For the exhibition at Quai de la Photo, "Tribute" by Franck Desplanques, photographer and editor-in-chief of the programme Rendezvous in unknown territoryWe spoke to Tahnee Juguin for Natives magazine, which has published a new issue of special issuecatalogue and extension of the current exhibition until 28 February.
Tahnee Juguin, a lecturer and scriptwriter whose life was transformed by her encounter with the Mentawai, has shared the life of this Indonesian people for several months over the last thirteen years. She has published a comic strip about these visits: Mentawai (1).
How did you come to meet the Mentawai?
I?ve been interested in indigenous peoples since I was a teenager. When I was 17, in 2010, I travelled to the French Amazon, in French Guiana, thanks to the Zellidja dedicated to young French speakers aged 16 to 21 who want to go off on their own to a country with a subject of study of their choice. The trip lasted five weeks and I really enjoyed it. The following year, I won another grant to go to the island of Siberut.. Indonesia came to mind after reading an article in Survival France about the oppression of the Mentawai under the Suharto dictatorship and their return to the forest when police pressure eased in the 1990s, thanks in part to tourism. I wanted to find out how these people had managed to recover a part of their culture, even though whole sections of it had been banned for some thirty years: community houses (uma) and objects (bells, ornaments, loincloths) linked to the practice of l?arat sabulunganThe mentawai, animism, destroyed, ritual tattoos banned, etc. Become sikerei ? mentawai medicine man? was even prohibited by law! Then I came back to Siberut almost every year for the last 13 years.
With what objectives?
I wanted to understand what the Mentawai people had gone through, to establish links with them. Then, very quickly, I wanted to convey the reality of their lives and convey a faithful image of their way of life and their way of adapting to modernity.. I learned to speak Indonesian and then, over time, the Mentawai language, which is very different, which took me several years. In 2013, I came with a camera to start making a participatory documentary and in 2014, I went back with a producer. But things didn't go according to plan. Some of the footage was hijacked and the project was stolen from us by the producer. The result was a documentary, broadcast on France 5, that does not reflect the reality of the Mentawai and even perverts what they say in order to stick to the myth of the shaman. A year later, I decided to set up the project Mentawai Storytellers with the aim of giving free expression to the Mentawai communities through the making of films by the Mentawai themselves. But filming is not enough: mastery of each stage of production is essential. So we gave them training, particularly in editing, so that they could show their own truth. The comic strip I drew with the artist Jean-Denis Pendanx focuses on the Mentawai?s relationship with the camera.
What is the role of shamans?
Deeply animist, the Mentawai do their utmost to preserve their age-old traditions and pass them on. The sikerei are the custodians and guarantors of this. They structure society, caring for and healing those who suffer thanks to an in-depth knowledge of plants, dances to invoke the spirits and community life. When a man becomes sikereiHe has to tattoo himself to look good and let his hair grow, because the power of sikerei lives there. His wife, too, in honour of her status as the wife of sikerei. According to their belief, the body and soul must always be in harmony. For this reason, beauty is an important part of their culture, as the soul must be constantly seduced in order to remain in the body. They must also respect the many taboos that surround the ceremonies, such as the prohibition on eating certain foods, working or touching one?s wife for several days or even weeks. An initiation is expensive for an apprentice shaman. They have to buy pigs, sago trees, tobacco and pay the tattoo artist in order to complete the initiation rites, respect the will of the spirits and learn as much as possible from their teacher, whom they also have to pay for each lesson.
Have the Mentawai changed the way you look at them over the years?
Yes, the Mentawai people I met changed my mind about their relationship with tourism. I admired the way they looked at the world. A relationship of trust was established with several people from different families. I got to know them. I became an adult with them and these encounters forged my identity. I made friends and they are the ones who keep me coming back to Siberut. Being a woman has also brought me closer to women.
Are women the equal of men?
In theory, their society is fairly egalitarian. But the sharing of tasks is gendered. The men hunt while the women fish, and everyone can take part in community discussions. In practice, however, the situation is more complex: the women look after the children and it is generally the older man who has the last word.
What difficulties are the Mentawai facing?
There is still a high infant mortality rate, and access to contraception and healthcare is difficult. There are dispensaries in the government villages, but they are very poorly equipped. The only hospital on the island is on the coast? so the hours spent by pirogue or scooter depend on the distance and the state of the river and the road. A woman cannot discreetly go to the dispensary to get contraception. In practice, everyone will know what she has come for, and the husband?s agreement becomes difficult to override.
The sikerei have specific knowledge that is the envy of pharmaceutical laboratories, but they cannot treat everything, especially when it comes to complex pathologies. In addition, religious proselytism - Christian and, increasingly, Muslim - is gaining ground and influencing behaviour. Children are going to school and some are losing the Mentawai language, spending less and less time in the forest and no longer acquiring ancestral knowledge. The Mentawai are aware that they live in a changing world. They want to preserve their culture and their autonomy, while at the same time allowing their children access to national education.
It is important to understand that the acculturation that this ethnic group has undergone for decades has distorted traditional ways of life. Many of the sikerei The Mentawai are particularly aware of this and are fighting to preserve their identity and their way of life in total communion with nature. The Mentawai are particularly fearful of deforestation. They depend so much on the forest and its resources to live, to look after themselves, to hunt, to build their homes? Yet the forest is threatened with extinction under the chainsaws of the timber industry and, above all, by road building and pseudo-"green" projects, such as the one developed in the village of Rogdok, where electricity is generated from bamboo? planted in place of the forest.
How are the Mentawai reacting to the development of tourism?
Quite positively. They are aware that they are unique in the world and want to benefit from the money made from tourism. There are few ways of earning money living in the forest. So welcoming tourists is an opportunity to earn some income. But it also has perverse effects, because some people can be envious. They find it hard to understand that the foreigners who come here have a limited budget.
With the fashion for shamanism, more and more Westerners are visiting them. As well as staying in umaTourists must also make a financial contribution to attend a ceremony. However, the ceremony will always be refused if it risks disturbing the spirits. This is where Mentawai beliefs are particularly strong. Even young people today are still very religious when it comes to animism, and this is no joke. The Mentawai are well aware of tourists? expectations in terms of authenticity, and this issue has been thought through by the families. While they use the positive benefits of tourism (to live better in the forest, to study), the comments of over-demanding travellers about their own vision of authenticity are derided by the Mentawai themselves and are (fortunately in my opinion) not taken into account: they don't hide their mobile phones or the objects they use every day, whether they are made of wood, coconuts or plastic. Folklore is present today when the Mentawai try to wear "traditional clothes" for certain activities, or when Mentawai culture is overplayed, often at the request of guides from other ethnic groups. Mentawai families, thanks also to the young Mentawai who have become guides themselves, are now working to achieve a better balance between their life in the forest and their openness to the outside world. Welcoming travellers seems to me to be a particularly fascinating demonstration of their lucidity and mischievousness.
The Mentawai Islands are a small archipelago located around 150 kilometres off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The archipelago is made up of four large islands, Siberut, Sipora, North Pagai and South Pagai, and around forty smaller islands. This geographical isolation is probably the reason why one of the oldest cultures in the world has been preserved here.
1 - Mentawaï! Comic strip by Tahnee Juguin (text) and Jean-Denis Pendanx (drawing). Published by Futuropolis, 2019.
Interview by Brigitte Postel
Opening photo : Franck Desplanques
