Luf 2024 - Initiation of a cooperation

In the summer of 2024, Alexis von Poser, Deputy Director of the Ethnological Museum, traveled to Papua New Guinea. Together with filmmaker Martin Maden and his team, he traveled from Manus to the Hermit Islands archipelago, which includes the island of Luf. For decades, the island was considered depopulated. The last inhabitants were said to have died in the 1930s. However, it was common practice in this region to maintain networks with trading partners on other islands. If threatened by natural disasters or war, people could stay with these partners for longer periods of time. For this reason, the Ethnological Museum commissioned Martin Maden, a filmmaker from Papua New Guinea, to research the descendants of the original inhabitants of Luf in 2021. Using his extended family networks, Maden tracked down a group of direct descendants of Nemin, one of the boat's builders, and interviewed them. Since then, there has been a desire to meet the entire community on site and decide together to what extent cooperation might be desirable in the future.