The Wenner-Gren Blog

In 2013 Suma Ikeuchi received a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant to aid research on “Brazilian Birth, Japanese Blood, and Transnational God: Identity and Resilience among Pentecostal Brazilians in Japan,” supervised by Dr. Chikako Ozawa-de Silva. Dr. Ikeuchi was able to return to the field in 2019 when she received an Engaged Anthropology Grant to aid engaged activities on “Jesus Loves Japan: Workshops on Migration, Religion, and Citizenship in Japan and Brazil”.

With the Engaged Anthropology Grant, I was able to travel to Japan and Brazil to share the results of my dissertation fieldwork conducted from 2013 to 2014. The yearlong fieldwork investigated why the Pentecostal Christian churches have flourished among the Japanese-Brazilian (i.e. Nikkei) migrant communities in Japan by probing the connections between their ethnic, national, and religious identities. State-sanctioned return migration is a growing phenomenon in Asia today, with major nations such as India and South Korea legally facilitating the “return” of foreign citizens descended from their emigrants. As part of this trend, Japan introduced a new type of visa in 1990 for foreigners of Japanese descent, which triggered the mass-migration of Nikkei Brazilians from Brazil. While Nikkeis benefit from the visa policy that confers the right to settlement virtually as a right of blood, they often feel discriminated in Japan for their ethnic ambiguity and working-class profile. In this context of racial tension and contested belonging, many have been converting to Pentecostal Christianity—a religion that has grown exponentially in Latin America since the 1970s and subsequently flourished among many Latino migrant communities across the globe. The fieldwork examined this transregional intersection of Asian return migration and Latin American Christianity.

In July 2019, I returned to the main research site in Japan—a Pentecostal church in Toyota City attended by roughly 500 Brazilian migrants—to hold an informal workshop with the people who had participated in my study. The main purpose was to receive their feedback for the two main final products of the research. Since the completion of fieldwork in 2014, I have been able to edit a short ethnographic film In Leila’s Room (2016) and publish a book Jesus Loves Japan: Return Migration and Global Pentecostalism in a Brazilian Diaspora (2019 Stanford University Press). First, I screened In Leila’s Room to a group of core participants, including the main protagonist Leila, followed by Q&A. Some expressed a sense of amusement about the fact that the film incorporated what they considered to be banal interactions, such as family members speaking about barbecue. A vibrant conversation about observational cinema ensued.

Unlike the film, which is mostly in Portuguese, Jesus Loves Japan is in English, a language that the participants in the study cannot read. To make the book content accessible, I prepared a four-page summary in Portuguese and Japanese (many younger migrants prefer Japanese) and distributed it to the community members at the church on Sunday. In addition to the summary, they also received a fifteen-minute oral presentation in Portuguese from me about the significance of the study results and how their cooperation contributed to it. In total, I had roughly 250 people in attendance on this day, many of them previous participants in my study. “What do Americans think about us?” This was one of the most common questions, now that they have seen the book in English and heard about my representations of them in it. Although Toyota City has been a frequent destination for social scientists (both Japanese and Brazilian) who took interest in this migrant community over the years, some Brazilian residents there told me that they had never heard back from these scholars about what was done with the data afterward. As a result, many in the audience were excited to find out how the stories of their lives were recounted in the book, now circulating in an unfamiliar language. We continued our conversations in the church canteen even after the presentation was over. Many interviewees had the chance to see where in the book their remarks appear and listen to me explain how I incorporated them into my overarching argument about the relationship between migration and conversion. In these dialogues, the findings of greatest interest were about how the various church initiatives about “family restoration” seem to address the challenges that many migrant families face as they cope with distance, demanding work, and language barriers in a foreign land.

