questions
elsewhere, I would like meanwhile to refer a reader wishing to gain an
insight into my own leanings to an excellent article by Marshall
Sahlins (1999).
The public places that form the first focus are precisely of the kind
described in the Prologue—museums, ‘villages’, culture centers, even
gardens—all manner of sites that offer the ‘display’ of peoples, their
‘artifacts’, and their various ‘cultural forms’. This kind of display is pri-
mary in defining the identity of a group, and as we have seen, it can in
fact do this whether the people themselves are there or not. The issue
is one of identification, and this book charts a strong demand by peo-
ple all over the world to identify themselves. It describes a range of
displays that have been modified to accommodate these demands,
demonstrates how it has become less and less acceptable for groups of
people to be entirely represented by others, and it discusses in detail
some of the problems that have arisen in places that tried to ignore
this trend. It then goes on to examine various ways in which people
 Introduction 5

have sought to represent their own existence, first to themselves, and

then to others with whom they interact.
An important part of the focus is on the power these displays can
confer—or remove. A recent manifestation of this truism is to be
found in the fashion for brand-design. No enterprise worth its salt
lacks an image these days, and this image, once designed, is displayed
mercilessly in building signs, name cards, notepaper headings, web
sites, T-shirts, and tiepins. Through this image, the public recognizes
the organization and can locate it and its outlets for all practical pur-
poses. Once an image is known, the use of it confers a tremendous
power of identification, and for this reason alone companies and
other organizations will pay huge sums to secure a professional job
(Matsunaga 2004). Indeed, a band of designers has sprung up and
grown rich simply responding to this realization. The misappropria-
tion of a design, on the other hand, is cause for legal action, and if
intentional reproduction can be proved, it spells big and expensive
trouble for the miscreant—if the owners of the design are deemed to
exist, and are in a position to make that claim, that is.
A case we consider again in chapter 1 illustrates just this point. It
concerns the way a museum in Canada chose and modified, for an
exhibition logo, a design that had been a sacred symbol for a particu-
lar Native people who still live in various parts of Canada. The original
was taken from an object carried home to Italy by an early-nineteenth-
century explorer, but returned to the museum in Canada—not to the
people—for an international exhibition, in 1988. Moreover, the
‘logo’ was modified to incorporate elements of design from other
Native peoples whose objects were to be displayed in the exhibition,
and its colors were altered, largely for marketing purposes (Phillips
1990: 17–18). The exhibition did cause trouble for the museum, as
we shall see, and the good news is that the trouble was eventually
instrumental in bringing about a greater cooperation and consultation
between museums and the peoples whose objects they display, but, as
far as I know, there was no identified group to sue for the use of their
design.
Museums actually exemplify an older and more comprehensive
example of the power of cultural display in the way they formed a cru-
cial part of nation-building projects. States around the world have
invested enormous sums of money in the erection of imposing build-
ings and monuments, the designing of flags, stamps, and uniforms,
the composing of anthems, and in the building and stocking of splen-
did museums. Within these museums, displays generally illustrate
the geography and geology of the nation in question, demonstrate its
6 Recl aiming Culture

technological achievements, regale its monarchy and/or political

leaders, and recount its history. This last, notably in Europe, depicts
evidence of exploration and colonization around the world; in the
colonies that were founded—even though they may no longer be
colonies—it depicts tales of the arrival and settlement of the person-
ages of such heroic activity. They also usually boast triumph in
conquests during wars among neighbors, and include all manner of
other explanations and justifications for whatever the contemporary
national situation might be.
These national displays also usually include some depiction of the
cultural forms of the people who live in the country: their clothing,
their housing, their treasured possessions, their lifestyle, and their cus-
toms. In times of imperial expansion, it became a measure of power
and achievement to display evidence of the ‘other’ peoples a nation
had dominated, and European countries vied with one another to
build up collections of artifacts just as they vied with one another for
land to dominate. During the nineteenth century, they even also
began to bring back samples of the peoples and their ‘artifacts’ to dis-
play at the Great Exhibitions that were all the rage during the time of
early industrial and technological development. Japan was for a while
among the exotic peoples displayed, but the Japanese worked hard in
various ways to create a status comparable with that of the great
European powers. In 1910, as part of this process, they brought to
the Great Britain–Japan Exhibition in London a group of Ainu people
to put on display (Hendry 2000, Street 1992).
I have previously used the concept of ‘wrapping’ to define all these
elements of cultural form. The notion came from Japan, where the
wrapping of gifts is a highly elaborate art form, but the principles
work quite well everywhere. ‘Bodily wrapping’ may refer to clothes,
jewelry, make-up, tattoos, ‘piercing’, and other decorations, for exam-
ple, and buildings, monuments, museums, and all manner of interior
décor may be described as the ‘wrapping of space’. Formations of
human beings, for example in a parade, a dance, or even organized
office seating, may be described as ‘people wrapping people’, and the
way they organize the proceedings, the movements, or their meetings
may be described as the wrapping of time. Languages devise ways of
communicating that wrap messages in elaborations according to the
occasion and the people involved, and they may invoke material sym-
bolism as well as words and grammar. Indeed, in Japan, the wrapping
of gifts is an important part of this communication, and in unwritten
languages all manner of mnemonic devices have been used to prompt
oral transmission through generations.
 Introduction 7

I also argued that the display of these forms of wrapping exhibits

their power. Buildings are an obvious example, and no state, province,
town, or city lacks a government building to impress its citizens. Most
have many more, to show off the establishments that are important to
them and their founding history. Most states also organize parades
from time to time to illustrate the particular hierarchies they adminis-
ter, suitably attired in appropriate garments and adorned with hats,
badges, and regalia of office and achievement. At the same time, a sig-
nificant part of the retinue may include all manner of weapons and
machinery to demonstrate their readiness to defend the system they
have created. The Great Exhibitions, and the World Fairs that fol-
lowed in America and other parts of the ‘New World’, were excellent
venues for the temporary display of the trappings and wrappings of
power, and the national pavilions that were constructed became
mobile versions of the museums being built back in the homelands.
The display of peoples and/or their forms of cultural wrapping
grew alongside the ideas of social evolution that allowed imperial
powers, and their offspring such as the United States, to justify
extraordinary interference in the lives of the Natives of the countries
where they settled. The ‘scientific’ explanation of their evolutionary
superiority was used as part of the displays, sometimes even as a way
of ordering particular peoples at various stages of so-called development.
These ideas were then used to rationalize government policies, again
supposedly benevolent, to ‘help’ the peoples that had been dominated
to ‘develop’. This posture underpinned all sorts of schemes to elimi-
nate the people’s own cultural practices, including their languages, as
we discuss in some detail in chapter 4. It also systematically destroyed
perfectly successful but ‘inferior’ ways of making a living off the land,
which governments then appropriated and reallocated for supposedly
‘superior’ practices of which the peoples had no knowledge or experi-
ence. To this day, members of many succeeding governments and the
societies they govern wonder why their Native people are so poor and
demoralized.
More subtly, individuals operating within their big material mani-
festations of power learn to manipulate linguistic and other smaller
symbolic forms of wrapping in dealing with each other, and in nego-
tiating with representatives of other systems with whom they may
engage—for trade, for example, and for alliance and diplomacy. I
argued too that those most skilled at these arts are able to understand
different forms of wrapping, use them to their own advantage, and
neatly switch between them. In periods of worldly exploration, initial
encounters between people who did not share a spoken language made
8 Recl aiming Culture

