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The Journal of Pacific History, Vol. 45, No. 1, June 2010
Sugar Plant Hunting by
Airplane in New Guinea
ACinematic Narrative of Scientific Triumph and Discovery in the ?Remote Jungles?
JOSHUA A. BELL
WRITING ABOUT INDIAN PRINT IMAGES, CHRIS PINNEY ASKS ?CAN ONE HAVE A HISTORY
of images that treats pictures as more than simply a reflection of something
else, something more important happening elsewhere?? Elaborating on this
proposal, Pinney suggests that, instead of images supporting what we ?already
know . . . What . . . if pictures have a different story to tell . . . one told, in part,
in their own terms??1 While scholars have increasingly interrogated
photographs to write more critical histories of the Pacific, film has been less
significantly examined.2 Notable exceptions are found, however, in the work
of Jane Landman and Jeff Geiger, who both use film to investigate Australian
and United States colonialism and their accompanying imaginaries.3
Contributing to this literature on Pacific history as articulated through film,
I take up Pinney?s challenge to consider film as a source for critical historical
narratives, as well as an agent in shaping them. To do so, I discuss the 1929 silent
35-mm black and white film Sugar Plant Hunting by Airplane in New Guinea.4
Emerging out of an intriguing episode in the global history of sugar, the film
chronicles the 1928 Sugar Expedition to the Territories of Papua and New
Guinea organised by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).5
1C. Pinney, ?Photos of the Gods?: the printed image and political struggle in India (London 2004), 8.
2 See E. Edwards, Raw Histories: photographs, anthropology and museums (Oxford 2001); C. Ballard, A. Ploeg and
S. Vink, Race to the Snow: photography and the exploration of Dutch New Guinea, 1907?1936 (Amsterdam 2001);
J.A. Bell, ?Losing the forest but not the stories in the trees?, Journal of Pacific History, 41:2 (2006), 191?206.
3 J. Landman, The Tread of a White Man?s Foot: Australian Pacific colonialism and the cinema, 1925?62 (Canberra
2006); J. Geiger, Facing the Pacific: Polynesia and the U.S. imperial imagination (Honolulu 2006).
4 The 64-minute film is in the Smithsonian Institution?s Human Studies Film Archives, Suitland MD
(82.7.1).
5 The history of sugar involves a network of people, places and tastes, in which New Guinea plays an
important role as a site of domestication of S. officinarum L. The USDA?s expedition was one of four trips to New
Guinea to collect parent stock for breeding (1928, 1935, 1951 and 1957), and was preceded by a series of
Australian expeditions to develop varieties for the Queensland sugarcane industry (1875, 1892, 1893, 1895?96,
1908, 1912 and 1921). E.W. Brandes, ?Into primeval Papua by seaplane: seeking disease-resisting sugar cane,
scientists find neolithic man in unmapped nooks of sorcery and cannibalism?, National Geographic 56 (1929),
253?332; E.W. Brandes and G.B. Sartoris, Sugar Cane: its origins and improvement (Washington DC 1936); E.F.
Artschwager and E.W. Brandes, Sugarcane (Saccharum Officinarum L.): origin, classification, characteristics and
descriptions of representative clones (WashingtonDC1958); J.H. Buzacott andC.G.Hughes, ?The 1951 cane collecting
expedition to New Guinea?, The Cane Growers? Quarterly Bulletin (Queensland Bureau Sugar Experiment Stations)
ISSN 0022-3344 print; 1469-9605 online/10/010037?20; Taylor and Francis
! 2010 The Journal of Pacific History Inc.
DOI: 10.1080/00223344.2010.484166
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The Expedition?s primary purpose was to collect sugarcane varieties from which
to hybridise cane resistant to mosaic, a virus then ravaging the ?noble? sugarcane
(S. Officinarum L.) of the Louisiana sugarcane industry.6 Conceptually conflating
?noble? sugarcane?s previously unknown wild progenitor (S. robustum) with the
perceived primitive nature of the human communities encountered, the
Expedition created distinct artefacts and networks, the narratives about which
helped sustain colonial imaginaries about New Guinea as timeless and primitive.7
Within the film, the scientific activities of the Expedition?s members are quickly
subsumed by the more visually arresting scenes of communities living ?just as
primitively as [they] did uncounted thousands of years ago?.8 While this denial of
the coevalness of indigenous communities with ?modern? humankind is far from
unique, the articulation through which science, exploration and colonial
authority constructed these artefacts and their networks is worth exploring in
an effort to understand the ways in which the film participated in the formation
of a distinct ?visual economy? of racial difference.9
While focusing on Sugar Plant Hunting, I acknowledge that the film is part of an
assemblage which includes sugarcane, an aeroplane, still and moving cameras, a
virus transmitted by aphids, New Guinea communities and government
agricultural and business interests. These entities interacted over the course of
the Expedition, and the subsequent work in laboratories in Florida, Hawai?i and
Java, and at the Smithsonian?s National Museum of Natural History
(NMNH).10 Though an awkward film, Sugar Plant Hunting gives a visual
presence to aspects of these networks, while also actively partaking in their
interactions. Despite being saturated with stereotypes, the film?s visual narrative
illuminates how the Expedition?s members wished to be seen and what the film-
makers understood themselves to be doing.11 Positioning film as an effective and
( footnote continued)
15:2 (1951), 35?72; J.N. Warner, ?Sugar cane: an indigenous Papuan cultigen?, Ethnology, 1:4 (1962), 405?11;
S. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: the place of sugar in modern history (New York 1985); P. Ahluwadia, B. Ashcroft and
R. Knight (eds), White and Deadly: sugar and colonialism (Commack 1999); F.K. Errington and D.B. Gewertz,
Yali?s question: sugar, culture, and history (Chicago 2004).
6 Appearing in 1912, by 1926 mosaic had drastically reduced US sugarcane production. J.L. Coontz,
?Sugar cane of New Guinea under inbreeding test here?, Washington Post, 7 April 1929, 7; G.R. Conrad and
R.F. Lucas, White Gold: a brief history of the Louisiana sugar industry 1795?1995 (Lafayette 1995), 66.
7Of the clones collected, 141 of 164 belonged to the ?noble? sugarcane (S. officinarum L.), a name derived
from its commercial value, thick stalks, colourful stems and high sugar content. Discovering S. robustum
confirmed for the Expedition that New Guinea was a centre for sugarcane domestication. Newspaper accounts
similarly conflated the ?primitive varieties of sugar cane?, and the savageness of the communities encountered.
Anonymous, ?Flew 10,000 miles in the East Indies. Brandes Expedition of Agriculture Department returning
from New Guinea?, New York Times, 18 September 1929, 20; Anonymous, ?Cannibals cheated of meal by
roaring seaplane motor, and so Dr. E.W. Brandes government pathologist lived to tell the tale?, The Evening Star,
19 October 1928, 40.
8 Brandes, ?Into primeval Papua?, 253.
9D. Poole Vision, Race, and Modernity: a visual economy of the Andean image world (Princeton 1997), 8?9; See also
C. Ballard, ?The art of encounter: verisimilitude in the imaginary exploration of interior New Guinea,
1725?1876?, in M. Jolly, S. Tcherke?zoff and D. Tyron (eds), Oceanic Encounter (Canberra 2009), 221?58.
