home | news l

British museums to return 'long lost' Aboriginal art

By Chris Hastings and Catherine Milner

26 August 2001 - Some of Britain's biggest museums are to return hundreds of artefacts to their original owners as part of a Government initiative on disputed collections.

African queen: a 16th-century sculpture of a Nigerian queen mother in the British Museum. At least 40 institutions are believed to be preparing to give back all or part of their collections. The biggest beneficiaries are likely to be the Australian Aborigines and native Americans who have been campaigning for the return of such objects for decades.

The Australian government has been given lists of objects which institutions might be prepared to concede. These have been passed to Aboriginal campaigners.

Museums in Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool are in talks about the return of cultural artefacts such as jewellery and tools, as well as a number of human remains.

The Manchester Museum at the University of Manchester has agreed to hand over four Aboriginal skulls and is considering a request for several 19th-century oil paintings of Aboriginal life to be sent to Australia.

Leeds Museum has agreed to return jewellery to the Cook Islands, and the Natural History Museum in London is in talks with the Chitimacha Indian tribe about the return of cultural artefacts and human remains.

A spokesman for the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre in Hobart said: "We are aware of negotiations taking place between the Australian government and museums on our behalf.

"I think in the past institutions have tried to justify keeping bits of heritage on the grounds it was important for scientific and cultural research. We have always argued that is a flawed argument because no one is doing any research on them. We are not against anyone displaying aspects of our culture. What we don't want is anyone destroying it."

The new approach to returning disputed items follows a meeting between John Howard, the Australian prime minister, and Tony Blair, after which the Government let museum administrators know that a report was being prepared which would advocate repatriation on a far greater scale than had been previously accepted.

The policy shift has disturbed many museum staff. One official in charge of an ethnography department in a large museum said: "The debate about repatriation has become very politically correct. We can no longer resist returns in the way we could have done 10 years ago because there is political support for the repatriation campaign which wasn't there 10 years ago.

"My fear is that things are being returned, not to be reburied or returned to individuals but simply to be placed in other museums which probably have far fewer visitors and research resources than we have here."

Such is the level of political pressure that those opposed to repatriation believe their cause is doomed. Sir Ernst Gombrich, the author of The Story of Art, said: "I would say that this is not a moral but a political question. I would prefer the items be left in museums here. The pressures are however enormous."

A group of tribal representatives from Australia and North America is planning to visit museums across Britain to draw up their own inventory of objects they want to claim.

Lyndon Ormond Parker, an Aboriginal campaigner, believes that the British Government is falling into line with its Australian and American counterparts, all of whom are in favour of repatriation.

"It is political pressure which forced the scientific and museum community in those countries to accept that they no longer had sole rights to decide what should happen to their indigenous human remains in their countries."

Many museums still fear that the return of objects will weaken the case for holding on to prestigious objects such as the Elgin Marbles.

Last week it was revealed that the Government and the British Museum were under increasing pressure to return the marbles to Greece after it offered to hand over newly discovered antiquities if the marbles were returned in time for the Athens Olympics in 2004.

A spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport said that individual museums were still free to act in accordance with their own rules.

Not all claims are, however, likely to be successful. New government initiatives are unlikely to help Seymour Maclean, a Rastafarian who has asked the Queen to hand over the Ethiopian crown jewels, which are held in the Royal Treasury.

This clip is from The Sunday Telegraph (UK)

Further information: repatriation issues page - includes news index and external links

|| click to go to the top of this page