much use of gifts and other material objects in their communication,

and subsequent negotiations included objects of the mnemonic kind
that had for long been used by nonliterate people as historical records.
How much shared understanding ensued at the time is a subject for
historians, but objects such as these form another important focus in
this book, for some of them became valued parts of museum collections
and are now sought for return by their original owners.
The fate of these objects provides one example of what happens
when peoples have important parts of their cultural wrapping appro-
priated by another group. In the ensuing chapters, we consider many
others. In an obvious way, this is what happens when nations go to war.
They destroy each other’s buildings, occupy each other’s land, and
take over the lives of ordinary citizens living in the war zone. Much less
obvious, but perhaps even more insidious, is what happens when peo-
ple ‘explored’, ‘discovered’, and claimed for themselves vast areas of
occupied land that they classified as ‘empty’ (terra nullis) because the
‘inferior’ people living there had very different ideas about their rela-
tionship with that land. The images the new nations built up as they
formed their museums and monuments included the cultural wrap-
pings of the people they had subsumed into their new territories, and
on whom they practiced policies of assimilation. They also sent home
examples of the ‘wrappings’ of the culture of these peoples as evidence
to those back home of their powers around the world.
In this way, the cultural ‘wrapping’ or ‘clothing’ of colonized peoples
was disseminated throughout the world and within the new nations
that were formed around them. Stereotypical false images took root in
the minds of the wider public, and they were perpetuated over the
ensuing years. An exciting part of the process of cultural reclamation,
which we discuss in more detail in chapter 2, was an exhibition entitled
Fluffs and Feathers, which took on the task of examining just this sub-
ject. Held at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario, and
curated entirely by First Nations people, the exhibition displayed all
kinds of material manifestations of what the museum director
described as “these absurd and inaccurate impressions of our culture”
(Hill T.V. 1992: 6). It responded to “the dire need to educate the non-
Native public to the reality of the historical and contemporary culture
of our people and the pervasiveness of stereotypes” (ibid.) and invited
the “the quiet questioning of good people; people who will reject the
false and seek the true understanding of those neighbors who are of
the First Nations of this Continent” (Bedard 1992: 5).
This Woodland Cultural Centre is the place where I did my most
detailed research for this project and I chose it for several reasons. One
 Introduction 9

of these was the comprehensive way in which it covers most of the

aspects of cultural renewal that are discussed in this book, and mate-
rial I learned there appears in almost all the chapters. Another very
practical reason was the international reputation that this center has
built up, so that I heard of its work before I left my desk in England,
and applied for a grant specifically to spend time there. Probably the
most important reason, however, is the long experience it has had, for
its period of activity spans the whole 30 years covered in the transfor-
mation of the Ainu situation described in the preface, and reading the
documents pertaining to its work provides an excellent case history of
the practice of cultural renewal by a group of First Nations living in
the woodland region of the area of the world now known as Canada.
To get a more in-depth feel for the experience of Native people
who had been portrayed so falsely, I also spent several months staying
on the reserve of the Six Nations of the Grand River, home of the
Haudenosaunee people who took the side of the British in the
American revolution and thus ended up living on the Canadian side of
a border they still don’t fully recognize. The family that put me up
(for further details, see the acknowledgments in the next section)
included Keith Lickers, the man who wrote the original feasibility
study for the Woodland Cultural Centre, now an employee of the
Ontario Ministry of Education, and his wife, Phyllis, whose grown
children filled many important positions in the community and in
wider networks of First Nations people. It was a great opportunity to
get to know some of the real people who had been portrayed so
falsely, and to learn first hand how it feels to live in a community
where tourists stop while driving by to ask Native people washing
their cars, or mowing the grass in front of their houses, “where are the
Indians then?”
It was also in Canada, at EXPO 67, that an important reversal was
initiated in the way that peoples were portrayed at the magnificent
Exhibitions and World Fairs that have punctuated international trade
and cultural exchange since the mid-nineteenth century. In 1967, at
the ‘universal exhibition’ held in Montreal, nations from all over
the world, as had become customary, built pavilions to display their
wares and accomplishments. Canada, as host, had several of its own
pavilions, and agreed that First Nations people should put one
together too. They had still to choose that name—First Nations—but
the pavilion told the story of the peoples who were living on the site
of the exhibition when it was ‘discovered’ by Europeans in a most
poignant and powerful way. I happened to visit this pavilion, and I can
still recall some of images that were depicted there, so I was delighted
10 Recl aiming Culture

to meet, during this research, two of the individuals who had been
involved. One of them was Tom Hill, the museum director of the
Woodland Cultural Centre, quoted above, whose name will pop up
again in different chapters for he has spent his life working relentlessly
toward the reclamation of the culture of his and other First Nations.
The other was the Chef de Mission, Andrew de Lisle, and we meet
him in chapter 2.
The late 1960s was a turning point for many people in the new
world that was created by the children born after the devastation of
World War II, or the Pacific War as it is known by those who were not
involved in the war described, with the usual European bias, as World
War I. Students demonstrated almost simultaneously in capital cities
of at least three continents—notably in Paris, Mexico, and Tokyo—
and they were forcibly subdued. So, eventually, were the Native peo-
ple of America who occupied the island of Alcatraz, site of the former
prison in San Francisco Bay, and sought to claim back the country
they had lost. But the movement for change—and a new freedom—
was unstoppable, and it frames nicely the movement for cultural
renewal that I have chosen as the focus of this book.
This study tracks broadly some of the many things that have hap-
pened during the period of 30 years covered by the tale told in the
Prologue then. It seeks not only to explain how cultural forms were
imprisoned in the past, but what has now made it possible for a peo-
ple described by university students as virtually extinct to be flourish-
ing again. It tries to explain why people who may have tried to pass as
members of the wider public and deny their Native past have now
rekindled a pride in their ancestry. It is a complicated story, which has
been built up in many different parts of the world, and it unfolds
gradually throughout the chapters of the book, though details of the
actual sites of research may be found in the acknowledgments and
methodology section that follows this one. It is also in some ways the
story of what has become known as globalization, but from the point
of view of people who were at first swept away in the tracks of too
much theorization.
The theory here is quite simple. It proposes that before people can
engage in any kind of action—for example the legal action that might
be taken when a logo, or vast tracts of land, are stolen—they need to
have an identity. Only then can they go on to engage acceptably and
successfully in the political activities necessary to retrieve them. In
other words, the expression of cultural form, which defines a people,
or a ‘nation’, call it what you will, is an essential part of cultural revival
when people and their very existence as an entity has been presented
 Introduction 11

