FW: New "African Village" exhibit at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, WA

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Akurang-Parry, Kwabena

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Jul 10, 2007, 11:03:29 AM7/10/07
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Kwabena O. Akurang-Parry, Ph. D.
Assoc. Prof. of African History & World History
Dept of History
Shippensburg University
Shippensburg, PA 17257 U.S.A.

Phone: 717 477 1286
Fax:   717 477 4062


Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2007 From: Itohan Osayimwese <ito...@umich.edu>

Following the 2005 debate on the "African Village" exhibit at the
Augusburg Zoo in Germany, I thought that list members might be
interested in knowing about an ongoing exhibit at the Woodland Park Zoo
in Seattle. The "Maasai Journey" exhibit, which started in May and is
planned to run until September 2007, is constructed around the zoos'
permanent "African Savanna" exhibit that includes animals indigenous to
the East African grasslands, and an "African Village" that includes
four Maasai gentlemen as "cultural interpreters".

According to the zoo's website, the Maasai cultural interpreters are
important in helping visitors understand Africa, its wildlife, and its
people. Specifically, the Maasai gentlemen employed by the zoo offer
daily "Safari" and "African Village" tours, perform as storytellers,
and sell Maasai crafts as part of the zoo's preservation efforts.

In addition to a web page about the exhibit
(http://www.zoo.org/maasai_journey/index.html), the zoo has also
embarked on a promotional campaign that includes billboards on major
throughways in the city, and advertisements on local radio stations.
Since the African Savanna is a regular part of the zoo, this publicity
campaign focuses on the Maasai as a new cultural attraction, a
compelling reason to visit the Woodland Park Zoo. To describe one
example, a billboard on I-5 depicts a magnified area of a zebra's body
that emphasizes its distinctive markings. The word "Maasai" is
emblazoned across the center of the image, which takes up the entire
billboard. Further information on the exhibit is included in
small-print below. Perhaps we should be appeased by the fact that it is
not the likeness of a Maasai man that graces the billboard?

To my knowledge, there has been no public debate on the problematic
nature of this exhibit among Seattle residents. I am in the process of
writing a letter to local newspapers and to the management of the zoo
(please contact me if you would like to know more about this) to
express my objection to this form of education/entertainment. While I
have not visited the exhibition myself as a matter of principle, I have
talked to several people who have. List members are conversant in the
history of ethnographic exhibitions in Europe and North America and the
questions raised when strategies that harken back to these early
exhibitions are used at zoos and other cultural venues today. Some of
the problems that I see with the Woodland Park Zoo's "Maasai Journey"
include:

1)While the US has no historical relationship with the Maasai that
would be considered in discussing the implications of the Woodland Park
Zoo exhibit, the exhibit remains problematic in a society as fraught
with racial tensions as the US. Furthermore, the Maasai of East Africa
themselves have been negatively affected by western interest and
intervention, in various forms, during the course of the twentieth
century and before. Should a public institution like the Woodland Park
Zoo be engaged in this kind of uncritical and insensitive activity?

2)What is the underlying message of such an exhibit vis-à-vis the
Maasai, Africans, and nature? To my knowledge there are no other
current exhibits at the Woodland Park Zoo that integrate performances
by people touted as being indigenous to specific regions into the zoo
experience. The Maasai men are being represented as cultural experts
but what exactly is their expertise? On one hand, they are supposed to
be knowledgeable about wildlife that has historically lived in the same
regions that they have. Why then do zoo keepers offer separate talks
about the animals as part of the Maasai Journey exhibit? Their (zoo
keepers') expertise is not predicated on their cultural and ethnic
affiliations. On the other hand the Maasai men are meant to be cultural
messengers. But the message that they convey appears to be somewhat at
odds with contemporary Maasai experience, which, as I understand it, is
one of rural, urban, and semi-urban marginalization and is not defined
strictly by a connection to natural landscapes, raising livestock, and
hunting (although these activities are still part of Maasai life). The
cultural message being conveyed is therefore one that employs the
age-old strategy of "fixing" Africans in anachronistic time and space
(the Maasai men are located within the same spatial frame as the
animals since the "savanna" and "African Village" are one and the same
exhibit).

3)It is important not to embark on a public debate about the exhibit in
Seattle without considering the agency of the individuals participating
in the Maasai Journey exhibit. I am told by several Seattlites who have
visited the exhibit that the "cultural interpreters" at the Maasai
Journey exhibit are available for post-tour chats with interested
visitors. From these reports, I have gleaned that some of these men are
college students here in Seattle and several of them were tour guides
and anti-poaching rangers in eastern and southern Africa. Thus, their
work as cultural interpreters is indeed paid work and their inclusion
in the Woodland Park Zoo exhibit should be considered in economic
terms. Furthermore, the zoo's website implies that the participation of
Maasai men in the summer exhibit is part of the institution's
involvement in conservation projects. It turns out that the zoo has
participated in the Maasai Association’s (an organization that bridges
the Seattle area and southern Kenya) Natural Waterholes & Dams
Restoration Project since 2006. However, very little is made of this
"conservation connection" on the Maasai Journey webpage. On this basis,
it is hard to believe that conservation (of African savanna animals?
The Maasai? Or of their waterholes?) is the primary motivator for the
exhibit. Furthermore, visitors are asked to talk to regular docents
rather than Maasai cultural interpreters if they want to find out more
about the zoos involvement in the Maasai Waterholes Project. So why
have Maasai interpreters if they cannot speak for themselves on the
topic of conservation?

4)All of the Maasai "cultural interpreters" are men. Why is this the
case? What message is being conveyed about the place of women in Maasai
society?

5)Although the Seattle-based zoo should be recognized for specifying
that its exhibit deals with one particular example of African culture
(I am still unclear on what makes this a specifically "Maasai" exhibit,
beyond the use of Maasai tour guides), there is still a strange
slippage taking place where "Maasai" stands in for an entire continent
and its diverse peoples and cultures.

What is the role of the academic community in situations like this? As
someone whose work deals in part with the history of ethnographic
exhibitions, I avidly followed the 2005 debate on the "African Village"
at the Augsburg zoo. The questions raised during that discussion have
become even clearer to me now that something similar is taking place in
the city that I recently decided to call home. I somehow doubt that the
2-7 year old children, mine included, that seem to make up the majority
of the zoo's audience will easily navigate the subtle distinctions
between economic exploitation and problematic science on the part of
the zoo and its patrons and economic empowerment through a brand of
cultural and eco-tourism on the part of the Maasai cultural
interpreters. They will, however, leave the zoo with a mental picture
that includes young African men, zebras, giraffes, and Maasai beadwork
in a single frame. As a young scholar, I hope to incorporate the
critical analysis of contemporary events like these into my history
classroom. As an African and a parent, I will continue to boycott this
exhibit and encourage everyone I know to do the same.

--
Itohan Osayimwese
PhD Candidate
College of Architecture and Urban Planning
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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