Harna's Heritage

The consequences of the first Pulang Kampung journey, of distributing copies of Legacy in Cloth among Batak weavers and their families, have evidently not yet achieved completion. The pebbles that I threw into the water then are still creating rings.

In 2010 I gave a copy of Legacy in cloth to Ompu Sihol’s only child (a son) and his youngest son (i.e. Ompu Sihol’s grandson), Juni. Ompu Sihol was my weaving teacher in 1980, the one who so thoroughly taught me the basics of weaving that this knowledge served as the foundation for all my subsequent understandings and documentation of Batak weaving techniques. I described my emotional Pulang Kampung moment, back in her village in Harian Boho, in one of my blogs. It was confrontational to be back in the village where I began my anthropological career as a 24-year old. The lessons with Ompu Sihol had been challenging. She was strict and I was unsure of myself, suffering greatly from culture shock. We managed to muddle our way through our respective cultural misunderstandings and I gradually discovered her good and kind heart and she forgave my confusions. On the last day when we ate our ritual lunch together, we had chicken and I was given the wings (I had given up my vegetarian lifestyle in the village). Ompu Sihol flapped her arms and said that the wings were to help me weave back in my village. I hope that I have done those wings proud even though I have never really become a weaver. I recorded her singing a weaving song on that day. Little did I know that thirty years later it would become the theme song of my film, Rangsa ni Tonun. Her daughter-in-law repeatedly urged me to “not forget the family” and I gave her my promise. “How would I be able to forget you?” I asked in return. When in 2010, thirty-five years later, I gave a copy of Legacy in cloth to Ompu Sihol’s son, his wife was already deceased, he was blind and could not witness the book, and his granddaughter (son Juni’s daughter) had never seen a Batak weaving loom. Times had changed drastically. Ompu Sihol's son was the only one living in the dying village. There were no more weavers in the valley. When I handed over my book, I offered it to three generations that descended from Ompu Sihol, three generations that represented the end of weaving in Harian Boho.  I could not help but wonder how the book would be received, not just then, but on into the future. What would it mean to them? At least they would have a record of an ancestor who was a master weaver and she could be a source of pride for them.

After a few years, a young woman named Alph Kianna Harna contacted me through Facebook saying that she was one of Ompu Sihol’s great grandchildren. She had seen the copy of Legacy in cloth that I had left behind in Ompu Sihol's village and she had googled my name. Her father was one of the little boys living in the village when I was there, one of the sons of that daughter-in-law and that now blind man. I met Alph Kianna Harna briefly when she came to Taman Mini at the launch of Pulang Kampung III and we hugged each other. She felt like family. I liked her equanimity and presence. She said that she worked for Singapore Airlines. We stayed in touch.

Harna had her first meal in The Netherlands with us.

Wonder of wonders, when I last returned from Indonesia (29 September 2015), Harna landed at Schiphol during her first visit overseas. Our planes landed at the same time and we fetched our luggage in the same hall. We met as we were both exiting that hall and I brought her home with me to give her a cozy bed where she could get over her jetlag. Our plan was that I would show her Ompu Sihol’s weaving equipment and textiles.

Harna looked at the pictures of her great
grandmother in my book.

I showed Harna her great grandmother's loom.

Harna said that she didn't know about
Batak weaving.

And we did that. We thumbed through the many pages in Legacy where her great grandmother is depicted. I shared my stories with her and she shared her reactions -- also to my collection of pictures taken during those fateful months. 

It turned out that the grandson who had been given the task of
looking after the chicken for our lunch grew up to be Harna's father.

It felt so odd to be in the position of sharing information about Batak weaving to a descendant of my erstwhile weaving teacher. It must have felt just as odd for Harna. I experienced the need to point out that I had purchased the weaving equipment, that I had exhibited it on several occasions, that I hoped that I had sufficiently honoured it through my work, that I hoped that one day it would all go back to the Batak area. I was gratified when Harna said that she was pleased that I had looked after it all so well. I had been a good custodian but I felt also strangely guilty. It is Harna’s heritage! Our bond is therefore very strong. I care about her as though she is my own family because she is inextricably bound up with the most important heritage of my career. How remarkable to share that heritage with her in The Netherlands! I remembered carrying out the wooden implements on my head as I walked from Ompu Sihol’s village to the edge of the lake, then packing it in crates to be shipped out to The Netherlands: my “anthropological study collection”.