as eliminated, or at the very least under severe threat. Thus the culture
centers I describe are not found so readily in areas where people still
speak their own languages, live on land they regard as their own, and
go about lives close to the ones they learned from their ancestors,
whatever their allegiance with regard to nationhood.
It is rather in areas where First Peoples were subjected to programs
of deliberate assimilation, intentional or unintentional genocide, or
simply systematically represented to the world at large as having
become extinct—their lands being deemed terra nullis—that their
revival is required if they are to act as an entity. Only then, when they
have recreated an identity that can be named and recognized, can they
engage in political activities such as claims to their ancestral lands and
demands for a system of self-governance. These political activities are
well covered elsewhere and are not discussed in great detail here,
though some cases will be raised toward the end of the book,
where the interesting situation is considered of Aboriginal peoples
turning the tables on being represented, and instead employing non-
Aboriginal experts in various fields to help with their representation.
Chapters in the book also address deeper expressions of renewal such
as the revival of languages and cultural knowledge, the proliferation of
Aboriginal art and architecture as examples of tremendous Aboriginal
creativity, and the reclamation of ancestral remains and stolen regalia.
Many of the people I have been working with are having to revive
their languages and cultures because they and their parents and grand-
parents were told that their ways of speaking and of making a living
were ‘bad’, ‘backward’, even ‘demonic’, and that at the very least they
were hindering their ‘progress’ in the ‘developing’ world. Many of
these people were subjected to ‘assimilation programs’, punished
severely for speaking their own languages, and forced to attend
schools that undermined their self-confidence for generations to
come. Fortunately, these programs eventually failed, and quite a num-
ber of the First Peoples they were aimed at have survived to tell the
tale, and to work to renew their cultural wealth. This book retells their
story, and I argue at the end of the book that if enough of us take the
trouble to listen to them and their powerful messages, we might even
be able to rescue our world from some of the forces of physical
destruction that currently form a major threat to our globe.
The reasons that people were depicted as ‘dying out’, or even
extinct, are various, and they often reflect the wider plans of the gov-
ernments of countries where they are found. Even these were still
sometimes quite ‘benevolent’ in intention, but in many parts of the
world the effects have been devastating. In the end all those stories
12 Recl aiming Culture

could have been self-fulfilling, and there are those involved in their
telling, or the support of it, who were aware and encouraging of that
possibility. But something called ‘culture’ is a powerful tool, and self-
identity a strong personal need, both now used as a form of ‘healing’.
This book shows how, and it brings the good news that many peoples
around the world, like the Ainu, think of themselves as having sur-
vived the efforts of the mainstream societies to wipe them out. They
have survived, and unsurprisingly, they now want to do their own
representation. The book examines how we, the wider public, can
continue to value our fascination with cultural form without letting it
devalue any of the forms we value.

Acknowledgments and Methodology

I set out to examine this subject in a most unconventional way by
usual anthropological standards, indeed by any academic standards,
and I have built up the knowledge I have acquired to write this book
more than ever through the kind cooperation of a large number of
people. A (Western) scholar would normally expect to read all the
books and other materials about the people with whom he or she
intended to work, but I have visited so many different peoples that
I could not have read all the books had I spent several lifetimes
devoted entirely to the task. I have not even read a few books about
many of the people I have visited, some of whom are anyway quite
scathing about a lot of the things that have been written about them.
Instead, I have traveled around the world scrutinizing museums, cul-
ture centers, and other forms of material display that purport to rep-
resent people, and I have relied on friends and other anthropologists
to introduce me to members of those ‘people’ themselves to help me
interpret the displays. This way I have been able to evaluate the extent
to which they present an accurate picture of the contemporary social
or cultural groups to which those people claim allegiance, and see how
far they are involved in their own representation.
In anthropological terminology, this could be, perhaps, called
global fieldwork, and my acknowledgments of assistance have in prac-
tice become part of the explanation of the methodology I have used
for the study. Anthropologists do not usually mention all the people
they have consulted in their fieldwork, and I suspect that this is one
of the reasons why the people they worked with have begun to resent
their work. For an (old-hand) anthropologist to travel to places about
which they know almost nothing is a humbling experience, and it
certainly made clear to me the value of individuals I met locally who
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 MacNALLY, LEONARD (1752-1820), Irish informer, was
born in Dublin, the son of a merchant. In 1776 he was called to the
Irish, and in 1783 to the English bar. He supported himself for some
time in London by writing plays and editing the Public Ledger.
Returning to Dublin, he entered upon a systematic course of
informing against the members of the revolutionary party, for whom
his house had become the resort. He also betrayed to the
government prosecutors political clients whom he defended
eloquently in the courts. He made a fine defence for Robert Emmet
and cheered him in his last hours, although before appearing in
court he had sold, for £200, the contents of his brief to the lawyers
for the Crown. After living a professed Protestant all his life, he
received absolution on his deathbed from a Roman Catholic priest.
He died on the 13th of February 1820.

MACNEE, SIR DANIEL (1806-1882), Scottish portrait

painter, was born at Fintry in Stirlingshire. At the age of thirteen he
was apprenticed, along with Horatio Macculloch and Leitch the
water-colour painter, to John Knox, a landscapist of some repute. He
afterwards worked for a year as a lithographer, was employed by the
Smiths of Cumnock to paint the ornamental lids of their planewood
snuff-boxes, and, having studied in Edinburgh at the “Trustees’
Academy,” supporting himself meanwhile by designing and colouring
book illustrations for Lizars the engraver, he established himself as
an artist in Glasgow, where he became a fashionable portrait painter.
He was in 1829 admitted a member of the Royal Scottish Academy;
and on the death of Sir George Harvey in 1876 he was elected
president, and received the honour of knighthood. From this period
till his death, on the 18th of January 1882, he resided in Edinburgh,
where his genial social qualities and his inimitable powers as a teller
of humorous Scottish anecdote rendered him popular.

