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Reviewed by:
  • Working with the Ancestors: Mana and Place in the Marquesas Islands by Emily C Donaldson
  • Seth Quintus
Working with the Ancestors: Mana and Place in the Marquesas Islands, by Emily C Donaldson. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019. isbn hardback: 9780295745824; isbn paper: 9780295745831, 280 pages. Hardback, us$95.00; paper, us$30.00

In Working with the Ancestors, Emily Donaldson provides welcome documentation of the enduring importance—yet ambiguous significance—of ancestral landscapes in Oceania. While focused on the Marquesas, Donaldson’s primary thesis will resonate with scholars across the region who are grappling with the idea of ancestral landscapes as spaces actively negotiated by multiple stakeholders. However, the analysis of how these landscape negotiations intersect with contemporary issues of historic preservation and conservation within the context of global heritage development is perhaps the work’s most important contribution. Donaldson’s sensitive attention to the complexity of these issues has resulted in a multi-faceted work well suited for a broad audience. While the disparate narrative may at times raise questions about Donaldson’s primary purpose, the text as a whole hangs together sufficiently to raise the question of whether this complexity is, after all, the point, as stakeholders of different backgrounds bring into view distinct engagements with place and the past.

This ethnography brings contested meanings and events to life through an effective melding of voices, substantive global comparisons, and theoretical contextualization. The first chapters provide a background that helps the reader to understand the complexity of land rights in the Marquesas. While readers familiar with Oceania will recognize many elements of this form of land tenure, it is nevertheless enlightening to read about this manifestation within the context of mission activity and French territorial governance. Importantly, these chapters highlight the changing meanings of ancestral landscapes and the contexts that give rise to those meanings. This sets the stage for the latter three chapters, which operationalize this background to contextualize the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (unesco) world heritage movement within the Marquesas. [End Page 278]

There is a contemporary tendency, especially in the West but also globally, to view archaeological remains, ruins, and historical landscapes as divorced from present concerns, apart from their place in educating the present about the past. This is probably best typified, as Donaldson points out, by the fortress approach to historic preservation, which seeks to limit the kinds of engagement with these resources. The goal of this approach is preservation and maintenance of the site for tourist consumption and, at times, targeted cultural activities. The meaning and value of a site or landscape is often defined by professionals—generally foreign archaeologists—rather than by those who have land-use rights. It is not difficult, then, to see how tensions might arise between the goals of local communities and those of state and national heritage projects. As Donaldson discusses, these tensions arise for several reasons, ranging from the increased territorialization of land to perceived disconnects between ancestors and the people interpreting the behaviors of those ancestors. Even within small communities, tensions can arise regarding the interpretation of ancestral places and the potential of heritage to increase tourism and, therefore, to bring about an improved economic future.

As an archaeologist who works in Oceania, I found this book engaging and thoughtful. It left me considering in a more nuanced way how people think about the past and how meaning about the past is produced and eventually used. Important in this discussion is the definition of the word “heritage.” Donaldson notes that the term is not widely understood—or at least has different meanings—in the Marquesas (121). This is an important point in that it demonstrates a different way in which people engage with the past. In as much as heritage is “what the ancestors left for the people of today” (121), the work of world heritage is an overarching paradigm that structures how one should engage with and think about the past. The growth of a heritage industry or heritage initiatives, while perhaps not intending to, can change how communities think about and interact with their past and ancestral places.

The foundational issue that Donaldson confronts in Working with...

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