My “stuff” is not unlike collections in anthropological museums: material that can rekindle culture in the places where it was acquired. But it needs to be shared with the descendants. What will Harna’s path look like? I hope I attain a great age so that I can keep track of her and her future children.

And I hope that Ompu Sihol and her daughter-in-law, Harna’s great grandmother and grandmother, were smiling down on us, nodding in approval. How many times Ompu Sihol had shaken her head while watching me fumble my way through a weaving technique and shared her amazement and dismay with her ever-curious neighbour. I gave Harna my blown-up picture of the two of them sitting together. 

Recognition from the Indonesian Government for my culltural activities

Today is the first of two days being spent on celebrating the Culture Awards issued by the Indonesian Ministry of Culture and Education. There are many people gathered here in Jakarta to help celebrate. I have the  honour of  being a recipient of one of the awards. This is the first year that foreigners have been eligible to receive the award. I am touched by the gracious  generosity of  this great country, Indonesia. On many occasions I have been overwhelmed by the kindness, support and loyalty of its people.

My life has been especially enriched by the great creative talent that is found in this nation.  I am awed by this talent  when I listen to Indonesian music, for example, or look at Indonesian textiles. Indonesia has one of the richest legacies of indigenous textiles in the world: fine, complex, refined, tasteful, difficult to make, unique, and requiring patience, know-how, knowledge of nature, and a strong spiritual foundation. Cultural products are testaments to the capacities and achievements  of mankind. These great cultural achievements are the reason why I come to Indonesia. They are why I love Indonesia. They are why I have devoted myself to the textile arts of Indonesia. There is nothing more satisfying in life than being close to the greatest spiritual and cultural achievements that the world can boast.

I would like to ask the Indonesian people to safeguard its ancient cultural heritage.  This  is the greatest legacy of your ancestors that you can pass on to your children. There are values other than the value of money and these are the only values that are enduring and that enrich the mind and spirit. No matter the monetary wealth of a national and its peoples, you are bankrupt without these enduring cultural values. Guard them. Promote them. Nurture them. Honour them. Share them. Teach them to your children. They are as fragile as they are precious. Exclusive devotion to monetary value will destroy them.

During my past in Indonesia, I have worked on Pulang Kampung projects. These projects have represented a way of giving resources to the villages in order to sustain and encourage them. I ask the  people of Indonesia to support and celebrate the makers of your heritage. That is the same thing as supporting your identity, your spirit, your children and strengthening the basis of your own sense of pride and satisfaction.

Goodbye Ompu Sandra, Selamat Jalan

The Pulang Kampung team met Ompu Sandra in 2013 when we moored at Hasinggaan to show our film Rangsa ni Tonun and thus restore to the Batak people in that isolated little bay a sacred and beautiful piece of Batak literature about weaving. Ompu Sandra lived in the village next to the harbour.

This is the shore where our boat put in. Ompu Sandra lived in the house
to the left with the blue trim around the bottom.

Without knowing anything about her or the village, we knocked on her door to ask where there were weavers and to make an initial contact. We needed to find a place to show our film.

Ompu Sandra woven underneath her house
where she was shaded from the sun.

It was bull’s eye immediately. Ompu Sandra turned out to be a weaver and we were able to watch her carefully thread her weft through her warp. Then she left her loom and made her house available for an impromptu film showing. It was a small gathering but it was important for all of us because of Ompu Sandra’s reaction. She wept as she watched the film.

Ompu Sandra was very moved by the film.

She knew all the weaving techniques show in the film.

She identified with the weavers in the film. 

I needed to know why she wept and I asked what it was that had touched her so deeply. She expressed admiration for her ancestors; was touched to see all of these processes in the film, processes that she had not seen for decades. “But why are you crying”, I asked, “if you are filled with admiration?” The cat gradually came out of the bag: because the work was so very arduous. She was empathizing with the weavers of the past. She was imagining how difficult and time-consuming all the processes of weaving had been, from spinning to dyeing to setting up the loom to finishing a textile. “Is it the hard work that makes you cry?” I asked in all innocence. But then the cat emerged fully. No, because there is no recompense for the effort expended!

Ompu Sandra was living the end of the Batak
weaving arts and experiencing the pain of it.

