Perema: Digital Museum of Penan Culture
About this collection
This collection contains approximately 250 digitized photographs from the Hedda Morrison photographs collection that were made available online as part of a collaborative project with the Penan community in Long Lamai (Sarawak, Malaysia), the Cornell University Global Citizenship and Sustainability program, Cornell University Library, and Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.
The collection contains a range of indigenous cultural material, including images and artifacts of people who may have passed away and other objects which may be culturally sensitive. The work was guided by Penan cultural protocols. More information about the Penan community and the project’s research methodology can be found on the accompanying exhibit, Perema: Digital Museum of Penan Culture.
The Hedda Morrison photographs collection contains more than 30,000 photographs, prints, and negatives donated to Cornell University by her husband after Morrison passed away in 1991. Approximately 750 items have been digitized from this collection, and a subset of those digitized are published online in this digital collection.
Historical context
Hedda Morrison (née Hammer) was born in Germany in 1908 and from 1960-66 was employed by the Sarawak government to work in the photographic section of the Information Office in Kuching. Morrison wrote two major books on Sarawak, Sarawak (1957) and Life in a Longhouse (1962). More background information about Morrison can be found on the finding aid for the collection and in other materials in Cornell University Library’s collections.
Using the collection
For more information about this collection, contact Rare and Manuscript Collections.
More information
- Collection steward
- Jeffrey W. Petersen, Southeast Asia Librarian; Katherine Reagan, Ernest L. Stern '56 Curator of Rare Books
- Metadata creation
- Annotations of photographs taken by Hedda Morrison were provided by the Long Lamai community elders and members during interviews conducted over 2017-2019 as part of the Global Citizenship and Sustainability Program (Cornell with Borneo) and prepared by Cornell University Library.
- Funding
- Grants Program for Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences, awarded to Shorna Allred (Natural Resources) and Kaja McGowan (History of Art) at Cornell University, in 2018.
- Credits
- This collection overview was prepared by Cornell University Library and Shorna Allred, Susan R. Wolf Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Dept. of Geography and Environment, College of Arts and Sciences; Adjunct Professor at Cornell University in the Ashley School of Global Development and the Environment.
- Collection sources
- Exhibits featuring items from this collection