MACNEIL, HERMON ATKINS (1866- ), American

sculptor, was born at Chelsea, Massachusetts. He was an instructor
in industrial art at Cornell University in 1886-1889, and was then a
pupil of Henri M. Chapu and Falguière in Paris. Returning to America,
he aided Philip Martiny in the preparation of sketch models for the
Columbian exposition, and in 1896 he won the Rinehart scholarship,
passing four years (1896-1900) in Rome. In 1906 he became a
National Academician. His first important work was “The Moqui
Runner,” which was followed by “A Primitive Chant,” and “The Sun
Vow,” all figures of the North-American Indian. A “Fountain of
Liberty,” for the St Louis exposition, and other Indian themes came
later; his “Agnese” and his “Beatrice,” two fine busts of women, also
deserve mention. His principal work is the sculpture for a large
memorial arch, at Columbus, Ohio, in honour of President McKinley.
In 1909 he won in competition a commission for a large soldiers’ and
sailors’ monument in Albany, New York. His wife, Carol Brooks
MacNeil, also a sculptor of distinction, was a pupil of F. W.
MacMonnies.

McNEILE, HUGH (1795-1879), Anglican divine, younger son

of Alexander McNeile (or McNeill), was born at Ballycastle, Co.
Antrim, on the 15th of July 1795. He graduated at Trinity College,
Dublin, in 1810. His handsome presence, and his promise of
exceptional gifts of oratory, led a wealthy uncle, Major-General
Daniel McNeill, to adopt him as his heir; and he was destined for a
parliamentary career. During a stay at Florence, Hugh McNeile
became temporarily intimate with Lord Byron and Madame de Staël.
On returning home, he determined to abandon the prospect of
political distinction for the clerical profession, and was disinherited.
In 1820 he was ordained, and after holding the curacy of Stranorlar,
Co. Donegal, for two years, was appointed to the living of Albury,
Surrey, by Henry Drummond.
 Edward Irving endeavoured, not without success at first, to draw
McNeile into agreement with his doctrine and aims. Irving’s
increasing extravagance, however, soon alienated McNeile. His
preaching now attracted much attention; in London he frequently
was heard by large congregations. In 1834 he accepted the
incumbency of St Jude’s, Liverpool, where for the next thirty years
he wielded great political as well as ecclesiastical influence. He
repudiated the notion that a clergyman should be debarred from
politics, maintaining at a public meeting that “God when He made
the minister did not unmake the citizen.” In 1835 McNeile entered
upon a long contest, in which he was eventually successful, with the
Liverpool corporation, which had been captured by the Whigs, after
the passing of the Municipal Reform Act. A proposal was carried that
the elementary schools under the control of the corporation should
be secularized by the introduction of what was known as the Irish
National System. The threatened withdrawal of the Bible as the basis
of denominational religious teaching was met by a fierce agitation
led by McNeile, who so successfully enlisted public support that
before the new system could be introduced every child was provided
for in new Church of England schools established by public
subscriptions. At the same time he conducted a campaign which
gradually reduced the Whig element in the council, till in 1841 it
almost entirely disappeared. To his influence was also attributed the
defeat of the Liberal parliamentary candidates in the general election
of 1837, followed by a long period of Conservative predominance in
Liverpool politics. McNeile had the Irish Protestant’s horror of
Romanism, which he constantly denounced in the pulpit and on the
platform; and Macaulay, speaking in the House of Commons on the
Maynooth endowment in April 1845, singled him out for attack as
the most powerful representative of uncompromising Protestant
opinion in the country. As the Tractarian movement in the Church of
England developed, he became one of its most zealous opponents
and the most conspicuous leader of the evangelical party. In 1840 he
published a volume of Lectures on the Church of England, and in
1846 (the year after Newman’s secession to Rome) The Church and
the Churches, in which he maintained with much dialectical skill the
evangelical doctrine of the “invisible Church” in opposition to the
teaching of Newman and Pusey. Hugh McNeile was in close
sympathy with the philanthropic work as well as the religious views
of the 7th earl of Shaftesbury, who more than once tried to persuade
Lord Palmerston to raise him to the episcopal bench. But although
Palmerston usually followed the advice of Shaftesbury in the
appointment of bishops, he would not consent to the elevation to
the House of Lords of so powerful a political opponent as McNeile,
whom Lord John Russell had accused of frustrating for thirty years
the education policy of the Liberal party. In 1860 he was appointed a
canon of Chester; and in 1868 Disraeli appointed him dean of Ripon.
This preferment he resigned in 1875, and he lived in retirement at
Bournemouth till his death on the 28th of January 1879. McNeile
married, in 1822, Anne, daughter of William Magee, archbishop of
Dublin, and aunt of William Connor Magee, archbishop of York, by
whom he had a large family.

Although a vehement controversialist, Hugh McNeile was a man of

simple and sincere piety of character. Sir Edward Russell, an
opponent alike of his religious and his political opinions, bears
witness to the deep spirituality of his teaching, and describes him as
an absolutely unique personality. “He made himself leader of the
Liverpool people, and always led with calm and majesty in the most
excited times. His eloquence was grave, flowing, emphatic—had a
dignity in delivery, a perfection of elocution, that only John Bright
equalled in the latter half of the 19th century. Its fire was solemn
force. McNeile’s voice was probably the finest organ ever heard in
public oratory. His action was as graceful as it was expressive. He
ruled an audience.”

See J. A. Picton, Memorials of Liverpool, vol. i. (1873); Sir

Edward Russell, “The Religious Life of Liverpool,” in the Sunday
Magazine (June 1905); Charles Bullock, Hugh McNeile and
Reformation Truth.
(R. J. M.)

MACNEILL, HECTOR (1746-1818), Scottish poet, was born

near Roslin, Midlothian, on the 22nd of October 1746, the son of an
impoverished army captain. He went to Bristol as a clerk at the age
of fourteen, and soon afterwards was despatched to the West
Indies. From 1780 to 1786 he acted as assistant secretary on board
the flagships of Admiral Geary and Sir Richard Bickerton (1727-
1792). Most of his later life was spent in Scotland, and it was in the
house of a friend at Stirling that he wrote most of his songs and his
Scotland’s Skaith, or the History of Will and Jean (1795), a narrative
poem intended to show the deteriorating influences of whisky and
pothouse politics. A sequel, The Waes of War, appeared next year.
In 1800 he published The Memoirs of Charles Macpherson, Esq., a
novel understood to be a narrative of his own hardships and
adventures. A complete edition of the poems he wished to own
appeared in 1812. His songs “Mary of Castlecary,” “Come under my
plaidy,” “My boy Tammy,” “O tell me how for to woo,” “I lo’ed ne’er a
lassie but ane,” “The plaid amang the hether,” and “Jeanie’s black
e’e,” are notable for their sweetness and simplicity. He died at
Edinburgh on the 15th of March 1818.