Ompu Sandra launched into her tale of woe. She had brought up her children on the proceeds of weaving. She worked very hard. Morning and night. Under her house on stilts that sheltered her from the burning sun. But now the money that she was receiving for the sale of a finished textile was so paltry that her long hours were for almost no recompense at all. How could women be expected to look after their families? What was to become of them? She asked us to show our film to everybody who would pay attention to it, especially government, consumers, anybody who might be able to ameliorate the problem. She advised us to penetrate deeper into Hasinggaan and to play the film again and again.

I gave Ompu Sandra a copy of Rangsa ni Tonun. We gave
all of our hosts a copy so that they could refer to it after we were gone
 and share it.  

The screening of Rangsa ni Tonun with Ompu Sandra is not something I can forget. Nor do I want to forget it. I later looked for a market specifically for her but circumstances made it hard to get in touch with her. I hoped that, when finally successful, I would not be too late and she would have stopped weaving altogether.

But I am too late. Ompu Sandra has stopped weaving forever. Lasma knows someone who hails from Hasinggaan and thus she learned of Ompu Sandra’s death. She shared the news with me on the telephone. We don’t know the circumstances of Ompu Sandra’s death. Given my brief association with the elderly weaver, I have a dull, heavy sense that she died of grief from the hardship of weaving fruitlessly. If it didn’t kill her, this grief accompanied her to the grave. It is hard to know how to stop mourning this fact, especially knowing that Ompu Sandra is not alone in reaching the end of the market and the end of her tether at the same time as Batak weaving, as the world has known it, also comes to an end.

We did as Ompu Sandra bid us to do: we showed Rangsa ni Tonun again and again, to consumers, to government, to everybody who would pay attention to it. All agree that it is a crime if the Batak weaving arts disappear. Nobody knows exactly what to do to ameliorate the situation. Ompu Sandra’s plea lives on, even if she does not. May she rest in peace.

(All photographs, except the first, are by MJA Nashir)

A Reaction to Rangsa ni Tonun

It is essential to continually raise awareness about the importance of feeding back cultural materials to the peoples whence they originated. Anthropologists and textile researchers don’t do enough of that. The results may only emerge years later but in this time of cultural crisis, cultural erosion and cultural disappearance, feeding back can be critical. In 2012 MJA Nashir and I showed our film, Rangsa ni Tonun, (about the Batak weaving tradition) in dozens of locations throughout the Batak area and beyond and we handed out my book about the film and the original Batak text to almost a hundred people. This was done in the context of considerable decline and lack of interest in the Batak weaving arts.

But as I write now, a little corner of Facebook is abuzz with plans for Batak textiles on the initiative of a man whom I only know through Facebook, “C.f. Sidjabat”. This is how he explained his motivation:

“…ini yang sedang kita lakukan. Inspirasi lama waktu muda terbuka lagi setelah melihat film "Rangsa ni Tonun" karya ‪Mja Nashir (art director) dan ‪Sandra Niessen (producers). Karya yang luar biasa peneliti "halak sileban" yang begitu mencintai Ulos Batak. Saya ingin meberi sumbangsih walau hanya sedikit.”

Translation:

“…this is what we are doing. An old inspiration from my youth was rekindled after seeing the film, “Rangsa ni Tonun” by MJA Nashir (art director) and Sandra Niessen (producer). An exceptional work by a researcher “halak sileban” who really loves Batak textiles. I wish to contribute even if only modestly.”

What is he doing?

Mr. Sidjabat writes down information supplied by the weavers
in his village. I am delighted to see that two copies of Legacy were
used at the meeting

He is planning an exhibition of Batak textiles, specifically those from his region (Silalahi/Si Tolu Huta). While he lives in Jakarta, he has gone to the effort of returning to his valley where he has assembled the weavers. Together, around the table, they discussed the highlights of their tradition. He made notes. They gave him the names of the 14 textiles that are unique to the region; many brought samples to show him. To my great delight, when he shared this information on Facebook, he presented a profile of each weaver. They were not left anonymous. (Nai Ati in the sidebar of this blog was

Nai Ati was also at the table and she had brought the copy of Legacy
that I had given to her during the first Pulang Kampung project.

present, and depicted at the meeting. This made me very happy. She brought her copy of Legacy to the meeting.)  C.f.Sidjabat is a mover and shaker with a good track record in motivating the people in his region to cherish their culture and nature. He is a man with a mission.