10D. Harraway, Modest-Witness@Second-Millennium. FemaleMan-Meets-OncoMouse (London 1997).
11 S. Kracauer, ?The little shopgirls got to the movies?, in T.Y. Levine (ed.), The Mass Ornament: Weimar
essays (Cambridge 1995), 294.
38 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY
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affective technology through which visual images are turned into circulating
artefacts, I examine the Expedition and its encounters as visually depicted,
thereby contributing to the interrogation of colonialism?s visual and material
processes.12
Sugar Plant Hunting is a deceptive and partial source. While this partiality is
inherent to all media, the film has particular omissions, which are a by-product
of its makers? self-aggrandising intentions, as well as the needs and perceptions of
the institutions which funded the project.13 However, brought alongside the
Expedition members? photographs, ethnographic collections and texts, one can
begin to read the film (and indeed these other materials) ?against the grain?,
revealing their silences. This enables a more contextual understanding of the film
and Expedition, and a more nuanced reading of its members? image- and
knowledge-making practices.14 Editing aside, film?s indiscriminate documenta-
tion of what moves in front of its lens can yield footage containing details that
circumvent the film-makers? intentions and allow for other histories to be told.15
The film?s images enliven the Expedition members? encounters, opening another
means by which to consider possibilities not constrained by the film-makers?
narrative.16 Sugar Plant Hunting is therefore not only an important source of
forensic information about the what, who and when, of the Expedition, but also a
way to understand the how and why. Through this examination, I seek to
unsettle the Expedition?s triumphal visual and textual narratives and present the
beginnings of a more multifaceted history of the entanglement of sugarcane,
people, place and knowledge.
While space precludes a fuller discussion of their materiality, I turn to the
assemblages that the Expedition and the film created and participated within.
Following an overview of Sugar Plant Hunting, I focus on the Expedition?s
encounters in the Lake Murray?Middle Fly and the Upper Fly River regions.
Here I explore the filmic imaginaries about these locales, together with their
slippages, and thus how the film contains cues for other histories and possibilities.
Movements and Assemblages
Although organised by the USDA, the 1928 Sugar Expedition resulted from the
collaboration of agricultural, commercial and government interests manifest
12D. MacDougall, The Corporeal Image: film, ethnography, and the senses (Princeton 2006); N. Thomas,
Colonialism?s Culture: anthropology, travel and government (Carlton 1994); B. Latour, Pandora?s Hope: essays on the reality
of science studies (Cambridge 1999); J. Fabian, Out of Our Minds: reason and madness in the exploration of Central Africa
(Berkeley 2000); H. Raffles, ?The uses of butterflies?, American Ethnologist, 28:3 (2001), 513?48; E. Mueggler,
?The Lapponicum Sea: matter, sense, and affect in the botanical exploration of Southwest China?, Comparative
Studies in Society and History, 47:3 (2005), 442?79.
13 It is unfortunately outside the boundaries of this paper to discuss the power dynamics between the
Expedition?s funders, members and current holding repositories.
14 B. Douglas, Across the Great Divide: journeys in history and anthropology (Amsterdam 1998), 18; M.R. Trouillot,
Silencing the Past: power and the production of history (Boston 1995); R.J. Gordon, Picturing Bushmen: the Denver African
expedition of 1925 (Athens, OH, 1997).
15 See a similar argument for photography in Edwards, Raw Histories, 107?26.
16G. Dening, ?Empowering imaginations?, The Contemporary Pacific, 19:2 (1997), 423.
SUGAR PLANT HUNTING BY AIRPLANE 39
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in the Colonial Sugar Refining Company of Sydney, the Celotex Company
of Chicago, the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association and the Administration
of the Territory of Papua.17 Led by Dr E.W. Brandes, principal pathologist
in charge of the USDA?s Plant Industry?s Office of Sugar Plants, the Expedition
engaged two other scientists: Dr Jacob Jeswiet, a Dutch sugar scientist renowned
for his pioneering work in Java, and Mr C.E. Pemberton, an entomologist who
specialised in sugarcane insect pests and worked for the Hawaiian Sugar Planters
Association. Mr Richard K. Peck, aeroplane pilot, cinematographer and
photographer, accompanied these men.
Equipped with a Fairchild FC-2WI, in four months the Expedition travelled
throughout eastern New Guinea collecting 164 clones of sugarcane, and
discovered a new wild species (S. robustum Brandes & Jeswiet ex Grassl) from
which ?noble? sugarcane was domesticated.18 Mapping new geographic features,
they helped to demonstrate further the capacities of air travel to the colonial
government.19 The Expedition acquired some 428 ethnographic objects, shot
some 2,000 photographs, and exposed 4,000 feet of 35-mm film.20 These
materials are now dispersed between the Smithsonian?s NMNH, the National
Anthropological Archives, Human Film Studies Archive, the National Archives
of the United States and the National Geographic Society Archives.21 While each
component of the total archive encapsulates interrelated moments, the only full
narrative of the Expedition is found in Brandes? 1929 National Geographic
article and the film itself.22
A decade known for its spectacular economic boom, new forms of technology
in the 1920s ? particularly the aeroplane, alongside smaller and more portable
still and motion-picture cameras ? helped to collapse time and space and
remake distant places in the colonial imaginary. Enabling new modes of visuality
and subjectivity, these technologies transformed travel and popular entertain-
ment, leading to the perception that this was ?the era of the last flowering
17While the network?s entirety is not yet discernable, Celotex, which made particle board from shredded
sugarcane residue, gave the Expedition its plane and facilitated permission from the colonial authorities for the
Expedition. The USDA appears to have funded the rest of the endeavour. Brandes, ?Into primeval Papua?, 259;
J.H. Galloway, ?The modernization of sugar production in Southeast Asia, 1880?1940?, Geographical Review, 95:1
(2005), 1?23; Dr Brandes? Expedition to New Guinea (1927?1928), National Archives of Australia, Canberra,
A458 AN118/8.
18 Artschwager and Brandes, Sugarcane.
19 The Expedition was able to clarify aspects of the cartography of the Fly and Strickland Rivers, and Lake
Murray. No documents as to the Papua administration?s views to the results of this mapping have yet been
located. Brandes, ?Into primeval Papua?, 259, 314?15; J. Sinclair, Wings of Gold: how the aeroplane developed New
Guinea (Bathurst 1983), 279?80.
20Memorandum from Mr Fisher to Mr LaGrace 25 October 1928, National Geographic Society Archives;
Brandes, ?Into primeval Papua?, 255; V.L. Webb, ?Photographs of Papua New Guinea: American expeditions
1928?29?, Pacific Arts, 11 and 12 (1995), 72?81.
21Upon Brandes? death, his wife destroyed his personal papers. Jeswiet?s, Peck?s and Pemberton?s papers
have not yet been located. Elizabeth Brandes Goldfandon, pers. comm. 2000.