The grant also enabled me to organize workshops and deliver lectures about Jesus Loves Japan at five universities—one in Japan and four in Brazil—so that I could engage the scholars interested in the study results in their respective languages. I participated in a workshop about my book in Japanese at the Nanzan Institute of Religion and Culture in Nagoya in June 2019. The talk was followed by the comments by two Japanese scholars and Q&A. Since one potential shortcoming of the book is that the majority of references cited are in the English language, their sharp feedback informed by the sources in Japanese constituted valuable and much-needed inputs. In August 2019, I traveled to Brazil to speak at The University of São Paulo, The Federal University of São Paulo in Guarulhos, The Federal University of São Carlos, and The University of Brasília. This time I delivered the lectures in Portuguese, followed by Q&A in a mixture of Portuguese and English. The audience consisted of Brazilian scholars and students, many of whom were deeply interested in the global expansion of Brazilian Pentecostalism due to the growing political power associated with the religion with the recent election of President Jair Bolsonaro. The comments and questions I received from the scholars based in Brazil were very different from those from the researchers in Japan, probably because of the diverging social positions of Protestant Christianity in the two respective societies. For example, some interlocutors inquired if the migrant churches I studied sought any political power in the mainstream society. I responded that doing so is more difficult in a non-Christian society such as Japan, especially for a foreign migrant minority such as Nikkei Brazilians. Overall, the feedback I received in Japan and Brazil demonstrate that different scholarly communities can bring to the table different analytical strengths informed by their respective intellectual and political backgrounds. The bilingual lectures in the two countries reaffirmed the importance of intellectual exchange across linguistic and national boundaries, and I am grateful for the Foundation for enabling me to advance such an initiative.

Christopher Morehart received a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant in 2007 to aid research on “Agricultural Landscapes and Political Economy at Xaltocan, Mexico,” supervised by Dr. Elizabeth M. Brumfiel. In 2012 Dr. Morehart continued his research when he received a Post-Ph.D. Research Grant to aid research on “Environmental Interaction and Political Transformation in the Northern Basin of Mexico”. After receiving an Engaged Anthropology Grant in 2016 Morehart began working on a, “Collaborative Development of a Book on the Archaeology of Xaltocan, Mexico for Community Members”.

This report presents an overview of a Wenner-Gren engaged anthropology grant project. Funds from Wenner-Gren were used to finance the creation of a book on the archaeology of Xaltocan. Xaltocan is a contemporary town approximately 35 km north of present-day Mexico City with a history that has lasted well over 1000 years. It is also one of the most continuously studied archaeological sites in central Mexico. Archaeologists first visited the town very briefly in the 1950s and again in the early 1970s.

However, in the late 1980s, Elizabeth Brumfiel initiated a long-term archaeological project in Xaltocan, with the promise that she would always seek to engage actively with community members and address questions that they have about their own past. Several other archaeological projects have occurred in the town over the past 15-20 years, all directed by Brumfiel’s students or former students (many funded by Wenner-Gren). Members of the town have a strong interest in their past and in the work archaeologists have been doing. This relationship is a unique example of productive, engaged archaeology. Many archaeologists have created museum exhibits (some financed by Wenner-Gren) as well as public talks and other events.

This project was planned to provide a more tangible and lasting contribution to the community. This book is based on the archaeological work of several researchers, from the United States and Mexico, as well as the experiences and leadership of local historians and organizers. This book is not an academic article or a technical report, both of which are supplied to community members and officials as part of ongoing projects. It is a book written specifically for the community of Xaltocan, written in an engaging, accessible and dynamic prose.

