{"pk":58012,"title":"Decolonial Knowledge Production and Reconnection through a Mormah Headdress from Simbu","subtitle":null,"abstract":"This article explores the relationship between knowledge, colonial entanglement, and material culture through the case study of a ceremonial headdress, a \nmormah\n, from Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea, currently held in the Linden-Museum Stuttgart. The \nmormah\n, once used during highland rituals such as \nbuka ingu\n, exemplifies how colonial collecting practices decontextualized culturally significant objects, transforming them from living ceremonial regalia into static museum artifacts. Drawing on postcolonial theory and Donna Haraway’s concept of “situated knowledges,” the authors adopt a collaborative, decolonial methodology that brings together archival museum research and oral history interviews conducted in the Kuman language with a key cultural informant: co-author Clara Bal’s grandmother. This interdisciplinary and transnational research design highlights the epistemic authority of insider knowledge and the ethical imperative of trust-based engagement. By analyzing the symbolic, ecological, and ceremonial meanings of the \nmormah\n, the article foregrounds the object’s role within Indigenous systems of memory and social reproduction. The authors argue for a reorientation of museum practice that goes beyond provenance as property tracing, toward provenance as a relational, ethical, and political project. Through this approach, the \nmormah\n becomes a site of cultural resilience and epistemic repair, offering new pathways for restitution, reinterpretation, and collaborative knowledge production between museums and societies of origin.","language":"en","license":{"name":"Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives  4.0","short_name":"CC BY-NC-ND 4.0","text":"Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\n\nNonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.\n\nNoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.\n\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"Decolonial knowledge, collaborative research methods, Simbu, mormah headdress, Papua New Guinea Highlands, material culture, colonialism"}],"section":"Articles","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3jk9z61d","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Clara","middle_name":"","last_name":"Bal","name_suffix":"","institution":"","department":""},{"first_name":"Katharina","middle_name":"","last_name":"Nowak","name_suffix":"","institution":"","department":""}],"date_submitted":"2025-10-31T14:30:49Z","date_accepted":"2025-10-31T14:30:49Z","date_published":"2025-01-01T00:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/pacificarts/article/58012/galley/44189/download/"}]}