Hi, my name is Shiva. This year my grandmother and I are going to Papua New Guinea as part of an ongoing collaborative project. I am hoping to receive funding to make this project possible. This is how the story started:

As an artist, I have always been fascinated with my grandmother's anthropological studies. In 1963 my grandparents, Allison and Marek Jablonko, journeyed to the Simbai Valley of Papua New Guinea to live amongst the Maring people of the Bismarck Mountains.


Allison and Marek with pet Yindama, Simbai, PNG, 1963

They joined four other members of the Columbia University expedition. Allison, one of four graduate students in anthropology, was in charge of taking photographs and Marek filmed with a 16mm camera. By the end of their year-long stay, relationships and friendships were formed with the people in the Simbai Valley. An exchange had been made between people of two very different parts of the world.


Nintup and Marek, Gunts, PNG, 1963

"Ambanga" - namesake - the practice of naming people for each other - was important for the Maring. It was a means of creating relationships between people and of carrying memories from one generation to another. Two babies were born during my grandparents' stay. One was named Allison, the other Marek.


Gau kisses baby Allison; baby Marek, held by mother At'ema, with sister Kringa.

Honoring the "ambanga" practice, in 1964 when my grandparents had their first daughter, they named her after Koram, daughter of Bosboi Gul.

Bosboi Gul enjoys a balloon brought by Allison; Gul's daughter, Koram, with her brother Mat'a; Koram, my mother.

Allison and Marek left Gunts with over 10,000 photographs that they had taken over the course of the year, as well as more than 100 drawings and watercolors that their friends had made with the paper and paints my grandparents brought.


Watercolor by Nintup (the young man shown above with Marek), Gunts, PNG, 1963

This material is archived in various institutions, including the Center of Research and Documentation on Oceania in Marseille, France, and the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. But the Maring people of Papua New Guinea have never seen it. As visual documents of their own history, we believe that this material must be brought back to them. It is our duty to repatriate these images of living memories to people whose history is documented through oral stories alone. These photographs are some of the few visual portraits of the lives of their families in the 1960s that the current and future generations will have. I look forward to accompanying my grandmother on her return to these special people. As a granddaughter, I will keep the old and new stories alive, carrying them into the next generations with my skills in designing exhibitions and presentations.


Pint laughing; Urum introducing her brother who lived across the mountains; Marek and Gul joking with each other.

WHAT ARE WE ACTUALLY DOING?

We are bringing this material back.

Our goals?

1. To put photographs in the hands of people who were in them or in the hands of their children.

2. To create a "traveling" exhibition of a moment in the history of Gunts which will be given to the rural schools in the Simbai Valley on the forested slopes of the highlands fringe. The title of the exhibition will be "The Maring of Papua New Guinea - Photography and Drawing as Dialogue between Past and Present." The exhibition will later be the focus of workshops in the coastal city of Madang and in the Highland city of Goroka. Some of the descendants of my grandmother's friends will now be working in those urban centers. We hope to locate them through "the grapevine" once we are there.

To achieve our goals, we will spend 8 weeks total in PNG. This will be a grand return for Allison and my first trip there.

We will spend 3 weeks in the Simbai Valley. Here we will meet Bishop Nathan Ingen who will introduce us to the local community and help us reach Gai and eventually Gunts! We are in touch with the Simbai Vocational School where we will have a workshop with the images. During this journey we will be assisted by our friend Koumanieu Kolain, a retired filmmaker at the National Film Institute in Goroka.


Sketch map of the Simbai Valley from 1963 expedition



U.N. Map of PNG revised to show the location of the Simbai Valley

In Goroka our exhibition will be part of the OURMedia conference held from July 20 - 26 at the Center of Social and Creative Media of the University of Goroka. Taking part in a larger circle of lectures, workshops and exhibitions will allow us to use the photographs to spark discussions on the role of history and preservation of culture in the formulation of identity and social change.

In August we will take the exhibition to Divine Word University (DWU) in Madang for a discussion with the students in conjunction with Culture Day celebrated at the University.

WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?

We are driven by something we cherish -- the importance of connecting people, exchanging thoughts and perspectives, following the footsteps of the people who went before us and creating new ties for future generations.

We aren't going back with impersonal, anonymous photographs, but with portraits and snapshots of the past that show the development of friendship. The photographs we have selected from our large collection are portraits that record specific personal relationships in the hope of finding the families shown and in the hope of creating a dialogue between past and present across generations.







We have paired as many of the portraits as possible with a drawing or painting made by that person.


Mbera and Pinai at the Singsing on August 24th 1963. Watercolor by Mbera.

We believe that bringing this material back is important, not only for us and for our family, but for the Maring people and the people of Papua New Guinea. Many of our contacts have already expressed to us the fact that people in the villages will be very happy to receive us and that photographs are very valuable objects to them even if the photographs are not of direct relatives but of people of their land.

The people we have already been in touch with in PNG are really excited about this project and we are too!

We need your help to make this repatriation of images happen!

Thank you for reading our story and for any donations!

Funding above the target goes to the making of a film!

We will be in PNG for 8 weeks! Given the unpredictability of travel and locating Maring speakers, we can't expect to accomplish our goals in less time. The funds raised will be used for transport within PNG, accommodation, exhibition and equipment costs.

Approx $1500 will be going to internal flights in PNG
Travel between Port Moresby, Madang, and Goroka is with Air Niugini. Travel into the Simbai Valley can only be done with the Mission Aviation Fellowship.

Approx $1000 is going to petrol

Approx $1850 is going towards accommodation
Where possible we will be staying in mission guest houses and with friends. Where these options are not available to us, costs are no less than $120/night in some cities and no less than $200/night in other cities.

Approx $1400 is going to printing, mounting and other exhibition and equipment costs

We believe our three week stretch in the Simbai Valley to be the most potentially challenging portion of the expedition. The obstacles follow from the two goals of this portion of our stay in PNG:

1. To put photographs in the hands of people who were in them or into the hands of their children.
2. To create a "traveling exhibition" for the schools in Simbai or Gai, in the Simbai Valley.

Neither of these goals is easy nor can be taken for granted in the "un-internet" world of rural PNG. In spite of well-laid plans, many of the specifics will have to take shape once we arrive. There aren't any telephone books or street addresses for the people we are looking for!

Our contacts with new and old friends in the urban centers of Goroka, Madang and Mt. Hagen make these potential obstacles of contacting people in the Simbai Valley much smaller. Bishop Nathan Ingen of Mt. Hagen has assured us that an exhibition at the Simbai Vocational School will be possible. Organization for the exhibits in Goroka and Madang is already under way. Many of our contacts have already expressed to us the fact that people in the villages will be very happy to receive us and that photographs are very valuable objects to them even if they are not of direct relatives but of people of their land.