“An Irreplaceable Ethnographic Record”?; A Takedown of Jimmy Nelson’s 'Before They Pass Away'.

On the 6^th of March 2014 when Tarapuhi and I (Hollie) were getting our morning coffee at one of our fave coffee places (which also happens to be a book store) we noticed something gleaming at us from the display table – Jimmy Nelson’s Before they Pass Away. It probably doesn’t help that the book is humungous, but what really drew us in was the front cover:

Immediately we let out disgruntled sighs, ‘why was it that people continue to promote the idea that indigenous peoples are all going to die soon?!’ But it wasn’t until we stumbled across a section on Māori that our gears were truly grinded. Highly aware of the idea, encouraged during settler colonialism, that Māori were a dying race we were deeply offended that this recently published book (2013) was still going along with the idea, especially since Māori had proven those settlers wrong (yes, we’re still here). Now, don’t get us wrong, the photos are absolutely stunning, and all credit to Nelson’s photography skills, but his aim to create an “irreplaceable ethnographic account” was not, in our opinion, fulfilled.

Back at anthsisters HQ we thought about what we were gonna do about this book, that as far as we could tell, was a subtle reminder of the everyday task indigenous peoples face to be considered living and thriving in today’s world. Our first step, we decided, would be to email said coffee shop/book store and let them know how we felt. Below is a copy of the emails:

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Kia ora

I noticed you have a copy of the book Before They Pass Away by Jimmy Nelson. I just thought I would let you know that many indigenous people find this highly offensive as it fetishizes indigenous peoples and represents many groups, including Maori, as primitive and as a homogenised ‘dying race’.

Perhaps it would be appropriate for it to be removed, or to be gifted to the Visual Anthropology department as an example of ethnocentric and offensive photography.

Personally I was really saddened to see it displayed at one of my favourite coffee places.

Thanks

Tarapuhi Bryers-Brown

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Hi,

I'm a student at Kelburn campus and I noticed today that you're selling Jimmy Nelson's 'Before they pass away' book. I don't know if you guys have actually looked at the book beyond the beautiful photos but it's actually super offensive.

Referring to these cultures as dying is fucking ridiculous! If you just look around you Maori (who are depicted in the book) are thriving and I think it's bullshit that this guy is passing my people off as some sort of primitive people that you have to see, like some 'quick before they're gone' deal at Godfrey's vacuum place. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/matika/project-562-changing-the-way-we-see-native-america

That's a link to Matika Wilbur's project which is aiming to dismantle the ridiculous ideas this book promotes, which I recommend you guys check out.

I would really appreciate it, as a Maori, as a student, and as a customer, if you would sort your shit and remove this racist and colonial propaganda from your store.

Thanks,
Hollie.

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After a week of no reply to our emails, we decided to take it to Twitter, tweeting at Jimmy Nelson directly, and Pita Sharples (NZ MP) who was featured in the book.

Again, no reply. But we had come across some articles that shed some light on a few things, most notably this one which garnered a response from Nelson. Then said coffee place/book store emailed us back:

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Hello Hollie,

We have decided after consideration to keep 'Before They Pass Away' in the store. 

We understand your concern, and agree that the book is clumsily titled. When we received your email we removed it from the shelf to have a look. We read the introduction to the Maori chapter and it describes Maori culture as far from dying out. The photographer also himself stated in interviews that many of his photographs were staged, meant as celebrations of the cultures photographed rather than accurate, everyday depictions of those cultures.

Once we'd had a thorough look at the book, we took it to the Maori Studies department at Vic to take a look, and they agreed with us - that while the title was unfortunate, the book itself was not offensive.

We hope this helps you understand our decision to keep the book in our stock.

Kind regards,

[Said bookshop]

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We were shocked, angry, but mostly disheartened with their response. We felt as if our feelings and arguments were delegitimised in one short and quite vague email (e.g. who did they speak to from the Māori department?). As well as this discouraging email, we also had our study to deal with - research proposals due, tutorials to plan, and ethics applications to fill out – so we put it on the back-burner for a couple of weeks.

Then we brought it up with one of our lecturers. She listened and agreed but reminded us about a little thing called freedom of speech. And she was right. Although it sucks, Jimmy Nelson is free to say what he wants, publishers are free to publish want they want , and bookshops are free to stock what they want, as long as it doesn’t promote hate speech. And technically Nelson’s book doesn’t. So, what could we do then? That’s when we came up with the idea to do a blog post about the book (because we have freedom of speech too J).

Now although it may sometimes seem we are personally attacking Jimmy Nelson, we don’t necessarily intend to. Rather, we think of it as an attempt to question and criticize the structures in society that allow this idea to flourish, and which encourage people to see Nelson’s book as anything other than a promotion of colonial ideas:

 But not all hope is lost, there are still some sane people in the world of Amazon:

So yeah, over the next few days (perhaps weeks depending on our procrastination levels) we are going to be posting a three-part series on why each of us thinks this book sucks. We hope you enjoy it and please feel free to leave some comments down below which we’ll endeavour to reply to (again, according to our procrastination levels).

Anthsisters out!