Challenges to the Sustainability of Pua Kumbu Weaving Production and Future Opportunities
摘要
The concluding Chap. 7, ‘Challenges to the Sustainability of Pua Kumbu Weaving Production and Future Opportunities’, offers a summary of the analysis and argument pursued in the book. It foregrounds, once again, the tacit and discursive knowledge that has enabled the revitalisation of the weaving tradition at the Rumah Garie longhouse. This has been made possible by the role of the weavers as ‘participating thinkers’, which has resulted in the documentation of pua kumbu practices. This, in turn, ensures that this knowledge is preserved for current and futures weavers. Despite the success in generating sustainable livelihoods through weaving at Rumah Garie, significant challenges remain. These include the absence of Indigenous arts and crafts from educational curricula; the lack of coherent support for weaving on the part of public agencies and private patrons; and the possibilities of enhancing community-based longhouse tourism that features traditional weaving. Despite these impediments, the longhouse weaving community has been recognised as a social and solidarity economy enterprise, conjoining its commonalities with those of Indigenous economies. The weavers of Rumah Garie have, over the last decade and more, recognised their own significance and worth, and have gained the courage to assert the scope of their rights regarding pua kumbu weaving. Indigenous knowledge generated, carried and transmitted by the female weavers of pua kumbu lies at the very heart of the story of the cloths and their ongoing journey.