MACOMB, a city and the county-seat of McDonough county,

Illinois, U.S.A., in the W. part of the state, about 60 m. S.W. of
Peoria. Pop. (1890), 4052; (1900), 5375 (232 foreign-born); (1910),
5774. Macomb is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and
the Macomb & Western Illinois railways. The city is the seat of the
Western Illinois state normal school (opened in 1902), and has a
Carnegie library and a city park. Clay is found in the vicinity, and
there are manufactures of pottery, bricks, &c. The city was founded
in 1830 as the county-seat of McDonough county, and was called
Washington by the settlers, but the charter of incorporation, also
granted in 1830, gave it the present name in honour of General
Alexander Macomb. Macomb was first chartered as a city in 1856.
 MACOMER, a village of Sardinia in the province of Cagliari,
from which it is 95 m. N.N.W. by rail, and the same distance S.W. of
Golfo degli Aranci. Pop. (1901), 3488. It is situated 1890 ft. above
sea-level on the southern ascent to the central plateau (the
Campeda) of this part of Sardinia; and it is the junction of narrow-
gauge lines branching from the main line eastwards to Nuoro and
westwards to Bosa. The old parish church of S. Pantaleone has three
Roman mile-stones in front of it, belonging to the Roman high-road
from Carales to Turris Libisonis. The modern high-road follows the
ancient. The district, especially the Campeda, is well fitted for
grazing and horse and cattle breeding, which is carried on to a
considerable extent. It is perhaps richer in nuraghi than any other
part of Sardinia.

MACON, NATHANIEL (1758-1837), American political

leader, was born at Macon Manor, Warren county, North Carolina, on
the 17th of December 1758. He studied at the college of New Jersey
(now Princeton University) from 1774 to 1776, when the institution
was closed on account of the outbreak of the War of Independence;
served for a short time in a New Jersey militia company; studied law
at Bute Court-house, North Carolina, in 1777-1780, at the same time
managing his tobacco plantation; was a member of a Warren county
militia company in 1780-1782, and served in the North Carolina
Senate in 1781-1785. In 1786 he was elected to the Continental
Congress, but declined to serve. In 1791-1815 he was a member of
the national House of Representatives, and in 1815-1828 of the
United States Senate. Macon’s point of view was always local rather
than national. He was essentially a North Carolinian first, and an
American afterwards; and throughout his career he was an
aggressive advocate of state sovereignty and an adherent of the
doctrines of the “Old Republicans.” He at first opposed the adoption
of the Federal constitution of 1787, as a member of the faction led
by Willie Jones (1731-1801) of Halifax, North Carolina, but later
withdrew his opposition. In Congress he denounced Hamilton’s
financial policy, opposed the Jay Treaty (1795) and the Alien and
Sedition Acts, and advocated a continuance of the French alliance of
1778. His party came into power in 1801, and he was Speaker of the
house from December 1801 to October 1807. At first he was in
accord with Jefferson’s administration; he approved the Louisiana
Purchase, and as early as 1803 advocated the purchase of Florida.
For a number of years, however, he was politically allied with John
Randolph.1 As speaker, in spite of strong opposition, he kept
Randolph at the head of the important committee on Ways and
Means from 1801 to 1806; and in 1805-1808, with Randolph and
Joseph H. Nicholson (1770-1817) of Maryland, he was a leader of
the group of about ten independents, called the “Quids,” who
strongly criticized Jefferson and opposed the presidential candidature
of Madison. By 1809, however, Macon was again in accord with his
party, and during the next two years he was one of the most
influential of its leaders. In December 1809 he introduced
resolutions which combined the ideas of Peter Early (1773-1817) of
Georgia, David R. Williams (1776-1830) of South Carolina, and
Samuel W. Dana (1757-1830) of Connecticut with his own. The
resolutions recommended the complete exclusion of foreign war
vessels from United States ports and the suppression of illegal trade
carried on by foreign merchants under the American flag. The
substance of these resolutions was embodied in the “Macon Bill, No.
1,” which passed the House but was defeated in the Senate. On the
7th of April 1810 Macon reported from committee the “Macon Bill,
No. 2,” which had been drawn by John Taylor (1770-1832) of South
Carolina, and was not actively supported by him. This measure
(amended) became law on the 1st of May, and provided for the
repeal of the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, authorized the president,
“in case either Great Britain or France shall before the 3rd day of
March next so revoke or modify her edicts as that they shall cease to
violate the neutral commerce of the United States,” to revive non-
intercourse against the other, and prohibited British and French
vessels of war from entering American waters. In 1812 Macon voted
for the declaration of war against Great Britain, and later was
chairman of the Congressional committee which made a report (July
1813) condemning Great Britain’s conduct of the war. He opposed
the Bank Act of 1816, the “internal improvements” policy of Calhoun
(in the early part of his career) and Clay, and the Missouri
Compromise, his speech against the last being especially able. In
1824 Macon received the electoral vote of Virginia for the vice-
presidency, and in 1826-1828 was president pro tempore of the
Senate. He was president of the North Carolina constitutional
convention in 1835, and was an elector on the Van Buren ticket in
1836. He died at his home, Buck Springs, Warren county, North
Carolina, on the 29th of June 1837.

See William E. Dodd, The Life of Nathaniel Macon (Raleigh,

N.C., 1903); E. M. Wilson, The Congressional Career of Nathaniel
Macon (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1900).

1 Their names are associated in Randolph-Macon

College, named in their honour in 1830.

MÂCON, a town of east-central France, capital of the

department of Saône-et-Loire, 45 m. N. of Lyons on the Paris-Lyon
railway. Pop. (1906), 16,151. Mâcon is situated on the right bank of
the Saône facing the plain of the Bresse; a bridge of twelve arches
connects it with the suburb of St Laurent on the opposite bank. The
most prominent building is the modern Romanesque church of St
Pierre, a large three-naved basilica, with two fine spires. Of the old
cathedral of St Vincent (12th and 13th centuries), destroyed at the
Revolution, nothing remains but the Romanesque narthex, now used
as a chapel, the façade and its two flanking towers. The hôtel de
ville contains a library, a theatre and picture-gallery. Opposite to it
stands a statue of the poet Alphonse Lamartine, a native of the
town. Mâcon is the seat of a prefecture, and has tribunals of first
instance and of commerce, and a chamber of commerce. There are
lycées and training colleges. Copper-founding is an important
industry; manufactures include casks, mats, rope and utensils for the
wine-trade. The town has a large trade in wine of the district, known
as Mâcon. It is a railway centre of considerable importance, being
the point at which the line from Paris to Marseilles is joined by that
from Mont Cenis and Geneva, as well as by a branch from Moulins.