22National Geographic?s editors helped to make this text more salacious, thus further obfuscating the
Expedition?s encounters. For a general discussion of editorial considerations in this period, see C.A. Lutz and
J.L. Collins, Reading National Geographic (Chicago 1993), 27?31; for another narrative about the trip see J.
Jeswiet, ?Met de vliegmachine opzoeknaardenstam-vorm vanhet suikerriet op Nieuw Guinea?, Tijdschrift Nieuw
Guinea, III (1938), 425?7.
40 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY
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of travel-adventure before the globe became flooded by mass tourism?.23 Steeped
in the rhetoric of salvage and participating in the travelogue genre, Sugar Plant
Hunting?s narrative and ?visual witnessing? reinforced the notion that visual
technology had redemptive power to preserve disappearing authentic cultural
forms. Within this framework, the rhetoric of the film?s inter-titles disavowed the
agency of communities encountered, portraying them as either children or
savages, upon whom the Expedition?s members acted.24
By 1928, the Pacific held a particular place within this genre. Films such
as Osa and Martin Johnson?s Among the Cannibal Isles of the South Seas and
Robert Flaherty?s Moana capitalised on and helped to create the region?s
perceived blend of being remote, exotic and populated by savages.25 While these
films and other narratives undoubtedly influenced the Expedition?s cinemato-
graphers (Peck and Brandes), two other films and their expeditions to
New Guinea were particularly influential: Pearls and Savages and By Aeroplane
to Pygmy Land. As has been discussed elsewhere, Pearls and Savages was part of an
unprecedented world tour by the Australian entrepreneur, photographer and
film-maker Captain Frank Hurley, who pioneered the use of an aeroplane in the
region.26 Besides reinvigorating imaginaries about New Guinea?s inhabitants as
paradoxically timeless yet imperilled by external forces, Hurley?s model
of expedition?film?publicity venture inspired others such as Mathew Stirling,
who participated in the massive Dutch?American Expedition to Dutch New
Guinea in 1926. Former assistant ethnology curator at the NMNH, Stirling also
pioneered exploration by aeroplane and, while not publishing a major popular
account, did a film-lecture tour, which fed popular perceptions about Pygmies.27
These precedents undoubtedly played a role in the Sugarcane Expedition?s
narratives through Peck, who was a cinematographer and the assistant aeroplane
mechanic in the Dutch?American Expedition. While no supporting materials
have yet been located, I believe that Brandes consulted Stirling before
undertaking his expedition and it was through his advice that Peck was hired,
and that ethnographic materials were collected and given to the NMNH.28
23R.J. Gordon, Picturing Bushmen, 95; see also R. Dixon, Prosthetic Gods: travel, representation, and colonial
governance (St Lucia Qld 2001); J. Ruoff (ed.), Virtual Voyages: cinema and travel (Durham 2006).
24 E. Edwards, ?Performing science: still photography and the Torres Strait Expedition?, in A. Herle and
S. Rouse (eds), Cambridge and the Torres Strait (Cambridge 1998), 133; J. Clifford, ?On ethnographic allegory?,
in J. Clifford and G. Marcus (eds), Writing Culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography (Berkeley 1986), 98?121;
R. Stella, Imagining the Other: the representation of the Papua New Guinean subject (Honolulu 2007).
25M. Johnston and O. Johnston, Among the Cannibals of the South Seas (1918); R. Flaherty, Moana: A Romance
of the Golden Age (1926); L. Lindstrom ?They sold adventure: Martin and Osa Johnson in the New Hebrides?,
in L.A. Vivanco and R.J. Gordon (eds), Tarzan was an Eco-Tourist (New York 2006), 93?110; Geiger, Facing the
Pacific.
26 F. Hurley, Pearls and Savages (New York 1924); J. Specht, When the Cause of ?Science? Is Not Enough: Frank
Hurley in Papua (Armidale 2003). Dixon, Prosthetic Gods, 48?98.
27 P.M. Taylor, By Aeroplane to Pygmyland: revisiting the 1926 Dutch and American expedition to New Guinea
(Washington DC 2006) http://www.sil.si.edu/expeditions/1926/
28 An examination of Peck?s materials from both expeditions still needs to be completed.
SUGAR PLANT HUNTING BY AIRPLANE 41
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Beyond the fashionable enthusiasm and various forms of impetus outlined
above, one can only speculate about the motivations behind the making of Sugar
Plant Hunting. This confusion stems from the film?s convoluted path to the
Smithsonian?s Human Studies Film Archive (HSFA). Shot with an unknown
35-mm camera (both hand-held and on a tripod), Sugar Plant Hunting was edited
in 1929 under Brandes? supervision in the now-defunct Motion Picture Division
of the USDA (1929?76). In 1978, E. Richard Sorenson, a visual anthropologist
who worked in Papua New Guinea, rescued the film, extra film reels,
photographic prints and glass plates from the decommissioned Motion Picture
Division, which he deposited into the National Anthropological Film Center,
the HSFA?s precursor.29 The United States National Archives possess the only
other extant segments of the film in 16-mm format. The first is 16 minutes of
Hula village from Sugar Plant Hunting?s sixth reel. The other is an eight-minute
educational film, entitled Sago Making in Primitive New Guinea, which consists
of footage shot near Ambunti, Middle Sepik taken directly from Sugar Plant
Hunting.30 Although Sugar Plant Hunting appears to have been made for USDA
research and promotional purposes, I believe that Brandes anticipated
conducting a film-lecture tour, and may well have made the film with this
in mind. While the collapse of the stock market shortly after the Expedition?s
return may have destroyed these aspirations, the National Geographic
Society screened the film to illustrate a talk by Brandes entitled ?Where Dwells
Neolithic Man?.31
Prior to this screening, Brandes showed the Expedition?s footage to a
National Geographic employee. An unsigned memorandum to Franklin F.
Fisher, Chief of the National Geographic?s Illustration Division, by the
employee, provides the only response to the footage discovered to date. Noting
some problems with exposure, views of scenery that ?generally were uninteresting
and much too long?, and sections where ?there was either no action or very stiff
action?, the employee comments that
I can see . . . the making of excellent entertainment . . . The parts to be preserved
would reveal reasonably good lighting and acceptable posing, while the subject-
matter would prove diverting and instructive. I have said that the views of scenery
were uninteresting, but I must not overlook the fact that in one sense these views
possess very real geographic interest. Until Dr. Brandes had visited certain lakes,
for instance, many of them were unrecorded, at least by name.32
29 Pam Wintle, pers. comm. 2008; see Sorenson, The Edge of the Forest: land, childhood and change in New Guinea
protoagricultural society (Washington DC 1976).
30 The first segment (NWDNM(m)?33.393) came to the National Archives (NA) from the NMNH before
the founding of the HSFA, while the later (NWDM(m)?16-P-119) came to the NA after the decommissioning
of the USDA?s film unit.
31 It is unclear whether Brandes gave his lecture on more then one occasion or if his original lecture was
postponed. Anon., ?Trips in far lands topics of lectures?, The Washington Post, 10 November 1929, 12; Anon.,
?Dr Brandes to tell adventures in Papua?, The Washington Post, 28 February 1930, 4.