This area (Silalahi and the neighbouring Paropo) is one of the few areas where Batak weaving is still being done, but even here the ancient styles typical of the region are often being sidestepped to cater to the demand from outside markets. The meetings with weavers and the planned exhibition will emphasize the uniqueness of

With the help of the weavers, Mr. Sidjabat assembled
a list of the specialty textiles of his region.

the Si Tolu Huta tradition. It will teach – and hopefully inspire – the youth. It will give energy and pride to the weavers. Hopefully it will stimulate both the market and production. The weavers are old. Their skills need to be transferred to the youth!

C.f.Sidjabat intends to write a leaflet to inform the world of the Silalahi/Si Tolu Huta tradition – not just the textile names but also the patterning. He is sharing his plans, results and inspiration through Facebook, thereby involving, informing, inspiring many people. I am also excited. To the best of my knowledge there has never been an exhibition of the “Silalahi Tradition”. This primeur will buck the wave of what I call “Palembangization” that has been compelling Batak weavers to make Palembang look-alikes in order to corner the currently glitzy market. The exhibition will say, between the hanging cloths, “Your own tradition has value too!”

Hopefully the other Batak regions will follow suit. Few Batak people today know which textiles are typical of their own tradition. Lasma and I have already been talking about doing something like this in Simalungun….

New legacy (and information) from Legacy

I have a new friend on Facebook: Hotnida Saragih. As soon as I accepted her friendship request, she wanted to chat. She knew my book, Legacy, she said, because I had visited her mother’s textile store sometime in the past and because, quite by chance, her grandmother is depicted on page 129. “She is the one wearing a green sweater and chewing betel,” Hotnida said by way of indicating which picture. I had snapped the picture when walking by because it was a rare example of a person still wearing an indigenous headdress, but I had not spoken to its wearer. Now, 29 years later, I was chatting through Facebook to her granddaughter. One cannot help getting a few goose bumps.

Our chat was interesting. Hotnida has taken over her mother’s shop in Pematang Siantar called “Ulos Gedogan Kain Simalungun”. (They used to have a ‘kiosk’ in Saribu Dolok; that is where the picture on page 129 was taken.) This immediately whet my interest. “There is quite a difference between the textile market of today and what your Mom used to know,” I threw out, curious how she would respond. She was in overwhelming agreement. “Nowadays people are interested in quantity but not quality,” she responded. “The artistry in the textiles has disappeared.”

Tapak Satur

In response to my subsequent question about whether there was a demand for textiles of high quality, she was able to answer in the affirmative and point out that she was trying to meet this market by introducing Simalungun textiles in silk. This, too, made me curious. Silk? I had brought silk from Makassar to Hutagalung in 1986 but none of the weavers had been able to use it; it just was not suited to the Batak backstrap loom. Hotnida, however, insisted that it was possible, that she truly was using the backstrap loom, and that it was real silk and not synthetic. She obtained her silk from a friend in Bandung, she said, but she did not know its origin.

She had had a few silk outfits (sarong and selendang) woven in Porsea. Again my interest was piqued. Simalungun textiles woven in Porsea (a Toba region south of Lake Toba) from silk???? “They are still traditional Simalungun textiles,” she claimed…  I could not help but begin to wonder about her definition of “traditional textiles”, especially given that there are essentially no Simalungun weavers left. It turned out she was referring to the textile patterning; her textiles are the Tapak Satur variety, a Simalungun pattern often used by brides. “Tapak Satur being woven in Porsea?” I queried. “Why not?” was the response. “The Porsea weavers are better at using fine yarn than the Silalahi weavers,” she pointed out. I made a mental note to try to look this up someday and take pictures.

Bulang

Then her story about her traditional Simalungun textiles took another interesting turn. The signature Simalungun textile, known as ‘Bulang’, she has woven in Jambi (a province in the south of Sumatra), she said. At this point, I just about fell off my chair. The story became a little more credible when she pointed out that it was Simalungun weavers, originally from Tiga Runggu (until recently the centre of Bulang production in Simalungun) in Jambi who were doing the weaving. Again, she stressed, “traditional Simalungun”.

How much more complex the geography of Batak textile production has become!