How We All Share in Restoration and Reparation
“Grave robbing.” Perhaps you have heard the expression. It isn’t just a thing of fiction or some Indiana Jones movie plot. This was yet another indignity suffered by many BIPOC (Black Indigenous People of Color) and their descendants long after they were driven from their lands, kidnapped, or killed. Hobbyists, collectors, and even prominent researchers took part in the desecration of Native American burial sites as skulls, bones, and antiquities were sold, traded, studied, and displayed in museums. This same theme made headlines last year when museums started returning stolen and looted artifacts from African countries. There was a renewed focus on the issues of racism and colonialism in the art world after worldwide Black Lives Matter protests kicked off last year.
Ngaire Blankenberg, who is South African and the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, has brought her children to museums around the world. She says by now they expect to hear her point out things that shouldn’t be there. “They are always braced for a rant,” she said with a laugh. She isn’t the only person who has said seeing objects that may have been obtained unethically can make them feel tense and uncomfortable. Cutcha Risling Baldy, a professor of Native American studies at Humboldt State University, said returning sacred items provides healing to various tribes. She criticizes museums and universities that warehouse items that objectify Native Americans and reduce them to “historical objects and artifacts rather than people.”
“From a spiritual perspective, from a cultural perspective, or even a human perspective, it’s hard to imagine the graves of your ancestors being dug up and then put into a museum.” Risling Baldy continued, “It kind of creates a mythology around Native people that we are somehow specimens, rather than people and human beings.”
When I learned of a collection of bronze statues from Benin being returned to Nigeria last year, in a ceremony headed by French President Emmanuel Macron, I was also surprised to learn 90% of Africa’s material cultural heritage is being housed in the West. Major museum collections hold them and not the families, tribes, and communities where these items were stolen from. The push for repatriation of art and artifacts with questionable histories has become more widespread in recent years, which experts attribute to advances in research techniques and the interest in art looted by Nazis during World War II. As Kalpana Nand, Education Officer of Fiji Museum, states: “Culture is a living, dynamic, ever-changing and yet ever constant thing—it is a story, a song, a dance, a performance, never a ‘dead thing’ to be represented in the form of an artefact to be looked at through glass.”
Think about that and the importance of how you maintain your own heritage, voice, and interests. Think about the last time you went to an art or history museum. Which pieces stood out to you? Did you read the plaques next to them? Did those tell you where the artifacts were from and how they were acquired? Today, most museums around the world contain art and artifacts that were stolen from their countries of origin during colonial rule or looted during war. But do museums have a right to keep and display those objects and if so, how much should they keep? Museums, activists, and governments are wrestling with that last question.
Being an ally to Indigenous communities in your area can take the form of donating money to local Indigenous organizations, supporting their movements and campaigns, or committing to returning land. As an ally, your role is to support and not immediately label BIPOC reactions — which may range from anger to grief. Most have post-colonial and/or post slavery trauma in their history, but it isn’t something you can easily categorize. Practice compassion and self-reflection as various communities mourn and remember. We do well to remember repatriation of culture and the revival of personal continuity restores well-being of individual young persons, is linked to improved health in all, and lowers suicide rates in BIPOC communities after decades of oppression and then suppression.
In the twenty-first century, yes, museums and larger institutions can play a new role in supporting and contributing to processes of cultural renewal. But so can we as it involves looking beyond the walls of our own institutions and the local community as we recognize the value of society as a whole. I read a book which suggested we “pay rent” to tribal people in the form of a donation to the tribe on whose land you live and work or through a nonprofit that serves Indigenous people. Pay reparations to Black people by supporting Black organizations or Black foundations. Don’t be afraid to do your own research for local organizations. All global citizens have to practice anti-racism on a personal level, and advocate anti-racism on institutional and societal levels. We can empower communities, as well as build new forms of community altogether and develop new ways of imagining the world.
[si-contact-form form=’2′]