TWH – Over the course of the last two decades there have been a number of high-profile cases in the news involving artifacts held by museums that the countries they originated from have requested their return.
Recently the request by the Norwegian Sami Parliament to retain a Sami drum that Denmark has held in its possession since 1692. The drum belonged to Sami shaman Anders Poulsson who had been accused of “witchcraft” and was being held for trial. Poulsson was murdered while in custody and the drum was sent to Copenhagen and became part of the Danish king’s art collection until 1849 when it was transferred to the Danish Museum.
Since 1979, the drum has been on display at the Sami Museum on loan from the Danish National Museum. The terms of the loan terminate on December 1. The Sami people believe the drum should remain in their custody and have petitioned Queen Margrethe of Denmark to intercede. The matter has been turned over to the Danish Minister of Culture, Ane Halsboe-Jørgensen who has the final say on whether the drum remains in Norway or must be returned to Denmark.
The Sami drum is one of many artifacts held in the museums of countries that are outside of its point of origin. The Sami drum can legitimately be claimed as a ritual tool since its provenance is well documented, and even distant descendants of Poulsson could likely recognize him as an ancestor.
Ancestor veneration is often a major part of Samhain’s celebration for many Witches and Pagans. The altars at public rituals often display pictures of loved ones who have passed and long-dead relatives and ancestors. Attendees and officiants also frequently include on altars keepsakes or items that have been passed down through the family.
Ancestor Vigil Altar – Mother Grove Goddess Temple – October 2018 – Image credit: S. Bustamonte
The idea of an ancestor’s property or their remains being held in a private collection or on display in a public institution without the permission of their descendants would very likely be repugnant to most people. From a Pagan perspective, having the tools of their ancestors in the hands of others who do not fully understand their spiritual practices or the importance of such objects, is very likely to be extremely troubling.
In 2007 the United Nations issued its Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that states clearly in Article 11:
1) Indigenous peoples have the right to practise and revitalize their cultural traditions and customs. This includes the right to maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures, such as archaeological and historical sites, artefacts, designs, ceremonies, technologies and visual and performing arts and literature.
2) States shall provide redress through effective mechanisms, which may include restitution, developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples, with respect to their cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their free, prior and informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions and customs.
And yet, museums and institutions around the world display any number of items from other cultures and countries, many of which were not donated or given to them by the country or people of the region where the objects originated. Even worse, many of the pieces of artwork and artifacts were plundered from their sources and taken either by force or obtained for prices far below their actual value.
While arguments abound over why artifacts, remains, and other items should not be returned to where they originated, most fall flat when confronted with the manner in which they were acquired, through colonization.
Egyptian artifacts remain in a number of museums outside of Egypt, having been taken from the country frequently by foreign archeologists and later given or sold to museums in their countries of residence. Artifacts were also outright stolen, transferred fraudulently, traded before laws were in place preventing such actions, or sometimes even gifted by Egyptian officials with little regard for the history or value of the items they were giving away.
Many of the institutions or archivists that have held Egypt’s artifacts cited the reason for refusal of their return as concerns for the preservation of the items and the poor condition of the Cairo museum. The completion of the new Grand Egyptian Museum – which has state-of-the-art preservation tools in place – eliminates such concerns.
Last year Egyptian archaeologist, Dr. Zahi Hawass launched a campaign to recover some of Egypt’s most well-known artifacts that currently still reside in museums outside of Egypt. The five items are (1) the Rosetta Stone (ca. 196 BCE) which is currently in the British Museum; (2) the famous and iconic bust of Nefertiti (ca. 1345 BCE) located in Berlin’s Neues Museum; (3) the Dendera zodiac sculpture (ca. 50 BCE) in the Louvre Museum; (4) a statue of Hemiunu (Old Kingdom) at the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, Germany; and (5) a bust of Prince Ankhhaf (ca. 2520-2494 BCE) located in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.
According to Hawass, only two of the objects in question were legally taken out of Egypt, the bust of Ankhhaf and the statue of Hemiunu.
Despite the passage and enactment of the National Museum of the American Indian Act (NMAI Act) in 1989, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990, it is estimated that roughly 500,000 Native American remains still reside in museums across the U.S. The process to reclaim remains and funerary artifacts is lengthy, complicated, and can take years before remains are returned, as TWH reported on earlier this year when the remains of nine Indigenous children from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School finally were allowed to be transferred back into Native hands.
How the artifacts of a culture and a people are treated is largely dependent on the level of outcry and participation from citizens of the countries involved. And bureaucracy plays no small role in the return of those items. The attitudes towards Indigenous cultures continue to shift, as countries and people have reclaimed their culture and independence from other nation-states.
In recent years the debate over the repatriation of artifacts, human remains, and artwork has gone beyond art and museums, the same debate is occurring within the scientific community.
A lawsuit by the family and descendants of Henrietta Lacks was filed earlier this month against biotech company Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., of Waltham, Massachusetts over its sale and use of Lack’s cells taken without her permission and before the current consent procedures now used by the medical and scientific research community were in place. Lack’s cells ended up being the cornerstone of many modern innovations.
We had discussed intrusion on Ancestors in The Wild Hunt before including leaving the “unanimated,” traveling with the ancestors, to visiting their tombs to honor them. Advances in our understanding of how to honor cultures and ancestors continue to evolve. Yet, there remain hundreds of thousands of artifacts and human remains that are held by foreign museums and institutions far from the lands and the people who claim ancestral rights to them.
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