Indigenous Practices – Connect Russia

Silks and Quilts in Central Asian Cultures, UCLA Asia Institute

Possibly the best-dressed scholarly meeting of the season, “Textiles as Treasures” looked at the place of fabrics in the lives and the industry of nomadic and urban Central Asian cultures over centuries. The March 5 conference was organized by the Asia Institute’s Program on Central Asia; a day-long program on the music of the region is planned for April 1.

Margaret Kivelson, UCLA professor emerita of space physics, describes items from her personal collection of Central Asian textiles to the audience.

At “Textiles as Treasures: Cultures of Consumption in Central Asia and Beyond,” held Saturday, March 5, in UCLA’s Royce Hall, historians, ethnographers and collectors considered how the role of textiles varies across the region and over time, in permanent and temporary settlements. The UCLA Asia Institute’s Program on Central Asia organized the free, public gathering with support from the Textile Museum Associates of Southern California. The UCLA Center for India and South Asia cosponsored. Cheri Hunter of the Textile Museum Associates of Southern California, a conference cosponsor, addresses the audience.

Some textile designs in Central Asia remained in continuous production for hundreds of years, said Jon Thompson, a retired curator of Oxford University’s Ashmolean Museum. While creating a new home-decor aesthetic in the West, the phenomenon also directed Turkmen production away from home furnishings destined for family and ceremonial use and towards international market demands.  Going back to the 16th century, Indian merchants were especially active in the textile trade, moving far into Central Asia, said Professor Claude Markovits of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales in Paris. In today’s Ferghana Valley, the heart of Central Asia’s cotton, silk and textile industries, several fourth- and fifth-generation ikat weavers are reviving some of the pre-Soviet splendor of the vocation, according to a conference paper by University of Kansas curator Mary Dusenbury. A number of conference attendees sported ikat garments, including this Indonesian example and others from Central Asia.

Textiles may go through finishing processes abroad, especially in Turkey and Italy, according to Dusenbury.  To get textiles ready for market, Central Asian producers now have to closely consider opportunities in places such as Moscow, Paris, New York and San Francisco, said Lotus Stack, curator emeritus of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

(Via UCLA; Asia Institute)

Lithuania ties minorities’ educational tongue

The Lithuanian parliament has adopted a law that cuts school hours for Russian language classes in Russian schools. Teachers say the law violates the rights of national minorities.

Under the new rules, starting in the next academic year the country’s history, geography, as well natural history and civil studies will be taught in Lithuanian. The law also provides that school hours for the national language should not exceed the amount of lessons of Lithuanian. All this will lead to the drastic reduction of academic hours of disciplines taught in the native language.

From 2013 all school graduates from both Lithuanian and national minority schools should pass a standardized Lithuanian language exam, which sets the same requirements for native and non-native speakers of Lithuanian.

“The step has nothing to do with the integration of national minorities, on the contrary, it’s a direct violation of their rights. It is definitely a road to complete assimilation,” said head of the Association of Russian school teachers Ella Kanaite. She added that the country’s “democracy” has double standards. Indeed, she added, the parliament which adopted the law flatly ignored more than 60,000 signatures collected by Russian and Polish diasporas in support of their constitutional right to education in their native language.

(Via Russia Today)