The discussion about returning wrongfully acquired heritage
to countries in the global south has, until now, largely focused on the steps
taken by Western museums and governments. But away from the spotlight, in
countries like Cameroon and Indonesia, heritage workers, government officials,
and activists are laying the groundwork to reclaim long lost treasures, a
process most expect will take decades.
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Identifying the objects and securing their recovery is just
one part of the task. Challenges include establishing who will own and take
care of the artifacts, upgrading museum infrastructure, involving communities,
and awakening public interest.
“We have an enormous mission,” said Placide Mumbembele
Sanger, a professor at the University of Kinshasa who is advising Congo’s
government. “This is not something we can complete in five years,” he added.
“It will be a long process.”
The trigger for the global movement toward restituting
plundered heritage was a 2017 pledge by President Emmanuel Macron of France, in
a speech in Burkina Faso, to permanently give back African patrimony in French
museums. Since then, Germany, the Netherlands, France and Belgium have set up
national guidelines to process claims and return artifacts. A milestone in this
process came last year, when Germany transferred ownership of 1,100 Benin Bronzes
to Nigeria.
There have been some hiccups. A decision by Nigeria’s
outgoing president to hand the returning artifacts to a direct descendant of
the ruler they had been stolen from created confusion. Some German curators
voiced concerns that the objects may not be cared for or displayed, but
Germany’s government argued that the return of the Bronzes was unconditional,
and it was not for Germany to dictate what Nigeria does with its reclaimed
heritage.
That position is shared by heritage workers in Cameroon,
Congo, Indonesia, and Nepal, who said they are watching developments in Nigeria
closely. The questions around returning heritage to the communities of origin
is occupying them too: In Nepal, statues representing gods are heading back to
the places of worship from which they were stolen; in Indonesia, the government
is talking with regional museum curators to make museums more accessible so
that ritual objects can be used in religious ceremonies.
Heritage workers in the global south also stressed the need
to cooperate in researching the historical context of the losses and the
stories behind individual objects.
Here is a closer look at developments in four countries.
Indonesia
The spectacular Lombok diamond, set in an intricately
wrought hexagon of gold flowers and leaves, is one of nearly 500 Indonesian
cultural treasures wrongfully acquired during Dutch colonial rule that are
returning home next month. The restitutions, announced July 6 by the Dutch
government, are likely to be the first of many: Tens of thousands of Indonesian
objects remain in museums in Europe, primarily in the Netherlands.
Indonesia’s preparations to receive its heritage have
developed in tandem with the structures the Netherlands has set up. In February
2021, Indonesia’s minister of culture established a restitution team as a
counterpart to the Dutch government’s panel, led by a former ambassador to the
Netherlands. In 2022, the Indonesian government sent a formal request to the
Netherlands for the return of eight groups of objects: the July restitution
comprised four of these groups. The Dutch panel has not yet issued its decision
on the remaining four.
Hilmar Farid, the director general of Indonesia’s Ministry
of Education and Culture, said the Dutch panel wants his government to make
claims for specific groups of objects in Dutch museums. “The problem is we
don’t really know what exists,” he said. “The next step is for the Dutch to
open access for Indonesian researchers to their museum collections.”
Because the objects left Indonesia more than a century ago,
local narratives attached to them have, in many cases, been lost, Farid said.
Each of the rings in the returning Lombok treasure, for instance, “has its own
story,” he said. “The speed and volume of restitutions is not the priority: the
priority is knowledge production. We will focus on items that tell stories.”
The Indonesian state will be the owner of all returning
heritage and the National Museum in Jakarta will serve as its custodian. But
Farid is also starting to engage local Indonesian communities and recently held
talks with museum staff on the island of Lombok on how objects of local
relevance can be displayed there in the future. Many of the returning items
have ritual significance: Bowls in the Lombok treasure were traditionally used
for offerings in religious ceremonies, for instance.
“Museums will need to be more open and accessible to
different practices,” Farid said. “We will need a more participatory approach
to allow people who are not traditional museumgoers to interact with the
objects and their stories.”
Congo
When Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde, Congo’s prime minister,
received an inventory of 84,000 Congolese heritage objects and natural
specimens from his counterpart in Belgium last year, it was the symbolic
beginning of what Lukonde described as a “reappropriation of our national
memory.”
After that, the Congolese government adopted a decree to
create a system for handling restituted cultural heritage from museums in
Europe and invited experts in art history, law, philosophy and foreign
relations to advise it.
Until 1960, Belgium controlled a vast territory in central
Africa — around 80 times the size of the European country itself — including
what is now Congo. Belgian explorers, soldiers, government representatives,
merchants and missionaries took home items they had stolen, bought, or
otherwise acquired.
Last year, Belgium’s parliament approved a law paving the
way for restitutions of cultural property to Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. It has
also created a commission to work with its Congolese counterpart.