Mâcon (Matisco) was an important town of the Aedui, but under

the Romans it was supplanted by Autun and Lyons. It suffered a
succession of disasters at the hands of the Germans, Burgundians,
Vandals, Huns, Hungarians and even of the Carolingian kings. In the
feudal period it was an important countship which in 1228 was sold
to the king of France, but more than once afterwards passed into
the possession of the dukes of Burgundy, until the ownership of the
French crown was established in the time of Louis XI. In the 16th
century Mâcon became a stronghold of the Huguenots, but
afterwards fell into the hands of the League, and did not yield to
Henry IV. until 1594. The bishopric, created by King Childebert, was
suppressed in 1790.

MACON, a city and the county-seat of Bibb county, Georgia,

U.S.A., in the central part of the state, on both sides of the
Ocmulgee river (at the head of navigation), about 90 m. S.S.E. of
Atlanta. Pop. (1900), 23,272, of whom 11,550 were negroes; (1910
census) 40,665. Macon is, next to Atlanta, the most important
railway centre in the state, being served by the Southern, the
Central of Georgia, the Georgia, the Georgia Southern & Florida, the
Macon Dublin & Savannah, and the Macon & Birmingham railways. It
was formerly an important river port, especially for the shipment of
cotton, but lost this commercial advantage when railway bridges
made the river impassable. It is, however, partially regaining the
river trade in consequence of the compulsory substitution of
drawbridges for the stationary railway bridges. The city is the seat of
the Wesleyan female college (1836), which claims to be the first
college in the world chartered to grant academic degrees to women;
Mercer university (Baptist), which was established in 1833 as Mercer
Institute at Penfield, became a university in 1837, was removed to
Macon in 1871, and controls Hearn Academy (1839) at Cave Spring
and Gibson Mercer Academy (1903) at Bowman; the state academy
for the blind (1852), St Stanislaus’ College (Jesuit), and Mt de Sales
Academy (Roman Catholic) for women. There are four orphan
asylums for whites and two for negroes, supported chiefly by the
Protestant Episcopal and Methodist Churches, and a public hospital.
Immediately east of Macon are two large Indian mounds, and there
is a third mound 9 m. south of the city. Situated in the heart of the
“Cotton Belt,” Macon has a large and lucrative trade; it is one of the
most important inland cotton markets of the United States, its
annual receipts averaging about 250,000 bales. The city’s factory
products in 1905 were valued at $7,297,347 (33.8% more than in
1900). In the vicinity are large beds of kaolin, 30 m. wide, reaching
nearly across the state, and frequently 35 to 70 ft. in depth. Macon
is near the fruit-growing region of Georgia, and large quantities of
peaches and of garden products are annually shipped from the city.
 Macon (named in honour of Nathaniel Macon) was surveyed in
1823 by order of the Georgia legislature for the county-seat of Bibb
county, and received its first charter in 1824. It soon became the
centre of trade for Middle Georgia; in 1833 a steamboat line to
Darien was opened, and in the following year 69,000 bales of cotton
were shipped by this route. During the Civil War the city was a
centre for Confederate commissary supplies and the seat of a
Treasury depository. In July 1864 General George Stoneman (1822-
1894) with 500 men was captured near the city by the Confederate
general, Howell Cobb. Macon was finally occupied by Federal troops
under General James H. Wilson (b. 1837) on the 20th of April 1865.
In 1900-1910 the area of the city was increased by the annexation
of several suburbs.

MACPHERSON, SIR DAVID LEWIS (1818-1896),

Canadian financier and politician, was born at Castle Leathers, near
Inverness, Scotland, on the 12th of September 1818. In 1835 he
emigrated to Canada, settling in Montreal, where he built up a large
fortune by “forwarding” merchandise. In 1853 he removed to
Toronto, and in the same year obtained the contract for building a
line of railway from Toronto to Sarnia, a project from which sprang
the Grand Trunk railway, in the construction of which line he greatly
increased his wealth. In 1864 he was elected to the Canadian
parliament as member of the Legislative Council for Saugeen, and on
the formation of the Dominion, in 1867, was nominated to the
Senate. In the following years he published a number of pamphlets
on economic subjects, of which the best-known is Banking and
Currency (1869). In 1880 he was appointed Speaker of the Senate,
and from October 1883 till 1885 was minister of the interior in the
Conservative cabinet. In 1884 he was knighted by Queen Victoria.
He died on the 16th of August 1896.

MACPHERSON, JAMES (1736-1796), Scottish “translator”

of the Ossianic poems, was born at Ruthven in the parish of
Kingussie, Inverness, on the 27th of October 1736. He was sent in
1753 to King’s College, Aberdeen, removing two years later to
Marischal College. He also studied at Edinburgh, but took no degree.
He is said to have written over 4000 lines of verse while a student,
but though some of this was published, notably The Highlander
(1758), he afterwards tried to suppress it. On leaving college he
taught in the school of his native place. At Moffat he met John
Home, the author of Douglas, for whom he recited some Gaelic
verses from memory. He also showed him MSS. of Gaelic poetry,
supposed to have been picked up in the Highlands, and, encouraged
by Home and others, he produced a number of pieces translated
from the Gaelic, which he was induced to publish at Edinburgh in
1760 as Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of
Scotland. Dr Hugh Blair, who was a firm believer in the authenticity
of the poems, got up a subscription to allow Macpherson to pursue
his Gaelic researches. In the autumn he set out to visit western
Inverness, the islands of Skye, North and South Uist and Benbecula.
He obtained MSS. which he translated with the assistance of Captain
Morrison and the Rev. A. Gallie. Later in the year he made an
expedition to Mull, when he obtained other MSS. In 1761 he
announced the discovery of an epic on the subject of Fingal, and in
December he published Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books,
together with Several Other Poems composed by Ossian, the Son of
Fingal, translated from the Gaelic Language, written in the musical
measured prose of which he had made use in his earlier volume.
Temora followed in 1763, and a collected edition, The Works of
Ossian, in 1765.