Plan of the book

Although I wrote the grant proposal, I worked closely with Enrique Rodríguez Alegría and Kristin De Lucia, two other archaeologists who have worked in Xaltocan. The book contains 13 substantive chapters, each written either by a researcher or group of researchers who has carried out an investigation in Xaltocan or by a local leader engaged in promoting cultural and historical affairs in the town. Each chapter is brief, 3-4 pages, and written in an accessible prose (in Spanish). At the end of the book, we have included a fairly comprehensive bibliography of publications on the history and archaeology of Xaltocan. Below is a list of the chapters:

Capítulo 1. La historia de la arqueología en Xaltocan, by Enrique Rodríguez-Alegría

Capítulo 2. El medio ambiente de la cuenca de México y del lago de Xaltocan, by John K. Millhauser

Capítulo 3. Antes de Xaltocan, by Christopher Morehart, Abigail Meza Peñaloza, and Destiny Crider

Capítulo 4. La formación de un reino, by Kirby Farah

Capítulo 5. Los grupos domésticos y la comunidad, by Kristin De Lucia

Capítulo 6. Las chinampas de Xaltocan, by Christopher Morehart

Capítulo 7. Impuestos, tributos y mercados, by John K. Millhauser

Capítulo 8. La religión y los ritos de los grupos Domésticos, by Kristin De Lucia

Capítulo 9. Xaltocan y el imperio azteca, by Lisa Overholtzer

Capítulo10. Xaltocan en el periodo colonial, by Enrique Rodríguez-Alegría

Capítulo 11. La historia genética de Xaltocan, by Deborah A. Bolnick, Jaime Mata-Míguez and Austin W. Reynolds

Capítulo 12. La casa de cultura de Nextlalpan “Cualcalli”, by Filemón Hernández Zambrano

Capítulo 13. El museo arqueológico de Nextlalpan en Xaltocan, by Sergio Maya Rodríguez Una bibliografía de la investigación arqueológica en Xaltocan

Distribution of the book

Distributing the book to the community of Xaltocan was an important goal of the project. We produced 315 printed copies and donated them to the town’s cultural center and museum. We worked with local organizers in order to plan an event to present and distribute the book. This occurred in July 2019 at the Casa de la Cultura (cultural center) in the center of Xaltocan. I gave a brief presentation of the book to approximately 60 to 70 attendees. The director of the cultural center (also one of the book contributors) decided to give a copy of the book for free to all in attendance, with the option of a small contribution (virtually everyone contributed something), after which the book would be sold at a price determined by the cultural center.

The presentation of the book was a great success, and attendees were very enthusiastic about the book.

Dr. Sophie Chao received a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant in 2015 to aid research on “Agribusiness Land Grabs and Transforming Indigenous Foodways: Towards a Theory of Hunger and Satiety in West Papua,” supervised by Dr. Jaap Timmer. In 2019 Dr. Chao returned to the field when she received an Engaged Anthropology Grant to aid engaged activities on “Oil Palm Expansion in West Papua: Multi-Stakeholder Workshop on Sustainability in the Agribusiness Sector”.

With the support of an Engaged Anthropology Grant, the grantee organized a workshop on “Oil Palm Expansion in West Papua: Multi-Stakeholder Workshop on Sustainability in the Agribusiness Sector” on 13 – 14 August 2019 in Jakarta. This event was attended by ten indigenous Marind participants (six men and four women) from Merauke, West Papua, where the grantee undertook her doctoral research, as well as thirteen representatives from the Indonesian National Land Agency, the Indonesian Investment Board, the Merauke Regency Governmental District Office, the Merauke Regency Environmental Agency, and local and national Indonesian non-government organizations.

The project allowed the grantee to disseminate the findings of her doctoral research on the social and environmental impacts of oil palm plantations on indigenous Marind communities in Merauke, in the form of an oral presentation, translated thesis chapters, and a summary of the overall thesis in brochure form. This research revealed that agribusiness projects severely undermines indigenous communities’ relations to land – which is central to their sense of collective belonging and cultural identity – and their morally imbued relations to forest plants and animals whom Marind consider their kin through shared ancestral descent. The research also demonstrated that Marinds’ right to give or withhold their consent to land conversions is routinely disregarded in the design and implementation of agribusiness projects. Affected communities lack the capacity to communicate their demands and grievances directly to high-level policymakers and corporate representatives and have limited access to comprehensive information about the palm oil projects affecting their livelihoods and environment. Their capacity to assert their claims to land is further hindered by their limited understanding of their rights under national and international law, and of the redress mechanisms available to them under these frameworks.

