Colonialism

Readjusting the focus: Exercising agency through the Ballangbang cultural dance

In this photograph from the Missouri Historical Society archive, titled by author Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870-1942) as “As God made them… Pierre Chouteau”, it depicts 4 Bontoc Igorot (an ethnolinguistic group of indigenous Filipinos from the Cordillera region of the Philippines) boys as they dance what is most likely the Ballangbang, a cultural dance performed during mass celebrations and social gatherings.

Champurrado to Champorado: Understanding cross-border connections through my childhood

Pictured in the first photograph is pictured the champorado, a Filipino dessert dish made of sticky rice and tablea (tablets of ground roasted cocoa beans) and topped with milk and sugar. The champorado is often served for breakfast or merienda (afternoon tea), and is served alongside dried fish as a salty balance to the dessert’s sweetness.

Woven Cloth at The Janson Holland Shop

Pictured here is a textile produced in India for the Ghanaian cloth market. It is a black and white cloth that appears to use a combination of a type of compound weave and floating warps. The patterns are taken from kente, a fine handwoven cloth originating in central and southern Ghana. It is woven in a way that imitates the structure of true kente, which is comprised of several narrow strips of cloth sewn together at the selvage. Kente is a treasured symbol of wealth and status among the Akan (the family of ethnicities to which the Asante belong) and the Ewe people.

Frybread, colonialism and resistance

Native American populations in the US have long been subject to stereotyping and destruction of their respective cultures. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Native Americans often found themselves at war with the colonial settlers; however, war did not just manifest physically. American colonists waged war against Native culture itself, attempting to assert the cultural superiority of the white man largely through Christian missions and the capture and destruction of Native lands and landmarks. Another facet of the cultural war was through food.

Imaginations of a Street

Mesha Murali, Senior Research Assistant, Centre for Community Knowledge, Ambedkar University Delhi, for her story took inspiration from all the exhibited photos for the session on Reading/Writing/Re-writing/Telling/Re-telling using prompts, 20 December 2019.

I saw people sitting on the street, outside their houses, talking, eating and enjoying the passing day. Children were playing games, laughing, dancing to music and being asked by their parents to stay at a safe distance from the main street.

Weaving luntaya acheik (1): Modernising Traditional Craft Practice

The Saunders Weaving and Vocational Institute (SWVI) is situated in Yay-twin-nyi-naung ward, Lay-su quarter, Amarapura Township, Mandalay Region on the side of Mandalay-Sagaing road.

Till 1910, the local weavers used the hand throwing loom which could weave 24 inches only. When Mr. L. H. Saunders, Judicial Commissioner of Upper Burma, found that the technology of hand loom in Myanmar was old, he introduced in 1910, a fly shuttle loom used in England.

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