The argument for museological repatriation
The purpose of a history museum is to make knowledge accessible to the public. However, how can we appreciate the beauty and information of these artifacts when so much of them have been stolen from their rightful places? When filled with ill-gotten goods, museums cease to reflect the virtues of knowledge and humanism, and begin to resemble colonial shrines instead.
Tawnya Plain Eagle, in a 2023 interview with CBC, discussed the experience of seeing Blackfoot artifacts on display in Canadian museums. She stated that when Indigenous artifacts are displayed by non-Indigenous people, the lives of Indigenous people are forcibly kept in the past. When century-old Blackfoot items are displayed with contemporary photos, “it keeps us in a time capsule. Many of these exhibitions do not acknowledge how we have evolved in society. More importantly, they do not recognize the genocide that happened to the Blackfoot people and other Indigenous cultures that led to these items being obtained and sold for profit by non-Indigenous people.” The sterile environment of the museum makes Indigenous craftsmanship seem lost to antiquity, furthering the colonialist belief that Indigenous peoples and cultures are stuck in the past.
Frequently, items in museums are assumed to be gifts or fairly-bought. This is often not the case, especially when the items are displayed on unceded land and/or by the colonisers of the people who created the artifacts. When researching the history of obtained artifacts in Canada, Clavir and Moses found that the Canadian government has a policy for the respect and care for sacred and/or holy objects in museums, emphasizing that knowledge of care should be deferred to whichever people created the object in the first place. It does not, however, have information on museum repatriation or the acquisition of artifacts. The informational void on the government of Canada’s website begs the question: what is being hidden?
Chika Okeke-Agulu, a Nigerian art historian and African art professor at Princeton University, speaks on the accessibility of stolen art. In an interview with CBC, he said, “What if we emptied the Metropolitan Museum and moved all the objects to Lagos and said, ‘Well, let’s keep them in Lagos for the rest of the world to come to Lagos and study and appreciate these cultural heritages of the world.’ I don’t think any one of them is going to like that proposition.” Okeke-Agulu refers to the Benin Bronzes: hundreds of bronze artifacts plundered from Benin in the nineteenth century and housed in the Berlin Ethnological Museum and the British Museum, until repatriation in 2025. Okeke-Agulu’s argument raises a powerful point about what the Western public considers to be a ‘suitable’ place for art.
The idea of autonomy is also central to this debate. Why should one country have the right to tell another country what they can and cannot do with their own artifacts? In the early 2000s, the Denver Art Museum was approached by the Blackfoot Nation, who were hoping to borrow back their horse shawl for a ceremony. The curators were “eager to oblige, but they worried that the ritual would expose the early-twentieth-century relic to the damaging effects of horse sweat. After a delicate negotiation, a compromise was reached: The tribe would use the object in the ceremony without actually putting it on the horse.” In the spring of 2006, settler archivists and librarians began working with “a committee of indigenous leaders to establish Protocols for Native American Archival Materials… [the protocol draft] states that Indian communities have ‘primary rights’ for all ‘culturally sensitive materials’ that are affiliated with them,” but the Blackfoot Nation was still unable to use the shawl as they had wished, as this protocol is still in draft 19 years later.
In another case, the British Museum has the Moai sculptures Hoa Hakananai’a and Moai Hava from Rapa Nui in their permanent collection. These pieces were stolen from Rapa Nui, as stated on the British Museum’s website; yet, the British Museum does not give a justifiable reason for keeping them, as they have with other stolen sculptures. Instead, their website reads, “The Museum recognises the significance of Hoa Hakananai’a and Moai Hava for the Rapanui community today, and acknowledges the impact of their removal from the island in 1868. The Museum is developing a long-term relationship with the community of Rapa Nui, to bring staff time and resources to collaborative research and reinterpretation of the Rapanui collections for the benefit of the community and the wider world.” They aspire to reinterpret the Rapa Nui collections, not return the Maoi sculptures. Why should the piece need to be ‘reinterpreted’ by some white museum curators? Is it not whole already?
This strategy of purposefully ignoring the desires of the Rapa Nui representatives regarding the Moai statues is further exemplified in the collaborative project of the “soundscape offering for the Rapanui tao’a… This audio piece, composed of sounds recorded by the artists on Rapa Nui… attempt[s] to shrink the space between the treasures and their home.” This bridge may seem like a fair compromise, but does not in any way make efforts towards the repatriation of the Moai statues. It is a way to “shrink the space between the treasures and their home”—even the Museum itself acknowledges that the statues do not belong in London. In fact, this feels like a step in the wrong direction, as now when the return of the Moai statues are requested again, the British Museum will point to these collaborative exhibits as false evidence of repatriation. Much like the Blackfoot Nation’s saddle, the museum currently housing the artifact is sidestepping the issue in an effort to keep control over their stolen goods.
The Rapa Nui people created their sacred statue, and yet the British Museum insists on treating them as if they are incapable of caring for it. The Rapa Nui museum in Chile has a museum displaying other Moai relics; it is more than capable of containing this culturally important artifact. If someone is truly worried about a lack of funds, they should consider the fact that tourism is a massively profitable industry. The movement of the statues would increase the number of tourists and visitors, raising more money for the upkeep and care of the artifacts. Again, there is no solid case against the idea of replacing the statues with a replica.
Having made an artifact does not necessarily mean your country or people have ownership over it. Though museum curators and art historians should be included in discussion and debate over ownership rights, they should not be able to veto the repatriation of artifacts. Arguing for the deprivation of Indigenous creators from their histories for the purposes of putting them in a ‘time capsule’ is a colonialist mindset: patronising and infantilising. Privilege and history can obscure the clear truth that stolen art deserves to be returned home.