The law is sweeping in scope. Any object acquired during
colonial rule is eligible for restitution — it does not have to have been
looted.
But Mumbembele, the professor advising the Congolese
government, said the emphasis would be on thoroughness, not pace.
“If Belgium sent us 20,000 objects in one go, the question
would be where to put them,” he said. “We do not have space in our museums. The
issue of museum infrastructure has to be dealt with in a responsible way.”
Mumbembele said Congo may be open to leaving some objects on
display in Belgian museums as loans after ownership has been transferred, in
the interest of “international visibility” for Congolese heritage.
Cameroon
Last year, Sylvie Njobati, a heritage activist from the West
African nation of Cameroon, scored a major victory in her campaign to bring
home looted objects from Germany.
Using the Twitter name BringBackNgonnso, Njobati has lobbied
German museums and joined forces on social media with other groups calling for
the restitution of colonial-era plunder.
A wooden figure decorated with cowrie shells called Ngonnso
is on display in the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. For the Nso people of Cameroon,
to whom Njobati belongs, Ngonnso is much more than a lost artifact: The carved
figure is the embodiment of the mother of their community, and its loss more
than a century ago is keenly felt to this day.
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the organization
that oversees Berlin’s major museums, agreed in June 2022 to give Ngonnso back.
To facilitate such returns, Cameroon’s government has set up a restitution
commission, according to Maryse Nsangou Njikam, a culture adviser to the
country’s embassy in Germany. Its members plan to visit Germany later this year
to discuss how to proceed, Njobati said.
Other German holders of Cameroonian artifacts are gradually
following Berlin’s lead: The University of Mainz, for instance, in July offered
to return a beaded bracelet and a small bag containing personal items, brought
back by a German military officer after he raided the kingdom of Nso in 1902.
But there are still an estimated 40,000 Cameroonian objects
in German museums — more than in the state collections in Cameroon’s capital,
Yaoundé, according to a report produced by Cameroonian and German scholars.
The artifacts in Germany include textiles, musical
instruments, ritual masks, manuscripts, weapons and tools, many of which were plundered
in violent raids. The report lists at least 180 “punitive expeditions”
involving looting and destruction during more than 30 years of German colonial
rule.
“We have immense potential to reclaim our heritage and our
dignity,” Njobati said. And while she had a special connection to Ngonnso, it
was also “just the starting point,” she said. There is no inventory of
Cameroonian heritage around the world, Njobati said, but added that she had
seen artifacts in France, and that she believes there are objects in Portugal,
as well.
Nepal
Nepal’s situation is different from that of the three
countries above. Its heritage was not plundered in a colonial context: After a
1951 revolution overturned the totalitarian Rana dynasty that had ruled the
country for more than a century, Nepal opened its borders to the world. Western
academics and tourists bought statues and carvings looted by locals, often from
temples in the Kathmandu Valley, then took their purchases out of the country.
The trafficking reached a peak in the 1970s and 1980s.
Many of the looted objects have since entered western museum
collections via bequests and donations. “We are a poor country, and people saw
how lucrative it was to sell their gods,” said Alisha Sijapati, the campaign
director of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign.
“Kathmandu was treated as an exotic playground. Communities
lost something,” she said. “We rely on these statues — they have superpowers
that help us with our lives.”
The Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign, an activist
organization, was established in 2021 and has already secured the return of
more than 25 stolen religious statues, according to Sijapati. Those include a
1,000-year-old sculpture portraying two Hindu deities from the Dallas Museum of
Art. The campaign researchers have traced many more and are working toward
their return, Sijapati said.
The group traces plundered statues around the world and uses
social media to get tips, circulate photos of missing sculptures and carvings,
and to publicize its campaigns. It passes its findings to Nepal’s Department of
Archaeology, which in turn works with the foreign ministry to issue claims to
museums or institutions.
Sijapati said the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign helps to
streamline this process: “We try to do the homework very well so that their
work is easier.”
Nepal has reached a clear conclusion about where its
restituted heritage belongs — a subject of global debate in the light of
Nigeria’s decision to give the Benin Bronzes to royal descendants. Where it is
possible and desired, recovered Nepalese heritage is returned to the community
from which it was stolen, since the sculpted figures have a spiritual
significance; Nepalese Hindus believe that their gods live within the statues.
“We see the museums in Nepal as a transit point,” Sijapati
said. “The circle of repatriation is only complete when the statues return to
the community. The community has the final say: If they don’t want something
back, it will stay in the museum.”
So, in 2021, amid great festivity, the sculpture from Dallas
was restored to the shrine from which it was taken, in Patan, near Kathmandu.
At the return ceremony, Riddhi Baba Pradhan, a former
director of Nepal’s Department of Archaeology, said, “Tangible heritage as
represented by the statuary is vital in keeping Nepal’s intangible heritage
intact and vibrant.” The sculpture is now protected by surveillance cameras and
motion sensors.
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