The workshop created a multi-stakeholder platform for indigenous Marind representatives to share their experiences of the adverse impacts of monocrop oil palm developments on their livelihoods, land rights, cultural well-being, food security, and physical environment, and to voice their recommendations towards addressing these adverse impacts before government and NGO bodies. In turn, Marind representatives were able to acquire up-to-date information from government and NGO representatives pertaining to the legal and governance structures regulating oil palm production in Indonesia, government targets and sites of future oil palm expansion, and indigenous people’s rights as these are enshrined under national and international legal frameworks and initiatives – including the draft Indigenous People’s Rights Bill and the One Map Initiative in Indonesia. Marind participants were also introduced to the principles and criteria of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO), two multi-stakeholder commodity certification standards established to promote rights-based and deforestation-free palm oil.

Formal presentations from the participants on the first day were followed by break-out group discussions on the second day, during which the participants formulated a set of joint recommendations for rights-based and culturally sensitive approaches to palm oil production in Indonesia. These recommendations included: 1) moving beyond a “consultation-only” mode of land acquisition towards full respect for indigenous people’s right to give or withhold their consent to land developments 2) more transparent, inclusive, iterative, and collective consultation processes, in which women, youth, and elders are equally involved 3) participatory mapping to support the identification and protection of customary land rights, ownership, and boundaries 4) the development of binding and verifiable safeguards, standard operational procedures, and protocols to protect indigenous communities’ food and water security and cultural food sovereignty and 5) the direct and iterative involvement of indigenous communities in the identification, demarcation, management, and monitoring of conservation zones within oil palm plantations.

In addition, a documentary titled Declaration of Land as our Spiritual Mother, produced by the grantee during her doctoral research was launched at the opening of the workshop (see Figure 2). This 45-minute film documents various aspects of indigenous Marind’s relationship to the forest, ritual practices, modes of subsistence, and grassroots land rights movements in the face of oil palm developments. A community manual in logat Papua, or Indonesian creole, produced by the grantee and titled Where Are We to Go If Our Customary Lands and Forests Disappear? A Practical Manual for Indigenous Communities on Land Rights and Human Rights in the Context of Oil Palm Investments, was also launched on the occasion of this workshop and copies printed for wider dissemination in the Marind villages where the grantee undertook her doctoral research (see Figure 1). This interactive manual and offers practical guidance to indigenous communities regarding their right to free, prior, and informed consent, the consultation and land acquisition process, and the obligation of states and corporations to respect indigenous lands and livelihoods.

The workshop provided the opportunity for the grantee to discuss directions of future research with the indigenous participants present and the opportunities and challenges (both legal and practical) involved in such research. A draft analysis of the process involved in organizing and holding the multi-stakeholder workshop itself was drafted together with community members and will form the basis of an academic article titled “A Tree of Many Lives: Indigenous Papuan Experiences of Multi-Stakeholder Negotiations and Strategic Ontological Performance,” due for submission to a first-quartile anthropology journal in September 2019.

Drawing from the outcomes of the workshop described above, and with the support of additional funds, the grantee also organized a follow-up regional meeting on 26 August 2019 between indigenous Marind who attended the workshop and local communities in Sorong Selatan, where oil palm development is underway. During this event, indigenous Marind community members were able to share lessons learned from their engagement to date with oil palm companies, to describe the process and outcomes of the workshop help in Jakarta, and to offer guidance and advice to Sorong community members based on their own first-hand experiences. A side-training on participatory mapping and its uses in advocacy contexts was also organized, during which community members produced sketches of their customary lands, boundaries, and sites of cultural, spiritual, and economic value. This will be followed by training in the use of GPS technology in the course of 2019.