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The history of one of the most prominent pieces of the Oceanic Collection in the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, the feather cloak from Hawai'i, shows the different uses and interpretations which ethnographic objects undergo through their long history in European museums. This appropriation of objects from a far distance, lately as a feather assemblage for a modern art installation reducing the cloak to its material substance, has to be seen in a long and tormenting history of misunderstandings and misallocations in the discourse between Hawai'i and Europe. The feather cloak is also part of the culture change which occurred on these islands at the beginning of the 19th century and documents the history of these islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]