32Unsigned memorandum to Franklin F. Fisher, 11 November 1928. National Geographic Society
Archives.
42 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY
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The employee also notes, ?Dr. Brandes mentions nervousness and imminent
hostility of the natives, great humidity and high temperatures as serious
obstacles?.33 Though illuminating of National Geographic?s visual interests, these
remarks also highlight Brandes? perception of danger during the Expedition,
which informed subsequent narratives.
Photography was another important means by which the Expedition collected
data, particularly around sugarcane. In the same memorandum, the employee
comments,
Dr. Brandes told me . . . that his still views had been taken with much greater care.
These still views, by the way, treat fully . . . the work of the expedition in securing
sugarcane cuttings . . . . The motion pictures touch the topic of sugarcane hardly
at all.34
While the film?s omission of sugarcane is surprising given its title, it is
understandable when one considers that photography was much better suited
to document sugarcane in situ. Filming, by contrast, appears to have been
directed principally at documenting the various encounters of the Expedition
members. While it remains unclear what cameras the Expedition members used,
within the film Brandes is shown using an unknown Graflex camera model to
document sugarcane (Figure 1).
In addition to the Smithsonian?s prints and negatives, the National
Geographic Society?s Archive (NGSA) contains images that Brandes sold as
FIGURE 1: Still from Sugar Plant Hunting of Brandes taking a photograph, with a Graflex,
of Ivan Champion holding sugarcane on the Upper Fly River (Courtesy of the Human Studies
Film Archive, Smithsonian Institution).
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
SUGAR PLANT HUNTING BY AIRPLANE 43
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part of his publishing deal.35 Though both collections range from portrait shots
of people encountered to images documenting the Expedition and sugarcane,
the NGSA collection is more personal and provides intimate glimpses of the
Expedition members? activities. While the reasons for these discrepancies are
unclear, the NGSA collection demonstrates that photographs were taken for
various purposes and that an unknown percentage of these images are now lost.
Brandes and Peck took the majority of these images, and Jeswiet took a series
of photographs of gardens.36
Ethnographic collection was another defining activity. As Brandes tellingly
remarks, ?Primarily, of course, we came for cane; yet, important as that quest
was, it was only natural that the strange tribes we bartered with were even more
interesting than the plant life we found.?37 ?Fishhooks, safety razor blades, empty
cigarette tins and colourful cloth? were an essential means by which Expedition
members established social relations with communities and thus negotiated
access to gardens. Though the contents of the NMNH?s four ethnographic
collections vary, the material consists of objects (arrows, bows, feathers, rattan
armbands) which were easily transported by aeroplane alongside sugarcane
samples.38 When unable themselves to visit villages and collect objects, Brandes
and Peck relied on community members bringing them materials. As a result,
the collections have embedded within them traces of indigenous selection and
thus their agency. The survey quality of the trip and the perishable nature
of cane cuttings also meant that the Expedition only stayed on foot within a
locale for ?a few hours or a few days? before flying back to the base camp.
These constraints limited what could be accomplished.39
?A Party of Three Scientists and an Airplane Pilot View Vast, Rich Island
Empire, Discover Rivers and Lake?
With the above as its first inter-title, Sugar Plant Hunting introduces the
Expedition. Deploying a well-known travelogue visual trope, Brandes? finger
traces their steamer?s route from New York to Samarai via Auckland and Sydney
on a globe. Their arrival story follows the display of regional maps and consists
of an eight-minute montage in which the aeroplane is loaded in New York, and
35The Smithsonian?s NAA possess 149 mixed glass-plate negatives and positives, as well as numerous prints
(91?8). The NGSA has 133 prints, 99 of which were published in Brandes? 1929 article. If his claims of taking
2,000 photographs are to be believed, then images remain to be found. Letter from G.H. Governor to
E.W. Brandes, 30 October 1928, National Geographic Society?s Archive.
36 Brandes also used photographs taken by Father Franz Kirschbaum (see below), and by Alfred Gibson,
who ran a photographic studio in Port Moresby. More photographs by these and other members of the
Expeditions have yet to be found. Webb, ?Photographs of Papua New Guinea?, 73; M. Quanchi, Photographing
Papua: representation, colonial encounters and imaging in the public domain (Cambridge 2007), 55.
37 Brandes, ?Into primeval Papua?, 304.
38 Brandes assembled the largest collection, which he donated on 25 July 1929 (NMNH 106509).
He purchased the second collection of objects from Percy Robinson, the long-term manager of Ogamobu
Plantation on the Kikori River (NMNH 106585). After his premature death, Peck?s mother-in-law Mrs C.A.
Kleinoscheg donated the last two accessions on the 25 January and 15 October 1936 (NMNH 137754 and
131988). It is presently unclear whether Jeswiet or Pemberton collected objects.
39 Brandes, ?Into primeval Papua?, 295; Brandes and Sartoris, Sugarcane, 568.
44 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY
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the voyage through the Panama Canal to New Guinea is celebrated. The viewer
is similarly transported over great distance to encounter supposedly untouched
communities. Enchanted by the enabling capacities of their own technology, the
Expedition consistently saw stasis and timelessness where there was movement
and history.40 For example, the first scene of Papua shot in Samarai consists
of footage of men in outrigger canoes next to the Expedition?s aeroplane. This
juxtaposition establishes a leitmotif of the film and the Expedition members?
photographs, whereby the self-perceived superiority of Western technology is
affirmed over the supposed primitive mentality and technology of communities
in Papua and New Guinea.41 Aspects of the film footage, however, belie this
intent and reveal the agency of these communities and their connections to the
wider world. This is where the dissonance of the film?s inter-titles and the footage
itself becomes apparent. While inter-titles draw the viewer?s attention to the
men ? ?Coastal natives of Melanesian type in outrigger canoe. They are
distinguished by mops of frizzle hair? ? plainly visible on the shore are the
infrastructure of the colonial government and economy, such as warehouses.42
Ignoring the presence of these buildings, along with questions of how the men
in their canoes are entangled within the economic networks of these structures,
the film conflates material culture and physical appearance as markers of race
and temperament. Here, simplicity is inferred by differences in technology, and
communities are marked as somehow less civilised. Such dissonances between the
realities of the lives of community members and the film?s projection of primitive
mentality onto them are found throughout Sugar Plant Hunting. Bringing these
otherwise unmentioned, but visually present, aspects of the colonial realities
of Papua and New Guinean communities to the fore helps to destabilise the
notions of racial inferority pronounced by the film?s inter-titles, and to
recontextualise the encounters of the Expedition (Figure 2).43
Reinforcing the technological difference foregrounded in this scene, the film
contains multiple aerial shots. The trip to Port Moresby consists of a panoramic
pan in the cockpit, and aerial shots of the coast, villages and gardens which
are interwoven with celebratory inter-titles: ?New Guinea?s natural scenery is
enchanting from the air ? and the features attributable to primitive man even
more thrilling when seen for the first time.? Aerial travel and surveillance were
central to the Expedition members? redefining of ways of seeing, and exploring
New Guinea.44 The panopticism afforded by these aerial views was illusory, and
worked to obscure the Expedition members? perceptions of the communities?
movements and histories. As the film unfolds, the aeroplane is a constant
40 J. Fabian, Time and the Other: how anthropology makes its objects (New York 1983).
41 See Quanchi, Photographing Papua, 140?2.
42M. Demian, ?Canoe, mission boat, freighter: the life history of a Melanesian relationship?, Paideuma, 53
(2007), 89?109.
