Smithsonian Team Visits PNG
By Carolyn Ive
January 26, 2011, Port Moresby -- A team from the Smithsonian Natural History Museum visited Papua New Guinea on a fact-finding mission January 13-22. According to the director of the museum, Christian Samper, the purpose of the trip was to highlight the work of the Smithsonian, while offering assistance to PNG’s National Museum. Possible areas of cooperation include documenting and sustaining endangered languages and knowledge.
“When a language disappears, knowledge crucial to understanding, humanity and the natural world is lost forever,” said Joshua Bell, curator for Globalization. Bell began his anthropological research in the Purari Delta in 2000. “Languages are disappearing fast, and with it goes the knowledge,” said Bell. “This issue has become a major area of research,” he said.
The team also travelled to Goroka and Madang, meeting with Kristofer Helgen, mammal curator at the Papua New Guinea Institute for Biological Research, and the Binatang Research Center, which has a long-standing connection to the Smithsonian through entomologist Scott Miller. The group also learned about the new Swire Research Forestry plot at Wanangb — part of the Smithsonian’s global network of forest plots, which is run by the Centre for Tropical Forest Science.
January 26, 2011, Port Moresby -- A team from the Smithsonian Natural History Museum visited Papua New Guinea on a fact-finding mission January 13-22. According to the director of the museum, Christian Samper, the purpose of the trip was to highlight the work of the Smithsonian, while offering assistance to PNG’s National Museum. Possible areas of cooperation include documenting and sustaining endangered languages and knowledge.
“When a language disappears, knowledge crucial to understanding, humanity and the natural world is lost forever,” said Joshua Bell, curator for Globalization. Bell began his anthropological research in the Purari Delta in 2000. “Languages are disappearing fast, and with it goes the knowledge,” said Bell. “This issue has become a major area of research,” he said.
The team also travelled to Goroka and Madang, meeting with Kristofer Helgen, mammal curator at the Papua New Guinea Institute for Biological Research, and the Binatang Research Center, which has a long-standing connection to the Smithsonian through entomologist Scott Miller. The group also learned about the new Swire Research Forestry plot at Wanangb — part of the Smithsonian’s global network of forest plots, which is run by the Centre for Tropical Forest Science.
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