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If successful, the initiative will extend to other Pacific communities and involve other museums across Australia, New Zealand and the United States, according to Australian Museum director and CEO Kim McKay.
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The Australian Museum would initially offer expertise in cultural conservation and preservation and help to catalogue and digitalise objects.
Evacuation of objects in need of urgent conservation to Australia would be a last resort, McKay said, but not out of the question.
Made of natural fibres and wood, objects are particularly vulnerable to degradation in changing climatic conditions “which is why the clock is ticking on these precious Pacific collections”, McKay said.
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McKay acknowledged the imbalance of Pacific nation’s minimal contributions to global warming and the impact of a dramatically changing climate.
The Australian Museum’s head of Pasifika Collections, Melissa Malu, said grassroots connections could only be positive.
Inspecting the Tuku’aho Museum on the Tongan island of Tangatapu in January, Malu found display cases were contaminated with ash from the 2022 underwater volcano eruption. Repairing or replacing cases could be an outcome of multilateral links, but this would be self-determined.
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The project could also assist with repatriation of ancestral remains and other culturally sensitive objects. Two ancestors were returned to Tonga earlier this year.
The trial project, an Australian first, was announced in the museum’s vast Rydalmere storage facility, the size of an airport hangar, where most of the Australian Museum’s 65,000 Pasifika collection objects are held.
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Kennedy was welcomed by Maori collections officer Logan Haronga, who blew the customary horn, the pukaea, declaring to ancestral spirits the ambassador’s arrival in friendship.
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To cement their bonds, she was offered a cup of kava, consumed throughout the Pacific.
Kennedy announced her departure from her key diplomatic post before the shock election of Donald Trump, and declined to take questions on the Trump presidency and its implications for Australian-US relations.
But she said it had been an honour for her to represent President Joe Biden as ambassador to Australia, citing its help to combat COVID, cervical cancer and provide humanitarian assistance during natural disasters.
“He has made the Pacific one of his top priorities as president,” Kennedy said. “We’ve opened new embassies, sent people there to learn, and is personally meaningful to me as well given my family connection to the Pacific, and my visit last year to these islands to meet the families who helped rescue my father.”
In line with American diplomatic conventions, Kennedy’s term will conclude by the day of the presidential inauguration on January 20.
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