German-Rapanui Entanglements: Collecting, Knowing and Remembering Easter Island

Groundbreaking material-visual history and ethnography of German-Rapanui entanglements. This book traces German-Rapanui entanglements from past to present through encounters between scholars, missionaries, institutions and Indigenous actors, and through the material and visual traces-objects, photographs, and texts-that continue to shape knowledge and memory of Rapa Nui (Easter Island).Moving beyond limiting Eurocentric frames, it highlights how Rapanui people have actively engaged with German and German-speaking individuals and institutions to (re)shape different practices and discourses of ‘Rapanuiness’. The chapters bring these dynamics to life: from Bavarian Capuchin activities that reached far beyond conversion, to collecting and exhibiting networks linking Altötting in Bavaria to Rapa Nui; from German efforts to record oral traditions and the 1957 German-Chilean expedition, to long-term archaeological collaborations at Ava Ranga Uka A Toroke Hau. Written by scholars based in Rapa