“Polele: A Myth of Mentawai” | Translation & Interpretation by Dr. Reimar Schefold

Three Sakuddei boys playing with *manggea* bows and arrows.

Polele

A Myth of Mentawai

Translation & Interpretation by Dr. Reimar Schefold

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Amanpabubukerei realizing a new conception of a sitting bird. Sakuddei, 1974.

Sakuddei man fabricating a “toy for the souls.”

Execution of the tattooing for a second time in order to get a clearer pattern. Sakuddei, 1978.

Sakuddei boy weaving a rattan chicken basket, 1967.

A pair of feet incised on a palm tree to memorialize a hunting companion. Maileppet, 1967.

Tattooing of a Sakuddei boy’s breast by his older cousin, 1974.

Tattooing instruments (*patiti*) with wooden mallet (*lilippat*), 45 cm, curved deer horn grip with inserted needle (17 cm), coconut shell (*lakkut angu)* for mixing the black tattoo fluid from soot with sugar cane juice. Wood, deer horn, metal needle, coconut shell. Sakuddei, ca. 1950. NMVW 7086-44.

Panel (*tulangan sikaoinan*) decorated in relief with a crocodile (Crocodilus porosus) from the back wall of the veranda. Only a crocodile hunter was permitted to decorate his house with the image of a crocodile, a right manifested by the hook above its mouth. When the former owner converted to Christianity, they “baptized” the figure by adding a cross. Wood, red and black pigment, mother-of-pearl, 34 x 158 cm. Samonganuot *uma*, Rereiket. Southeast Siberut, ca. 1950.

Detail, harpoon reel. Tortoise shell inlay of sea turtle.

The merchants and the sea turtle. stucco relief h. 79,5 cm, 8th cent., National Museum, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand, Photo Dirk Bakker

Dr. Reimar Schefold

Dr. Reimar Schefold is Professor Emeritus Cultural Anthropology and Sociology of Indonesia at Leiden University. He has a long-standing interest in material culture, art, and vernacular architecture, particularly that of Southeast Asia, which has been the subject of many of his scholarly publications and Museum exhibitions. He has conducted several extensive periods of fieldwork in Indonesia, notably among the Sakuddei of Siberut, Mentawai Islands, where he spent two years from 1967 to 1969 and several shorter stays later; the Batak of Sumatra, and the Sa’dan Toraja of Sulawesi.

He is, with Steven G. Alpert, editor and one of the authors of Eyes of the Ancestors: The Arts of Island Southeast Asia at the Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art; New Haven etcetera: Yale University Press. 2013) and, with Han F. Vermeulen, of Treasure Hunting? Collectors and Collections of Indonesian Artefacts (Leiden: Research School CNWS/National Museum of Ethnology. 2002). His most recent publication is Toys for the Souls: Life and Art on the Mentawai Islands (Belgium : Primedia sprl. 2017) where in the Bibliography more of his writings on Mentawai can be found.

Contact Dr. Reimar Schefold