The genuineness of these so-called translations from the works of

a 3rd-century bard was immediately challenged in England, and Dr
Johnson, after some local investigation, asserted (Journey to the
Western Islands of Scotland, 1775) that Macpherson had only found
fragments of ancient poems and stories, which he had woven into a
romance of his own composition. Macpherson is said to have sent
Johnson a challenge, to which Johnson replied that he was not to be
deterred from detecting what he thought a cheat by the menaces of
a ruffian. Macpherson never produced his originals, which he refused
to publish on the ground of the expense. In 1764 he was made
secretary to General Johnstone at Pensacola, West Florida, and
when he returned, two years later, to England, after a quarrel with
Johnstone, he was allowed to retain his salary as a pension. He
occupied himself with writing several historical works, the most
important of which was Original Papers, containing the Secret
History of Great Britain from the Restoration to the Accession of the
House of Hanover; to which are prefixed Extracts from the Life of
James II., as written by himself (1775). He enjoyed a salary for
defending the policy of Lord North’s government, and held the
lucrative post of London agent to Mahommed Ali, nabob of Arcot. He
entered parliament in 1780, and continued to sit until his death. In
his later years he bought an estate, to which he gave the name of
Belville, in his native county of Inverness, where he died on the 17th
of February 1796.

After Macpherson’s death, Malcolm Laing, in an appendix to his

History of Scotland (1800), propounded the extreme view that the
so-called Ossianic poems were altogether modern in origin, and that
Macpherson’s authorities were practically non-existent. For a
discussion of this question see Celt: Scottish Gaelic Literature. Much
of Macpherson’s matter is clearly his own, and he confounds the
stories belonging to different cycles. But apart from the doubtful
morality of his transactions he must still be regarded as one of the
great Scottish writers. The varied sources of his work and its
worthlessness as a transcript of actual Celtic poems do not alter the
fact that he produced a work of art which by its deep appreciation of
natural beauty and the melancholy tenderness of its treatment of the
ancient legend did more than any single work to bring about the
romantic movement in European, and especially in German,
literature. It was speedily translated into many European languages,
and Herder and Goethe (in his earlier period) were among its
profound admirers. Cesarotti’s Italian translation was one of
Napoleon’s favourite books.

Authorities.—For Macpherson’s life, see The Life and Letters of

James Macpherson ... (1894, new ed., 1906), by T. Bailey
Saunders, who has laboured to redeem his character from the
suspicions generally current with English readers. The antiquity
 of the Ossianic poems was defended in the introduction by
Archibald Clerk to his edition of the Poems of Ossian (1870).
Materials for arriving at a decision by comparison with
undoubtedly genuine fragments of the Ossianic legend are
available in The Book of the Dean of Lismore, Gaelic verses,
collected by J. McGregor, dean of Lismore, in the early 16th
century (ed. T. McLauchlan, 1862); the Leabhar na Feinne
(1871) of F. J. Campbell, who also discusses the subject in
Popular Tales of the Western Highlands, iv. (1893). See also L.
C. Stern, “Die ossianische Heldenlieder” in Zeitschrift für
vergleichende Litteratur-geschichte (1895; Eng. trans. by J. L.
Robertson in Trans. Gael. Soc. of Inverness, xxii., 1897-1898);
Sir J. Sinclair, A Dissertation on the Authenticity of the Poems of
Ossian (1806); Transactions of the Ossianic Society (Dublin,
1854-1861); Cours de littérature celtique, by Arbois de
Jubainville, editor of the Revue celtique (1883, &c.); A. Nutt,
Ossian and the Ossianic Literature (1899), with a valuable
bibliographical appendix; J. S. Smart, James Macpherson: an
Episode in Literature (1905).

McPHERSON, JAMES BIRDSEYE (1828-1864), American

soldier, was born at Sandusky, Ohio, on the 14th of November 1828.
He entered West Point at the age of twenty-one, and graduated
(1853) at the head of his class, which included Sheridan, Schofield
and Hood. He was employed at the military academy as instructor of
practical military engineering (1853). A year later he was sent to
engineer duty at New York, and in 1857, after constructing Fort
Delaware, he was sent as superintending engineer to San Francisco,
becoming 1st lieutenant in 1858. He was promoted captain during
the first year of the Civil War, and towards the close of 1861 became
lieutenant-colonel and aide-de-camp to General Halleck, who in the
spring of 1862 sent him to General Grant as chief engineer. He
remained with Grant during the Shiloh campaign, and acted as
engineer adviser to Halleck during the siege operations against
Corinth in the summer of 1862. In October he distinguished himself
in command of an infantry brigade at the battle of Corinth, and on
the 8th of this month was made major-general of volunteers and
commander of a division. In the second advance on Vicksburg
(1863) McPherson commanded the XVII. corps, fought at Port
Gibson, Raymond and Jackson, and after the fall of Vicksburg was
strongly recommended by Grant for the rank of brigadier-general in
the regular army, to which he was promoted on the 1st of August
1863. He commanded at Vicksburg until the following spring. He was
about to go on leave of absence in order to be married in Baltimore
when he received his nomination to the command of the Army of the
Tennessee, Grant’s and Sherman’s old army, which was to take part
under Sherman’s supreme command in the campaign against Atlanta
(1864). This nomination was made by Sherman and entirely
approved by Grant, who had the highest opinion of McPherson’s
military and personal qualities. He was in command of his army at
the actions of Resaca, Dallas, Kenesaw Mountain and the battles
about Atlanta. On the 22nd of July, when the Confederates under his
old classmate Hood made a sudden and violent attack on the lines
held by the Army of the Tennessee, McPherson rode up, in the
woods, to the enemy’s firing line and was killed. He was one of the
most heroic figures of the American Civil War, and Grant is reported
to have said when he heard of McPherson’s death, “The country has
lost one of its best soldiers, and I have lost my best friend.”

MACQUARIE, a British island in the South Pacific Ocean, in

54° 49′ S. and 159° 49′ E. It is about 20 m. long, and covered with
a grassy vegetation, with some trees or shrubs in the sheltered
places which afford food to a parrot of the genus Cyanorhamphus,
allied to those of the Auckland Islands. Although it has no settled
population, Macquarie is constantly visited by sailors in quest of the
seals which abound in its waters.

