Imaging Minority Culture: Photography, Digital Sharing, and Cultural Survival in Northeast China

这是一个研究中国东北两个少数民族以前从未见过的、最近数字化的照片档案的项目：剑桥大学人类学与考古博物馆的埃塞尔·约翰·林格伦收藏的埃文基和奥罗钦社区。剑桥人类学家埃塞尔·约翰·林格伦和她的挪威丈夫兼摄影师奥斯卡·马曼收集了8000张照片，他们在1919年至1921年期间在当时的东北满洲进行了实地调查。他们积累了宝贵的视觉记录，记录了前共产主义中国历史形成时期该地区的人民、地方和民族间关系——在他们被中国政府定居并归类为“少数民族”之前。然而，更重要的是，这些照片也是今天生活在中国的埃文基人和奥罗钦人的高度个人社区记录，他们是照片中所描绘的人的直系后裔，在许多情况下，这些照片代表了他们的祖父母和亲属关系的唯一视觉记录。研究将首先对MAA的照片进行研究，以记录它们的历史信息，确定地点、景观、社会特征和物质文化。由于这些照片描绘的是完全游牧的社区，当时允许自给狩猎，氏族身份突出，日常和仪式活动仍然广泛进行，记录这些将是通过游牧社区的镜头更好地理解该地区民族历史的关键，以及他们如何体现中华人民共和国成立前的文化生活世界。接下来，该项目将首先使用这些照片作为工具，在当代埃文基和奥罗钦社区进行民族志田野调查，确定地点、景观、习俗和实物，以更好地了解共产主义前中国这一形成时期的日常社会生活。我们还将使用这些照片作为解释性的工具，以促进回应和讨论，阐明人们对最近的变化和国家政策的经历，如定居化、现代化和经济发展、环境退化、伐木业的影响和向保护的转变、狩猎禁令、以及最近向民族旅游的转变及其对代表性政治的意义。该项目还有一个重要的社区组成部分，通过与一家香港非政府组织合作，它将把这些藏品纳入中国东北少数民族村庄和中心现有的和新的文化振兴和社区外展活动中。例如，我们将把这些照片用于当地学校的教育项目、语言培训、教授狩猎和手工艺品制作、音乐和舞蹈等技能、森林活动，以及与老年人合作，记录传统文化的各个方面，以便为新的民族旅游业重新发展，并帮助创造其他谋生机会。该项目还将与长老和社区领袖合作，重建未被记录的家庭和氏族历史，为少数民族官员、著名巫师和更广泛的社区编制个人传记，并帮助人们识别以前没有以照片形式出现的个人和家庭成员。鉴于这些照片的近代史及其与当今社区的直接联系，该项目有一个独特的机会，可以帮助人们从国家分类中解脱出来，这些分类往往通过亲属关系、异族婚姻和不断变化的历史联盟而跨越种族类别。更广泛地说，我们记录了数字遣返和共享的过程，并描述了社区和国家行为体在“保护”少数民族遗产和文化的兴趣和投资激增的背景下对它们的使用。

This is a project to research a previously unseen and recently digitised photographic archive of two ethnic minorities in northeast China: the Ethel John Lindgren Collection of Evenki and Orochen communities at the Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Cambridge. This unique archive of 8000 photographs was collected by Cambridge anthropologist, Ethel John Lindgren, and her Norwegian husband and photographer, Oscar Mamen, who undertook field research between 1919-1921 in what was then northeast Manchuria. They amassed an invaluable visual record of the people, places, and inter-ethnic relations of the region during a formative period in pre-communist China history - before they were sedentarised and classified as 'ethnic minorities' by the Chinese state. More importantly, however, the photographs are also a highly personal community-record for Evenki and Orochen people living in China today, who are the direct descendants of those depicted in the photographs, and in many cases the images represent the only visual documentation of their grandparents and kin relations. Research will first be carried out on the photographs at the MAA to document their historical information, identifying locations, landscapes, social characteristics, and material culture. As the photographs depict communities when they were still fully nomadic, when subsistence hunting was permitted, clan identities were prominent, and both everyday and ritual activities were still widely practiced, documenting this will be key to better understanding the ethno-history of the region through the lens of nomadic communities, and how they embodied their cultural lifeworlds before the founding of the PRC. Next, the project will first use the photographs as tools during ethnographic fieldwork amongst contemporary Evenki and Orochen communities, identifying locations, landscapes, practices, and material objects to better understand everyday social life during this formative period in pre-communist China. We will also use the photographs as hermeneutic tools in order to prompt responses and discussions, elucidating people's experiences of more recent changes and state policies, such as sedentarisation, modernisation and economic development, environmental degradation, the impact of the logging industry and shift towards conservation, a hunting-ban, and the recent shift towards ethnic tourism and its significance for the politics of representation. The project also has an important community-based component, and by partnering with a Hong Kong-based NGO it will incorporate the collection into existing and new cultural revitalisation and community-outreach initiatives in minority villages and centres across northeast China. For example, we will use the photographs in educational programmes at local schools, language training, teaching skills such as hunting and craft production, music and dance, forest activities, as well as working with elders in documenting aspects of traditional culture to be re-developed for the new ethno-tourism industry and to help generate alternate livelihood opportunities. The project will also work alongside elders and community leaders to reconstruct un-recorded family and clan histories, develop individual biographies of minority officials, prominent shamans, and the wider communities, and assist people in identifying individuals and family members often not seen in photographic form before. Given the recent history of the photographs and their direct connection to communities today, the project has a unique opportunity to help disentangle people's actual lived-identities from state classifications, which often cut across ethnic categories through kinship, intermarriage, and shifting historical alliances. More broadly, we document the process of digital repatriation and sharing and describe their uses by community and state actors in the context of surging interest and investment in 'protecting' minority heritage and culture.