LeaAnna McConnell is one of those people who's fascinated by death and human remains, and the more exotic the better. Like a Texas cousin of the Addams Family, the Houston sculptor has assiduously cultivated her morbidity, creating convincing replicas of shrunken heads, witch doctor staffs, "flesh folios" and the tattooed heads preserved by the Maori people of New Zealand. "Each facial feature is hand sculpted, each hair hand plugged to achieve the maximum reality and gross-out effect," she says on her Web site, Swell Heads.
George Hixson
LeaAnna McConnell doesn't understand why the Maori are upset about her tribal head replicas.
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A film industry veteran who got her first job when she wrangled her way onto the guts-and-gore crew of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, LeaAnna McConnell prides herself on her ability to make things that look real. When a friend challenged her to make a tattooed Maori head, she came up with a new technique using industrial materials. "As far as I know, I am the only person in the world who's doing this," she says.
LeaAnna set up a Web sitethat offered a choice of hair length and color for the heads. The Maori, she told her cybervisitors in an oily tour-guide tone, "were seafaring Polynesian folk who took a wrong turn and landed in New Zealand."
"Making the best of the situation, they set up housekeeping and commenced eating the neighbors," she adds.
LeaAnna had never been to New Zealand, and she thought the Maori people were a dead culture, like the Vikings. So she was surprised and flattered to get an overseas call this summer from a real, live Maori radio reporter, who wanted to do a story on her heads. But the reporter had some tough questions for LeaAnna. How many was she selling? Why was she making them? And didn't she realize that the Maori were trying to reclaim the heads from museums and collectors all over the world?
"I didn't realize I was walking into a trap," LeaAnna says.
LeaAnna's heads made the New Zealand papers, including the front page of the Wellington Evening Post. The national magazine Tumai plans to feature LeaAnna on its next cover.
As word spread, LeaAnna's Web site was besieged by angry e-mails from insulted Maori, who accused her of racism, greed and cultural exploitation, and likened her to "scurvy- and v.d.-ridden" colonial plunderers. A few threatened her; others cursed her in a language she didn't understand. Most simply articulated their objections to the faux heads or the site's characterization of the Maori.
"Maori are shocked to see such ignoranceŠ.It is of the utmost disgust that you have the audacity to step on our mana[soul] like that," wrote Aroha Te Kanawa.
In Maori culture, the heads (called mokomokai) are considered sacred. The word moko refers to the elaborate facial and body tattoos used in Maori culture to denote tribal rank and lineage. A man's facial tattoo was unique, and he might use a drawing of its spirals and concentric lines in place of a signature. Preserving the tattooed head of a deceased loved one was a way of honoring him and keeping his "essence" intact; capturing the heads of enemies was a way of insulting them.
Although LeaAnna's Web site insisted that "diligent research went into discerning the real and varied styles of shrunken head relics," it frequently betrayed a tenuous understanding of the facts. For one thing, it referred to the Maoris' "secret recipe" for shrinking heads. The mokomokai are not shrunken, but dried and smoked. LeaAnna (who has studied up a lot since the controversy broke) says she meant the Web site's text to be tongue-in-cheek but adds she understands why the Maori people would find it culturally insensitive. "I had no idea that a real Maori would ever read this," she says.
In response to the protests, LeaAnna has removed all mention of the Maori from her description of the heads, but the heads themselves remain. Not that they're selling like hotcakes. The Web site is slick and well designed, and that, combined with the heads' steep price tag -- $900 -- probably convinced many Maoris that LeaAnna was making big bucks off what they see as cultural pirating. But according to LeaAnna, a publicist for the Village Women's Health Clinic, she has sold only about ten heads in a year.
She refuses to stop making them, pointing out that there's a big difference between replicas and the real thing. "If there is something spiritual or mystical involved, that is not going to be transferred to plastic."
"These images are historical and are not owned exclusively by one set of people," the Web site now reads. "The images have become significant to other groups in ways that may not make sense to a Maori."
Cultures always borrow from each other, LeaAnna argues, and the Maori should assume some responsibility for disseminating mokomokai in the first place. In the late 18th century, European traders began to covet "baked heads" as curiosities. Museums drove up demand, and a finely tattooed head became more valuable than the living person to whom it belonged, causing increased bloodshed and fighting among the Maori tribes. While some mokomokai were undoubtedly looted by whites, the Maori traded others for guns or tobacco. Some Maoris tattooed slaves for the express purpose of killing them and trading their heads. "The thing is, the Maoris are no pussies," LeaAnna says.
