In a message dated Wed, 10 Nov 1999  8:25:52 AM Eastern Standard Time, Seana Jones <[log in to unmask]> writes:

> Yes, but what about Aboriginal (Indian) material. For example, ceremonial masks, that had (and still have) personal religious meaning, that should not be on display or in a museum. Or for that matter, African religious artifacts.

Speaking of religious artifacts, how come it is okay to display mainstream religious artifacts like crosses, Stars of David or Korans but not anything that's "Aboriginal"?  I can see removing something if a culture does not want it to be displayed but should we not display any of these artifacts in the first place?  I think that is a little extreme.

> As an example from the States, what about the skulls of Native Americans (Indians). Shouldn't museums "edit" those artifacts out of their collections? I'm thinking of a story not too long ago where a major musuem in the States would not give the relatives the bones of their ancestors for
> proper burial. Is it not "immoral" for museums to continue to keep these types of objects in their collections?

To me, it depends on how old these things are and how they were acquired.  After several hundred or even thousand years, I don't think any tribe or people has claim over artifacts.  I would be laughed at if I went back to my family's ancestral lands in England (if I knew where they were in the first place) and demanded that "my people" be returned to me.  The relation between me and my "ancestors" that lived hundreds of years ago is like 1/1000th or less.  Why are we trying to go to great lengths for native peoples who have a 1/1000th connection or less to their ancestors?

Case in point, a man came in on archaeology day to my school's archaeology lab with a box of Southwestern native american artifacts that he had bought off an Indian in Nevada.  A local Indian woman looked at the artifacts with great reverance and wanted him to give them to local tribe to be reburried.  I wanted to say, "What claim do you have on the artifacts of a tribe all the way across the US, especially when they were freely sold by another Native American?"  That's like a Frenchman making a claim on an Irish artifact because they're both European.  It's that kind of blanket treatment to anything native or aboriginal that really irks me and makes me think that museums have now swung the other way in the realms of "PC".

There are tons of artifacts that were freely given by native peoples to other people who then donated them to museums, many were given over a hundred years ago.  Why do tribes today have claims on those artifacts?  Again, I think they have a right to ask that they not be displayed because of religious reasons, but not to be returned if the artifact was freely given up or donated.

Sorry for the rant but this is something that has bugged me about the museum community for a long time.

Deb Fuller

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