43 Though Brandes is the presumed source for the inter-titles, the extent of his knowledge of anthropology is
unclear. For discussions of misunderstandings of anthropology of the time, see N. Thomas, Out of Time: history
and evolution in anthropological discourse (Cambridge 1989); B. Douglas and C. Ballard (eds), Foreign Bodies: Oceania
and the science of race 1750?1940 (Canberra 2008).
44Dixon, Prosthetic Gods, 48?98.
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presence, either as a means by which images are obtained, or as backdrop or
stage for encounters. Montages of the aeroplane taking off and aerial scenes of the
countryside are repeatedly deployed to reiterate its centrality, such that the
aeroplane itself becomes a mode of representation, a condensed icon
of modernity.45
By contrast, the film largely glosses over the Expedition?s other equipment.
A short scene of supplies on the charted auxiliary ketch Vanapa becomes
FIGURE 2: Stills from the footage of the Expedition?s aeroplane at Samarai surrounded by men
in their outrigger canoes. In the background a whaleboat is visible, as are various stores
and government buildings (Courtesy of the Human Studies Film Archive, Smithsonian
Institution).
45 J. Ruoff, ?Introduction?, Virtual Voyages, 6?9.
46 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY
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shorthand for the Expedition?s ten days in Moresby obtaining provisions,
which consisted of
1,150 gallons of aviation gasoline . . . tons of tinned food and rice, 3 portable boats
with outboard motors, 6 wall tents and 39 tent flies, and usual complement of cots,
blankets, fine-mesh sleeping nets, arms, ammunitions, hospital goods, and an
assortment of scientific supplies, including still and motion-picture cameras . . . 46
The Expedition also involved an array of colonial intermediaries who made their
travel possible: eight armed Papuan Constabulary, and their commanding officer
Assistant Resident Magistrate Ivan Champion; the camp manager Roy Bannon
who supervised a crew of eight Papuans, including Gano, the cook, Euki, the
wash boy, Emere, the aeroplane?s crew, and Nape, Brandes? assistant.47 These
individuals and infrastructure are temporarily foregrounded through panoramic
shots of the base camp at Everill Junction on the Strickland River and of the
Expedition?s members, which are interspersed with a scene of the constabulary
force drilling. These segments, particularly the latter, are remarkable visual
documents of the performance that colonialism entailed, and its various
negotiations.48 Other Europeans encountered are unevenly shown in the film.
While Father Kirschbaum of the Marienberg Mission, who assisted Brandes and
Peck in their visit to the Sepik appears in the film, Caroline Mytinger and
Margaret Warner, American socialites who hitched a ride on the Vanapa to
Everill Junction do not.49
While waiting three weeks for the Vanapa to reach Everill Junction, the
Expedition collected sugarcane around Moresby, along the coast in the Central
Province and in the Papuan Gulf. A short sequence of the latter appears after
footage of the Lake Murray?Middle Fly and the Upper Fly River area, while the
longer scenes of Hanuabada, Elevala, Hula and Aroma appear at the film?s end.
Despite the reasons for this non-chronological editing remaining unclear,
I suggest that Brandes strategically positioned the segments in this way so that
the film proceeded directly to the Expedition members? ?discoveries? in the
interior. In this way, the appropriate mix of tension and expectation is preserved,
and the more ?civilised? communities of the Central Province become a foil by
46 Brandes ?Into primeval Papua?, 267?8.
47 Brandes, ?Into primeval Papua?, 267. Champion?s experiences with C.H. Karius exploring the Upper Fly
River in 1926?27, made him the logical choice for the Expedition. C.H. Karius, ?Exploration in the interior of
Papua and North-East New Guinea?, The Geographical Journal, 74:4 (1929), 305?20; see I. Champion, Across New
Guinea from the Fly to the Sepik (London 1932); J.P. Sinclair, Last Frontiers: the explorations of Ivan Champion of Papua.
(Queensland 1988).
48 C. Gosden, ?On his Todd: material culture and colonialism?, in M. O?Hanlon and R.L. Welsch (eds),
Hunting the Gatherers: ethnographic collectors, agents and agency in Melanesia, 1870s?1930s (New York 2000), 227?50;
A.I.K. Kituai, My Gun, My Brother: the world of the Papua New Guinea colonial police (Honolulu 1998); Stella,
Imagining the Other.
49Mytinger and Warner travelled throughout the Solomons and New Guinea painting portraits (1926?30).
Though noted in Brandes? National Geographic article, their absence in the film extenuates the masculine
achievement of the Expedition members. Though not mentioned by name, the Expedition also interacted with
patrol officers in Kikori, Lae and at Ambunti, along with Moresby residents Beatrice Grimshaw, Lt Governor
Murray and F.E. Williams. Brandes ?Into primeval Papua?, 267, 316, 321, 326, 331; C. Mytinger, New Guinea
Headhunt (New York 1946), 347?92.
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which the remoteness of Lake Murray?Middle Fly and the Upper Fly River
communities are heightened.
Leaving Everill Junction in early August, Brandes and Peck flew to Moresby
and proceeded by air to Madang, where Father Kirschbaum joined them. Using
the Ambunti police station as a base, the three explored by plane the Middle
Sepik and made a short excursion to the Upper Sepik. The film disjointedly
represents these visits with a brief focus on an unnamed village in the Upper
Sepik, and the western Iatmul village of Nyaurangai (Jaurangi in the film).
The only substantial footage from this time lies in Brandes and Peck?s
documentation of sago preparation near Ambunti. The film then shifts to
villages around Moresby and along the Aroma coast, where extended filmic
portraits of people, their dress and architecture echo earlier photographic
preoccupations of previous visitors.50 The extended footage of clothed
Hula villagers holding their bibles is not remarked upon and any higher status
that viewers might infer from these materials and inter-title references to their
Polynesian blood, beauty and absence of headhunting, is qualified by placing
the Hula villager?s status as civilised in quotation marks. Absent from the film
are any comments about the activities of Jeswiet and Pemberton who, escorted
by Champion, collected sugarcane near Rigo while Brandes and Peck travelled
around the Sepik.51
The film ends with the Expedition?s reunion in Port Moresby?s harbour,
followed by disjointed scenes from the steamer trip to Australia, where once
again the aeroplane is featured, and the purpose of the Expedition reiterated
through a scene of Brandes watering collected sugarcane cuttings (Figure 3).
