Ancestral Memory

To cite this article: Eby, M. (2002). Ancestral Memory. In J. Mitoma (Ed.), Envisioning Dance on Film and Video. New York and London: Routledge. Ancestral Memory

I have a memory. I keep it well hidden . . . tucked away in the folds of neglect that shroud the daily rituals of work and play and sex. It gnaws at the edge of my dream like a hungry shark as I swim in aqua blue sleep—forcing me to abruptly bob to the surface like a deep-sea diver who suddenly runs out of oxygen—even though this action could force small bubbles of air into my blood-stream that will slowly make their way to my brain and end my life with a stab of concentrated pain. I open my eyes in the dark and my body is covered in sweat. This is the way memories make themselves remembered. If I could take my memory and shed a little light on it, mold several bodies from clay and prop them in the corner, breathe life into them and teach them how to dance, I could begin to capture their movement frame by frame at thirty frames a second and soon my memory would be made flesh. If the bodies developed a will of their own I would interview them and call it a documentary . . . a memory recreated. Would I still open my eyes in the dark covered with sweat trying to remember—or trying to forget? “Ancestral memory” was a term used by Pualani Kanakaole in a conversation at the UCLA National Dance/Media Leadership Conference in February of 1999. Pualani is from a leading Hawaiian family in the performance of an ancient Kahiko style that has been passed down to successive generations in a long line of transferrence. She wasn’t referring to a personal memory . . . the memories of childhood that we collect and order on a shelf in a closet reserved for that purpose. She was talking about memory that is

embodied in rhythm and chant and movement and creates a very specific response in the body of the performers and the community to which it is offered. Many of my strongest personal. memories involve the observance of embodied ancestral memory in New Guinea highlands ceremony. Since they are the memories of a child, many are the product of a childish curiosity or the startled fear of witnessing something for the first time. The first few years of any child’s life are full of these moments—an alien being observing the strange practices of what soon becomes familiar and unremarkable. I remember the excitement in the air as hundreds of people gathered: the earshattering squeals and horrified screams of huge, black, fattened pigs as they were clubbed to death, their skulls crushed by large wooden stakes; the smell of burnt pork flesh as the hair was singed off and the bloody carcasses sliced and prepared for the large earth ovens; the explosion of rocks that couldn't take the high temperature in the large bonfires that were created to heat the stones for the earth ovens — the overwhelming smoke that hung over the ceremonial ground and made you rub your eyes red. I remember a bride price ceremony where the bride, a young girl who had been my part-time babysitter was dressed in her finest regalia: long bird of paradise feathers, woven bark-string apron, perfumed leaves crushed into tight arm bracelets, skin oiled and powdered. She was suddenly picked up by two of her cousins and rushed across the ceremonial grounds — they rushed her across in a flurry of rustling feathers and leaves to her new husband's people while they let out a piercing wail. As a child, the cry was unexpected and startling — my baby-sitter did not seem happy and the wail made me tremble.

I remember courting couples at the New Years day fete who, once again, in all their regalia, painted faces and oiled skin, would sit at the edge of the festivities in long lines, couples with their legs entwined, rubbing red-painted noses and singing songs in unison — a subtle nod of the head producing a not so subtle shake of their feathers in what can only be characterized as a bird-like fashion. I remember the funeral of the Ontekeleka warrior who had been killed in battle. The wailing of the women and the men covered in yellow mud, yanking tufts of hair out of their scalp and beard as they sat massed around the coffin on a raised platform. How another group of men, all brandishing spears, swept out of the coffee grove and humming like angry hornets circled the ceremonial grounds, stamping the earth, rushing forward and then slowing to a jog, shouting for revenge. I remember that same tribe, years later, finally making peace with its neighbors. Hundreds of warriors in their feather regalia, ceremoniously breaking their arrows in half, hundreds of men moving and singing in synchronization, performing peace on a former battle-field where they had ritualized the enforcement of environmental justice and searched to create balance in the dispute over land and the loss of life. I sat on my friend's shoulders and looked out on an ocean of feathers and men covered in black soot. My uncle pointed to the queer little hill that pointed out of the small river-plain, like a wayward island on the edge of that ocean of feathers, and explained that it was the local Garden of Eden. "That is the origin place of the first man and woman," he said. And who was I to argue? I have recounted these memories for a reason. It is a political act . . . as personal as it may appear. The reason I make films about bodies that swirl in the mist, and shuffle

in the dark, and sway in long parallel lines in the mid-day sun. . . bodies that circle and step to the beat of the drum and the ipu and the shake of the rattle . . . voices that cry out in ancient song to the rhythm of the heart pumping . . . the reason I recreate these performances frame by frame is because they invoke a spirit rarely remembered by the the world that now wraps its arms tighter and tighter around me—a world that is becoming networked and codified through the tentacles of its own digital technology. A world where bodies sit rigidly transfixed by a glowing screen, only the fingers performing a rapid tap-dance on the attached keyboard, as they practice contemporary art and communication that requires no bodily contact . . . no presence. It encourages the proliferation of an anonymous community of rigid bodies staring at the glowing screen, all invisibly connected but strangely detached from each other. Ancestral memories are rarely seen or heard and their language rarely understood in our contemporary world of transfixed bodies. It is a political act to take these performances and use digital technology to give them a voice because it forces people to remember things they would prefer to forget . . . a powerful way of moving and singing and being present in community . . . an ancestral memory.