Tobelo North Moluccas in images

On 19 April 2023 Museum Maluku received a special donation from Prof. Dr Jos Platenkamp. Platenkamp (1951) is a cultural anthropologist and, until 2017, held the chair of social anthropology at the Institut für Ethnologie of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster, Germany. In 1979, 1980 and 1982 Platenkamp stayed for extended periods in the village of Paca in the Tobelo region of the North Moluccas. There he researched the social structures and cosmology within this Tobelo community. The research resulted in many publications and in a dissertation on which he obtained his doctorate at Leiden University in 1998.

Donation

Platenkamp’s donation consists of a copy of his dissertation ‘Tobelo, Ideas and Values of a North Moluccan Society’ (Leiden 1988), the catalogue of the exhibition ‘De Waarde der dingen, ceremoniële geschenken van de Tobelo’ (Museon, Dec 1990–March 1991) and, very special, 580 slides taken in the Tobelo district during his research in 1979 and 1980, including many research notes.

Slide collection

The slide collection consists of 24 colour slide films, systematically arranged and mounted. The slide collection has been described in detail by Platenkamp and shows various events and rituals such as the ceremonial hola* war dance (cakalele), weapons, meals and also the funeral of a child who died of cholera.

Particularly striking are the images and documentation of Platenkamp’s own ritual ‘marrying-in’ in the village of Paca. Through this ritual Platenkamp received the kinship relations that make it possible to sleep, eat and work safely in the village and among ‘relatives’ in other villages.

Marriage ritual

Many slides are devoted to the performance of the wo geri-doroa ritual, a marriage ritual in which dozens of people from Paca and the neighbouring villages of Leleoto and Yaro took part. Wo geri-doroa literally means: ‘he (visits) the brothers-in-law and parents-in-law’. The bridegroom is accompanied by his relatives to the house of his future family. Over the following two days other parts of the marriage ritual follow.

Documentary film Tobelo Marriage

In 1982 Platenkamp returned to the village of Paca in Tobelo, this time in the company of the cultural anthropologist and filmmaker Dirk Nijland (1938), ibu Lis Asinoellah, cultural anthropologist at the Universitas Indonesia in Jakarta, and Frans Rijoly, assistant curator at the Siwa Lima Museum in Ambon. The four stayed for more than three months to film a marriage ceremony and all the rituals that a marriage involves, such as the marriage negotiations, the preparations and the rituals of the marriage itself, which last three days.

At a Tobelo marriage a large-scale exchange takes place of valuables, weapons, plaited work and food between the two parties. In this film we see the bride-receiving family of the bridegroom Wempi Ano and the bride-giving family of the bride Henni Rope.

Dirk Nijland has donated his film Tobelo Marriage on DVD to Museum Maluku. Together with Platenkamp’s donation it gives a wonderful picture of the special rituals of the Tobelo communities. They are a beautiful and welcome addition to the collection of Museum Maluku.

Head Curator Huib Akihary