Absent from the film are any references to the planting of sugarcane samples
in the Colonial Sugar Refining Company?s Sydney facilities before the departure
for Vancouver by boat; or the shipment of the sugarcanes by rail to Washington
DC, and then to a ?detention greenhouse? in Arlington VA, where after a year
they were sent to an experimental station in Florida for breeding.52
?Tens of Thousands of Square Miles of the Earth?s Surface Never Looked Upon
by White Men Before?: Lake Murray?Middle Fly and the Upper Fly River
The Expedition?s activities at Everill Junction during July are the film?s most
explicitly romanticised sequences, and where perceptions of the remoteness
and savageness of those encountered are starkest. As the inter-title that forms
this section?s title indicates, the Expedition?s movements captured on film in this
region were steeped in the rhetoric of pioneering exploration.53 These perceptions
obscured the regional and global networks by which these communities were
50Quanchi, Photographing Papua, 111?25.
51 Sinclair, Last Frontiers, 85; I. Champion ?Rigo District with the American Sugar Commission for the
purpose of collecting canes?, Port Moresby Patrol Report (Canberra 1928), G91, Item 555, Reel 45, University of
San Diego Special Collections MSS 53 Microfilm.
52 Brandes ?Into primeval Papua?, 332; Artschwager and Brandes, Sugarcane, 34?5.
53 Compare with Brandes, ?Into primeval Papua?, 284?5.
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connected to outsiders, and their cosmologies of engagement with nonhuman
actors.54 Echoing colonial administrative rhetoric, and anthropological mis-
perceptions of New Guinea populations of the time, the regions become foils for
one another with Lake Murray?Middle Fly communities being characterised
by their headhunting and cannibalism practices, while those of the Upper Fly
River are Negritos, ?remnants of a vanishing race . . . ? whose ?diminutive, likable
people must be regarded with compassion?.55 Yet filmic and textual ruptures
concerning these encounters subvert such narratives.
Though the Lake Murray?Middle Fly footage is a confusing composite of
unnamed locales, Brandes did record village names while collecting artefacts,
thus providing a sense of the Boazi and Zimakani speaking communities
encountered.56 On the main body of Lake Murray, they visited Kaundoma
and Maravu, while on the Strickland they visited Davom and Miwa. They also
ventured to Daviumbu Lagoon, and ?discovered? Wam Lagoon, which they
named Lake Herbert Hoover.57 Though briefly mentioned in Brandes? article,
FIGURE 3: Still of Brandes, tending to sugarcane cuttings on a steamer bound to Sydney (Courtesy
of the Human Studies Film Archive, Smithsonian Institution).
54M. Busse, ?Sister Exchange among the Wamek of the Middle Fly?, PhD thesis, University of California
(San Diego 1987); P. Swadling, Plumes from Paradise: trade cycles in outer Southeast Asia and their impact on New Guinea
and nearby islands until 1920 (Boroko 1996); R.L. Welsch, ?Pig feasts and expanding networks of cultural influence
in the Upper Fly?Digual Plain?, in A. Strathern and G. Stru?rzenhofecker (eds), Migration and Transformations
(Pittsburgh 1994), 85?120; M. Busse, ?Wandering hero stories in the Southern Lowlands of New Guinea:
culture areas, comparison, and history?, Cultural Anthropology, 20:4 (2005), 443?73; S. Kirsch, Reverse
Anthropology: indigenous analysis of social and environmental relations (Stanford 2006).
55 Brandes, ?Into primeval Papua?, 304. C. Ballard, ?Strange alliance: Pygmies in the colonial imaginary?,
World Archaeology, 38:1 (2006), 133?55; Stella, Imagining the Other.
56Mark Busse, pers. comm. 2008; Justin Shaffner, pers. comm. 2008.
57 Brandes named the lake because of Hoover?s ?sympathetic promotion of commercial aviation? and his
?popularity in Australia?, which derived from his work in the Western Australian goldfields. Brandes, ?Into
primeval Papua?, 259, 314?15.
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no filmic reference is made to previous European activity in the Lake
Murray?Middle Fly area. This lacuna facilitates the deployment of the tropes
of first contact that follow.58
The circling of a longhouse in an unnamed adjacent lagoon (possibly
Daviumbu) introduces the Lake Murray?Middle Fly region. An inter-title
announces ?First meeting with the headhunters. This village was probably never
visited by whites before and the natives were at first prostrated with fear.?
In National Geographic, Brandes remarks ?It goes without saying that we were
considered supernatural?.59 ?First contacts? are rife with conflicting perceptions,
not the least of which are European misunderstandings of the supposed fear
of those encountered. The strong emotions that these encounters provoke
may in fact be wonderment at the communities? capacities to forge social
relations with strangers. Of central issue in these encounters for Melanesians was
their attempt to turn these encounters into productive conduits for exchange.60
The wandering hero narratives that informed communities? understandings of
their regional connections undoubtedly complicated these encounters, as did
violent and non-violent interactions around the Bird of Paradise plume trade.61
More telling than Brandes? posturing is that mutual recognition was soon
established through trade. This, however, did not dissuade Brandes from
describing this first encounter in his article as involving him heroically advancing
with turkey-red calico, while Peck ?sought to make a deathless film record of our
first meeting with the renowned head-hunters?.62
Poor lighting appears to have relegated this event to the film?s extra reels
during editing. If my identification is correct, any tension present in this
encounter is belied by Brandes? glance to make sure Peck is filming and by
Jeswiet?s casual checking of his belt pouch for items of trade. Though the
technology differs, the scene and the representational strategies are strikingly
reminiscent of other ?first contacts? in New Guinea that appeared in written
acounts from the turn of the 19th century.63 While it is unclear how much
contact this community had with Europeans, it is clear that, if there is any fear in
this footage, it appears to lie in Brandes? apprehension that Peck may not be
filming. As Bloom reminds us, the ?mediating function [of the camera] serves to
make the explorer capable of the act of creation itself. Once legitimised in terms
58 Such engagements begin with the initial governmental patrol to Lake Murray by S.D. Burrows (1913),
and continued with subsequent visits by Lt Govenor H. Murray (1914). Luigi D?Albertis? (1876 and 1877) and
Sir William MacGregor?s (1890) exploration of the Middle Fly River prefigured these visits, as did the bird of
paradise trade. Frank Hurley also visited the region in the 1920s. Busse, ?Sister Exchange?, 130?51; Swadling,
Plumes from Paradise, 175?203.
59 Brandes, ?Into primeval Papua?, 290.
60M. Strathern, ?Artefacts of history: events and the interpretation of images?, in J. Siikala (ed.), Culture and
History in the Pacific (Helsinki 1990), 25?44; M. Strathern, ?The decomposition of an event?, Cultural Anthropology,
7:2 (1992), 244?54; E.L. Schieffelin and R. Crittenden (eds), Like People You See In a Dream: first contact in six
Papuan societies (Stanford 1991).
