Virtual Event
Rurutu Island Cultural Insights from the Phillips Library Collection
Tuesday, July 1, 2025 from 5—6 pm
Know before you go
Virtual event
Included with admission
Advance registration recommended.
Bay of Moerai, mid 20th century. Martin A. Brunor Papers, E 12, box 35, folder 3.
Join us to hear Jennifer Kahn, the 2024 Frances E. Malamy Fellow at PEM’s Phillips Library, present the findings of her research project: The Longue Durée of Rurutu Island Culture History: Insights from the Martin Brunor Archival Collections at the Phillips Library.
Rurutu Island, part of the Austral Islands, is located about 350 miles South of Tahiti in the South Pacific. Rurutuan communities traditionally transmitted their local histories through oral traditions, relying on genealogies. Accessing library collections with unpublished materials relating to Rurutuan oral traditions, land use, material culture and cultural practices is critical for anthropological understanding of Rurutuan culture and its relationship to other archipelagoes in Eastern Polynesia. These library collections are also vital for engaging with Rurutuan communities’ desires to access aspects of their cultural history that have been lost given the chaotic upheavals their ancestors experienced in the post-contact period.
Martin Brunor (1901–1983) devoted much of his life to researching the Indigenous cultures of Rurutu and the Austral Islands. He was awarded a research fellowship to the Peabody Museum, one of PEM’s predecessor institutions, in 1962, and his large personal collection of recordings, research notes, photographs and manuscripts is now housed in the Phillips Library collection.
The Phillips Library Frances E. Malamy Research Fellowship program, funded by the Malamy family, awards $5,500 to one recipient each year to perform independent research for three months at the library in Rowley, Massachusetts.
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