A review by cjeanne99
Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art by Carl Hoffman

dark informative medium-paced

4.0

I read this book in bits and pieces over the course of six weeks. While I wouldn’t describe the book as a “mesmerizing whodunit” - I thought that Hoffman’s description of the culture of the Asmat people and their interactions with Dutch priests and Indonesian government officials in the mid twentieth century and the 2010’s was well done. It’s challenging to reconstruct Michael R’s experience through his own diary and photos, along with the writings of religious leaders and other non-native people who lived in New Guinea in the 1960’s - but Hoffman took his best shot. Hoffman himself lived in New Guinea and with the Asmat people for four months during two trips - including one month immersing himself with a man named Kokai and his family. Hoffman paints himself as being more sensitive to the culture of the Asmat than Michael R - at least that’s the impression I had. We really don’t know how Michael treated the people he met. However, his (MR’s) insistence on buying sacred bisj poles to put on display at his father’s museum in New York City struck me as insensitive. From a culture that has a long standing oral history, the story behind each bisj pole must be known, that to carry even one away is to take away a piece of culture - and Michael R had purchased 20 of them.
Hoffman was in the area 50 years after Michael’s death. Numerous Western influences, including Roman Catholicism, had been introduced and gained a foothold in those intervening years.