61 Busse, ?Wandering Heroes?; Busse, ?Sister exchange?, 74?160; Swadling, Plumes from Paradise, 175?203.
62 Brandes, ?Into primeval Papua?, 294.
63 C. Ballard, ?The art of encounter?; Stella, Imagining the Other.
50 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY
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of his particular relation to photographic technology, the explorer can claim
complete authoritativeness for his vision.?64
With this scene unusable, the film moves from the inter-title?s positing of local
fear to footage of trade. Brandes calmly hands out goods as the assembled men
part with their bows and arrows, while Jeswiet and Pemberton load the
aeroplane with sugarcane. Transitioning to what I believe is Maravu village on
Lake Murray, an inter-title announces: ?Here we bartered for stuffed human
heads as well as sugarcane.?65 Brandes and Peck interact with the men and
women who arrive from the aeroplane?s pontoons. Hyperbolic inter-titles quickly
ensue such as, ?Their faces reflect only primitive bestial passions.? Setting aside
these racist categorisations the footage?s redemption lies in the glimpses it offers
of these transactions, and thus of the Lake Murray men?s agency as they
determined what the Expedition could collect from the plane?s pontoons.66 While
we are not privy to their conversations, the men can be seen passing among
themselves bundles of feathers, blocks of sago, as well as basketry gauntlets,
for which, upon offering to the Expedition?s members, they receive trade goods.
We learn from Brandes? article that residents in some communities were so used
to Europeans that they demanded trade axes for sugarcane and other objects.67
Peck chose not to film his companions during these exchanges, focusing
exclusively on the Lake Murray men. Inter-titles make ethnographic assessments
of the men?s apparel and weapons, thereby layering the footage with
anthropological objectivity and authority. Glimpses of Expedition members?
pointing hands, and the side of Brandes? head, however, disrupt any distance
created through the camera?s lingering gaze and its catalogue-like inter-titles
(Figure 4). An unpublished photograph by Peck within the NGSA further
contextualises this footage. In the photograph, Brandes stands on the aeroplane?s
pontoon while leaning over the Maravu men, who stand knee deep in the water
holding up items for trade, while Pemberton looks on. In one hand, Brandes
holds a small Kodak camera to his face, while below the camera he holds a loop
of beads. Assuming this image is representative of the Expedition members?
practices, it helps explain some of the still and moving images in which people
look quizzically up at the camera. Here we see faces not dazzled with fear, but
puzzled by the delay and mediation of exchange. Such contextual renderings
reveal elements of the intimacy of the Expedition?s encounters, the bodily
64 L. Bloom, Gender on Ice: American ideologies of Polar expeditions (Minneapolis 1993), 87?8, cited in
R.J. Gordon, ?Introduction?, in L.A. Vivanco and R.J. Gordon (eds), Tarzan was an Eco-Tourist (New York
2006), 18.
65 Brandes collected two stuffed heads from the village of Maruva (E344822 and E344822) and one from
another unnamed village (E344821). While by 1928 ordinances banned collecting human heads, the laws
stipulated that recognised scientific institutions with written permission could export protected objects. To date,
no such documents have been located. Brandes does thank F.E. Williams for his assistance with the collection.
Williams would have been part of the permission granting process, Brandes ?Into primeval Papua?, 295?6, 331;
M. Busse, ?The National Cultural Property (Preservation) Act?, in K. Whimp and M. Busse (eds) Protection of
Intellectual, Biological and Cultural Property in Papua New Guinea (Canberra 2000), 81?95.
66M. O?Hanlon, ?Introduction?, in O?Hanlon and Welsch (eds), Hunting the Gatherers (New York
2000), 1?34.
67 Brandes, ?Into primeval Papua?, 302.
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comportment that Expedition?s members image making entailed, and thus how
the film?s narrative fabricated elements of danger.
On 24 July, Brandes, Peck and Champion flew inland to explore the Ok Tedi
and Palmer Rivers. On the west bank of the Upper Fly River below D?Albertis
Junction they visited Katingor and Kai-imbi, hamlets of the soon-to-be-vanished
Negritos.68 Here the film participates in the wider colonial imaginary around
FIGURE 4: (a) Still of a Maravu man handing a headdress in exchange for a mirror or small tin box
being offered in the bottom left; (b) Brandes? arm, visible on the image?s left, points towards a man
as he passes arrows, and fibre basket to a boy (Courtesy of the Human Studies Film Archive,
Smithsonian Institution).
68 Brandes? ethnographic collection records these names. Katingor was situated on the bank of the Fly River
(it is unclear as to which bank), while Kai-imbi was five miles inland. In the absence of contemporary
settlements in this region and given the histories of movement during this time, without oral histories it is
difficult to ascertain who these people were. They are most likely people known today as the Yonggom or the
52 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY
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Pygmies, stressing their antiquity, gentle nature and doomed future.69 These
projections not only obscure the communities? cultural achievements, history and
regional interaction with European and Malay visitors, but also configure the
Negritos as pre-cultural equivalents to the wild pre-domesticated sugarcane
sought by the Expedition. The friendly and energetic Negritos prove themselves
allies in the quest for sugarcane, and a welcome break from the ?fierce
dispositions? of the Lake Murray?Middle Fly communities.70
Following aerial surveillance of the rivers, the team sighted ?small clearings
in the jungle concealed from river, with houses built in trees and on 50 foot poles?.
Upon landing, the surveillance is reversed, as an inter-title announces, ?we feel
eyes on us but cannot locate them?. The camera pans over the aeroplane?s wing,
and stops on tree houses on the far bank, which are ?apparently hastily deserted?.
However, ?The aborigine?s curiosity overcomes his fear . . . ?, and Champion
greets a canoe of five men with a handshake as Brandes looks on (Figure 5).
Friendship established, the men proceed to collect sugarcane. Therein follows the
only image of sugarcane in situ, thereby visually associating a supposedly antique
race of man with sugarcane (Figure 1). This association is further reinforced
in still images in which local men are pictured holding labels for the Expedition?s
field photographs of sugarcane.71 Brandes? more informative written account
relates how they ?bartered for weapons and ornaments. The pygmies seemed
pleased with the matches, jackplaneblades, safety-razor blades, beads, and
cloth.?72 With no footage of these interactions, the film?s only sequence of these
encounters consists of a close-up of the five men on the river. Inter-titles help to
visualise their racial status by cataloguing (and thus collecting) the men?s
personal adornment, and short stature (i.e., ?They average 4 feet 6 inches to 5 feet
tall?) (Figure 7). Brandes? National Geographic article further dramatises their
otherness through the interplay of images and text wherein the shortness of their
stature is contrasted to their soaring tree houses, which are likened to ?huge
birdhouses?.73 Both the film and text naturalise these oppositions, such that these
men are not only portrayed ?as the dandies of the Papuan world?, but also as
being on the verge of disappearing.74
An episode in Brandes? article helps throw these rhetorical strategies into
doubt. While at Katingor ?one of the real surprises of the trip? occurred when
a man, named Jarep, addresses them in Malay. Through Peck, who knew
Malay from his time in Dutch New Guinea, the party learns that Jarep worked
( footnote continued)
Awin. Brandes, ?Into primeval Papua?, 304?14; Swadling, Plumes from Paradise, 192?9; Kirsch, Reverse
Anthropology.
69 C. Ballard, ?Collecting Pygmies: the ?Tapiro? and the British Ornithologists? Union Expedition to Dutch
New Guinea, 1910?1911?, in O?Hanlon and Welsch (eds), Hunting the Gatherers (New York 2000), 127?54; C.
Ballard, ?Strange alliance?.