MACRAUCHENIA, a long-necked and long-limbed, three-

toed South American ungulate mammal, typifying the suborder
Litopterna (q.v.).
 MACREADY, WILLIAM CHARLES (1793-1873), English
actor, was born in London on the 3rd of March 1793, and educated
at Rugby. It was his intention to go up to Oxford, but in 1809 the
embarrassed affairs of his father, the lessee of several provincial
theatres, called him to share the responsibilities of theatrical
management. On the 7th of June 1810 he made a successful first
appearance as Romeo at Birmingham. Other Shakespearian parts
followed, but a serious rupture between father and son resulted in
the young man’s departure for Bath in 1814. Here he remained for
two years, with occasional professional visits to other provincial
towns. On the 16th of September 1816, Macready made his first
London appearance at Covent Garden as Orestes in The Distressed
Mother, a translation of Racine’s Andromaque by Ambrose Philips.
Macready’s choice of characters was at first confined chiefly to the
romantic drama. In 1818 he won a permanent success in Isaac
Pocock’s (1782-1835) adaptation of Scott’s Rob Roy. He showed his
capacity for the highest tragedy when he played Richard III. at
Covent Garden on the 25th of October 1819. Transferring his
services to Drury Lane, he gradually rose in public favour, his most
conspicuous success being in the title-rôle of Sheridan Knowles’s
William Tell (May 11, 1825). In 1826 he completed a successful
engagement in America, and in 1828 his performances met with a
very flattering reception in Paris. On the 15th of December 1830 he
appeared at Drury Lane as Werner, one of his most powerful
impersonations. In 1833 he played in Antony and Cleopatra, in
Byron’s Sardanapalus, and in King Lear. Already Macready had done
something to encourage the creation of a modern English drama,
and after entering on the management of Covent Garden in 1837 he
introduced Robert Browning’s Strafford, and in the following year
Bulwer’s Lady of Lyons and Richelieu, the principal characters in
which were among his most effective parts. On the 10th of June
1838 he gave a memorable performance of Henry V., for which
Stanfield prepared sketches, and the mounting was superintended
by Bulwer, Dickens, Forster, Maclise, W. J. Fox and other friends. The
first production of Bulwer’s Money took place under the artistic
direction of Count d’Orsay on the 8th of December 1840, Macready
winning unmistakable success in the character of Alfred Evelyn. Both
in his management of Covent Garden, which he resigned in 1839,
and of Drury Lane, which he held from 1841 to 1843, he found his
designs for the elevation of the stage frustrated by the absence of
adequate public support. In 1843-1844 he made a prosperous tour
in the United States, but his last visit to that country, in 1849, was
marred by a riot at the Astor Opera House, New York, arising from
the jealousy of the actor Edwin Forrest, and resulting in the death of
seventeen persons, who were shot by the military called out to quell
the disturbance. Macready took leave of the stage in a farewell
performance of Macbeth at Drury Lane on the 26th of February
1851. The remainder of his life was spent in happy retirement, and
he died at Cheltenham on the 27th of April 1873. He had married, in
1823, Catherine Frances Atkins (d. 1852). Of a numerous family of
children only one son and one daughter survived. In 1860 he
married Cecile Louise Frederica Spencer (1827-1908), by whom he
had a son.
 Macready’s performances always displayed fine artistic perceptions
developed to a high degree of perfection by very comprehensive
culture, and even his least successful personations had the interest
resulting from thorough intellectual study. He belonged to the school
of Kean rather than of Kemble; but, if his tastes were better
disciplined and in some respects more refined than those of Kean,
his natural temperament did not permit him to give proper effect to
the great tragic parts of Shakespeare, King Lear perhaps excepted,
which afforded scope for his pathos and tenderness, the qualities in
which he specially excelled. With the exception of a voice of good
compass and capable of very varied expression, Macready had no
especial physical gifts for acting, but the defects of his face and
figure cannot be said to have materially affected his success.

See Macready’s Reminiscences, edited by Sir Frederick Pollock,

2 vols. (1875); William Charles Macready, by William Archer
(1890).

MACROBIUS, AMBROSIUS THEODOSIUS, Roman

grammarian and philosopher, flourished during the reigns of
Honorius and Arcadius (395-423). He himself states that he was not
a Roman, but there is no certain evidence whether he was of Greek
or perhaps African descent. He is generally supposed to have been
praetorian praefect in Spain (399), proconsul of Africa (410), and
lord chamberlain (422). But the tenure of high office at that date
was limited to Christians, and there is no evidence in the writings of
Macrobius that he was a Christian. Hence the identification is more
than doubtful, unless it be assumed that his conversion to
Christianity was subsequent to the composition of his books. It is
possible, but by no means certain, that he was the Theodosius to
whom Avianus dedicates his fables.

The most important of his works is the Saturnalia, containing an

account of the discussions held at the house of Vettius Praetextatus
(c. 325-385) during the holiday of the Saturnalia. It was written by
the author for the benefit of his son Eustathius (or Eustachius), and
contains a great variety of curious historical, mythological, critical
and grammatical disquisitions. There is but little attempt to give any
dramatic character to the dialogue; in each book some one of the
personages takes the leading part, and the remarks of the others
serve only as occasions for calling forth fresh displays of erudition.
The first book is devoted to an inquiry as to the origin of the
Saturnalia and the festivals of Janus, which leads to a history and
discussion of the Roman calendar, and to an attempt to derive all
forms of worship from that of the sun. The second book begins with
a collection of bons mots, to which all present make their
contributions, many of them being ascribed to Cicero and Augustus;
a discussion of various pleasures, especially of the senses, then
seems to have taken place, but almost the whole of this is lost. The
third, fourth, fifth and sixth books are devoted to Virgil, dwelling
respectively on his learning in religious matters, his rhetorical skill,
his debt to Homer (with a comparison of the art of the two) and to
other Greek writers, and the nature and extent of his borrowings
from the earlier Latin poets. The latter part of the third book is taken
up with a dissertation upon luxury and the sumptuary laws intended
to check it, which is probably a dislocated portion of the second
book. The seventh book consists largely of the discussion of various
physiological questions. The value of the work consists solely in the
facts and opinions quoted from earlier writers, for it is purely a
compilation, and has little in its literary form to recommend it. The
form of the Saturnalia is copied from Plato’s Symposium and Gellius’s
Noctes atticae; the chief authorities (whose names, however, are not
quoted) are Gellius, Seneca the philosopher, Plutarch (Quaestiones
conviviales), Athenaeus and the commentaries of Servius (excluded
by some) and others on Virgil. We have also two books of a
commentary on the Somnium Scipionis narrated by Cicero in his De
republica. The nature of the dream, in which the elder Scipio
appears to his (adopted) grandson, and describes the life of the
good after death and the constitution of the universe from the Stoic
point of view, gives occasion for Macrobius to discourse upon many
points of physics in a series of essays interesting as showing the
astronomical notions then current. The moral elevation of the
fragment of Cicero thus preserved to us gave the work a popularity
in the middle ages to which its own merits have little claim. Of a
third work, De differentiis et societatibus graeci latinique verbi, we
only possess an abstract by a certain Johannes, identified with
Johannes Scotus Erigena (9th century).

See editions by L. von Jan (1848-1852, with bibliog. of

previous editions, and commentary) and F. Eyssenhardt (1893,
Teubner text); on the sources of the Saturnalia see H. Linke
(1880) and G. Wissowa (1880). The grammatical treatise will be
found in Jan’s edition and H. Keil’s Grammatici latini, v.; see also
G. F. Schömann, Commentatio macrobiana (1871).
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookname.com