70 Brandes, ?Into primeval Papua?, 309; Ballard, ?Strange alliance?, 143?4.
71 See Figure 3 in Brandes and Sartoris, Sugar Cane, 568.
72 Brandes, ?Into primeval Papua?, 309.
73 Seven images appear in Brandes ?Into primeval Papua?, 289?93, 296, 309.
74 Brandes ?Into primeval Papua?, 307; Kirsch, Reverse Anthropology, 43.
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in nearby Dutch New Guinea with a band of bird-of-paradise hunters. While
only given a glimpse of the conversation that ensues, the encounter brings into
view, however partially, Jarep?s, and indeed the community?s, regional and
global connections.75 While it is possible to over-read such connections,
Jarep?s activities help disrupt the Expedition?s triumphant narrative of discovery,
and place the community into a wider context of global trade. The absence
of these connections in the film are not surprising, given the ways in which the
film?s overall effect, and intent, is to telescope space and time, transforming the
FIGURE 5: (a) Still from footage of Champion shaking hands of a young man on the bank of the
Upper Fly River, while Brandes stands off camera to the right; (b) still image from footage of
the five men who approached the Expedition (Courtesy of the Human Studies Film Archive,
Smithsonian Institution).
75 Brandes, ?Into primeval Papua?, 309 and 311; Swadling, Plumes from Paradise, 192?9; Kirsch, Reverse
Anthropology.
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Expedition members? experiences into narratives for consumption. This process
flattens out the intricacies of local interactions and histories encountered, in order
to construct narratives of adventure, and fantasies of wild men and sugarcane.
WHILE IT MAY BE easy to dismiss expeditions and their films such as Sugar Plant
Hunting, as Claude Le?vi-Strauss famously did in Tristes Tropiques, in doing so we
lose the opportunity to engage the multiple histories ? popular, scientific
and local ? inscribed in the various artefacts of these endeavours.76 As I have
attempted to demonstrate here, one way forward in our engagement of these
materials lies in considering the images generated by expeditions on their own
terms, or at least through more contextual analysis.77 This forces the researcher
not to subordinate images to text, but rather to grant images agency in the
production and negotiation of histories, and to engage them dialogically with
the network of artefacts ? texts, photographs, ethnographic collections ? in
which they were produced and circulated. While far from a perfect process,
this serves to expand the scope of histories with which we can engage, and
forces consideration of the contradictions, silences and messiness of our sources
and narratives.
Produced out of a confluence of government and corporate interests, Sugar
Plant Hunting is a result of the attempt to save the agro-business of sugar in the
United States through the discovery of domesticated sugarcane?s wild progenitor.
The Expedition?s triumphs over nature ? both botanical and human ? are
celebrated through filmed feats of travel and ?discovery? enabled by their
aeroplane. This valorisation relied on the fiction that the communities
encountered were fixed and timeless. Bringing the ?noble? and wild sugarcane
in conjunction with these temporal and racial imaginaries, the Expedition
attempted to represent New Guinea as outside time and yet on the verge of
massive externally driven transformation. The artefacts and networks created
by this Expedition ?render[ed] new territories [and experiences] in terms recycled
from familiar generic frameworks?.78 New Guinea has long been a fertile ground
for colonial imaginaries, as well as journeys in which Europeans discover regions
already known to, and named by, local communities. Sugar Plant Hunting
enlarged the scope of these endeavours and their fictions and helped create anew
the imagined communities of uncontacted people.79
This paper has endeavoured to reveal the nuances that constitute this film and
Expedition, thus undercutting their triumphal narrative and opening up room
for other histories to emerge. Doing so is bound up with two concomitant goals.
The first lies in examining the popular discourses, which borrowed from
anthropology and are typified in films of the 1920s and 1930s. These narratives
76C. Le?vi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, trans. J. and D. Weightman (New York 1992 [1955]), 17?18.
77 Pinney, Photo of the Gods, 8
78 Landman, The tread of a white man?s foot, 96.
79 J. Clifford, Routes: travel and translation in the late twentieth century (Cambridge 1997). N. Thomas, Entangled
Objects (Cambridge 1991), 178. Stella, Imagining the Other.
SUGAR PLANT HUNTING BY AIRPLANE 55
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obscure the realities of the encounters from which these discourses emerged, and
obscure the agency of communities in Papua and New Guinea. But doing so is
also of particular importance if we are to understand, and deconstruct, the recent
deluge of reality shows and quasi-documentary films about New Guinea and the
wider Pacific, which unreflectingly perpetuate the stereotypes of films like Sugar
Plant Hunting. The second goal lies in my belief that these films, though contrived
and at times offensive, possess the possibility to be resources for indigenous
communities, whose members can rework aspect of these films for themselves,
thus making new ?screen memories? as part of their cultural archive.80 While it
might strike some that these goals are at odds with one another, I see each as part
of a wider strategy by which more inclusive and critical histories of colonialism in
the Pacific can be articulated. Films like Sugar Plant Hunting are part of the wider
archival and museum legacy of our shared colonial histories which need to be
engaged with as a means to make these materials and their narratives open to
greater scrutiny. Doing so necessitates engaging in what Werner Herzog invoked
as looking ?around the edges or over the top? of images and, through them,
rethinking Pacific histories and their multiple sources.81
Acknowledgements
The research for this paper could not have been done without the assistance of staff at the
Smithsonian?s NMNH, particularly Adrienne Kaeppler, Jake Homiak, Daisy Njoku, Pam Wintle
and Mark White. Versions of this paper were presented at the American Anthropological
Association in a session entitled, ?Expeditions, Anthropology and Popular Culture: Reinventing
First Contact? (2007) and the ?Film and History in the Pacific? workshop (2008) at The Australian
National University. I am grateful to participants at both events, and to Mark Busse, Justin
Shaffner and Stuart Kirsch for our ongoing conversations. This paper has been improved by the
comments of David Odo, Ludovic Coupaye, Chris Ballard, Jane Landman and JPH?s anonymous
reviewers.
ABSTRACT
Drawing on Chris Pinney?s suggestion that images ?narrate a different story, one told, in part, in
their own terms?, I examine the 1929 silent 35-mm film Sugar Cane Hunting in New Guinea. Emerging
out of a particular moment in the colonial history of the Territories of Papua and New Guinea, the
film and the United States Department of Agriculture Sugar Expedition from which it arose,
provide important but largely overlooked glimpses into the workings of colonial science, racial
imaginaries and exploration. Examining this film helps restore it to the larger discussion of such
events of the 1920s, but more importantly enables a discussion of the narratives constructed and
elided by this artefact. Doing so complicates the Expedition?s account and repositions the film as an
important vehicle for recovering silences in the histories of colonial science, practice and encounter
in New Guinea.
80 F.D. Ginsburg, ?Screen Memories: resignifying the traditional in indigenous media?, in F.D. Ginsburg,
L. Abu-Lughod and B. Larkin (eds), Media Worlds: anthropology of new terrain (Berkeley 2002), 39?57.
81 J. Demme with W. Herzog. A Pinewood Dialogue (New York 2008), available online at http://
www.movingimages.us.pinewood/files/pinewood/3/91116_programs_transcript_pdf_304.pdf
56 JOURNAL OF PACIFIC HISTORY
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