Legal Briefs - August 2020
If the Past is Another Country, What’s the Future?
by Ron McCoy
“The past is another country; they do things differently there.”
L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)
Hoa Hakananaia’a at the British Museum
Photo by: James Miles / CC BY-SA
Hopefully, you are weathering the pandemic’s upheavals and dislocations as best and as well as you can. Paso a paso, folks, step by step.
At the moment, we appear to be in a state akin to a hiatus: perched in the narrowest of gaps betwixt and between; lodged in a liminal bubble sliding along a wobbly continuum that runs from the wreckage of a rapidly receding past crammed-up uncomfortably against an incomplete present; all the while searching for the makings of a bridge that will allow us to move into an uncertain future dominated by some great reset. Cheerful stuff.
Not surprisingly, then, when it comes to the field of tribal art things have been almost preternaturally quiet of late. Museum and gallery closings, widespread civil upheaval, and the fact that most people find their minds focused on other, more prosaic matters like survival…well, there is nothing quite like a pandemic to refocus one’s attention. Although searching for signs of links between this pandemic and antique tribal art may seem a bit of a stretch, it has been during this time that musing on these subject’s relationship to one another took me back to 1967.
That was the year many then-young seekers of transformational change listened avidly to a record called “For What It’s Worth (Stop, Hey What’s That Sound?).” In what became an audible trope for the era, the eclectic folk-rock group Buffalo Springfield sang Stephen Stills’ haunting lyrics about the dislocating uncertainties of a disconcertingly unsettling time: “There’s something happening here/What it is ain’t exactly clear….”[1]
The next year, 1968, the genie came roaring out of the bottle. Everything seemed adrift, loosened from moorings, far from in-control as the firestorm of events accelerated: war, protestors and police battling in the streets, cities alight, assassinations, all in a seemingly relentless cascade of near-apocalyptic horror during one of those may-you-live-in-interesting-times times. Four years later, 1968’s goings on occupied the thoughts of China’s wily premier Zhou Enlai, who carved his way up to a point as close to the top of the Maoist hierarchy as you could get without being Mao. Asked for comment on the long-term impact of a tumultuous revolutionary wave which reminded many of the beginnings of the French Revolution, Zhou wisely replied: “Too early to say.”[2]
If you consider the confusion voiced by Buffalo Springfield and mingle it with Zhou’s words of wisdom, there’s a lot right now that may not seem “exactly clear.” Still, it’s just about ironclad-certain that there’s another side to all of this from which we shall, at some point, emerge. (Needless to say, “all” includes that array of aficionados, curators, collectors, and dealers associated with the field of antique tribal art.) It is certainly an equally secure wager to take the position that life on the other side is going to be a whole lot different from that to which we are accustomed.
We often perceive the loci of our activities as firmly rooted in what amount to different worlds: “tribal art world,” “automobile manufacturing world,” “world of politics,” and so forth. But this perception of separateness is an illusion, a mental accounting trick that allows us to compartmentalize our affairs. But none of those world-constructs is inherently distinct; all are inextricably linked.
With that thought in mind, we may sense that the impact already wrought upon the tribal art sphere by the pandemic and its resulting waves of after-effects remains uncertain, the details of its longer-term impact unknown. Still, it is not too early to give some thought to the future if only to be better equipped for dealing with its new realities.
“The past,” British novelist and short story writer L.P. Hartley observed, “is another country; they do things differently there.” Similarly, the future — at least as much and perhaps even more than the past — will be another place; one where we shall, perforce, find ourselves doings things differently.
As we prepare to venture into alien territory, it’s a safe bet that the impact of what amounts to a pandemic earthquake (complete with its cascade of riffling aftershocks) cannot help but exert a profound impact upon those for whom antique tribal art is a passion.
The previous edition of this column — “Emmanuel Macron’s Bold Promise to Repatriate African Objects: ‘Hey, Wha’ Happen’?” — looked at the pledge French president Emmanuel Macron made in 2017 to atone for the “grave mistake”[3] of European colonialism by repatriating objects of African material culture to the continent of its origin.
Macron envisioned a five-year timeline for creating a mechanism to effect the repatriation from French public collections of an unspecified amount of African tribal art — currently, a legal impossibility — and, by implication, works emanating from other exploited cultures. Macron even pledged a $22.5 million loan to Benin so a suitable museum could be constructed at the UNESCO World Heritage site at Abomey.[4]
Naturally, there was a report on the subject. Macron received the Savoy-Sarr Report, named after its coauthors, in late 2018.[5] This is bold stuff, its authors proclaiming they seek nothing less than “the emancipation of memory.”[6] Much of the report is devoted to mind-numbing statements concerning impossibly convoluted constructs theoretical and special pleading. Whatever else it may have accomplished, the Savoy-Sarr Report succeeded in transforming the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris into ground zero for Macron’s experiment.
One of the world’s foremost museums, the Quai Branly holds more than 300,000 pieces of ethnographic art from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas.[7] The Savoy-Sarr Report took account of the roughly museum’s 70,000 pieces of sub-Saharan origin and honed-in on twenty-six objects, including “statues and thrones looted by French troops during a military raid against the once powerful West African Kingdom of Dahomey in 1892.”[8]
At the time that column was published, Macron’s initiative remained unrealized, stalled for any number of reasons. Since then, the Quai Branly announced the appointment of Emmanuel Kasarhérou as its new president (director). Kasarhérou, the New Caledonia-born son of a Melanesian father and French mother, completed museum studies in Paris, headed the Museum of New Caledonia in his homeland, and returned to the Quai Branly where he served as deputy head of collections.[9]
“I feel as much the descendant of people who were colonizers of a certain place as of people who were colonized,”[10] Kasarhérou explained in an interview with Farah Nayeri of The New York Times soon after his appointment to the Quai Branly directorship.
He lost no time making some interesting observations about Macron’s pledge (indirectly) and the Savoy-Sarr Report (directly), including offering his opinion that the overall issue of cultural heritage and its repatriation is not something that can be “tackled with big block ideologies.”[11]
In fact, Kasarhérou evidently holds some decidedly negative views of the Savoy-Sarr Report, which he describes as a “very militant” document, one which “cannot be a blueprint for policy.” (He did give its authors some kind of nod for “[s]haking things up.”)[12] In addition, Kasarhérou committed himself to careful review of repatriation claims, declaring: “I’m not in favor of objects being sent out into the world and left to rot.”[13]
Emmanuel Kasarhérou certainly knows how tricky his outsider-insider/insider-outsider position may become when it comes to the crunch, the actual business of receiving and evaluating repatriation claims, engaging in often difficult dialogue between claimants and those possessing the relevant objects, and a gazillion other points of agreement, confusion, and contention. “I know I will inevitably disappoint people,” he has ruefully noted, perhaps reflecting a somewhat optimistic form of stoicism. “One always does. The worst thing would be to do nothing.”[14]
This is not just about Macron, the Savoy-Sarr Report, or the Quai Branly. As the pandemic raged and its associated dislocations scythe through our societies there are plenty of people and organizations playing a truncated game of catch-up. In June, for example, the British Museum came under renewed pressure about its own massive collection of controversial works. Hartwig Fischer, the institution’s director, put up a statement online declaring the museum “stands in solidarity with the British Black community, with the African American community, and with the Black community throughout the world.”[15]
For more than a few observers, the statement exhibited precisely the sort of cluelessness, condescension and desperation that may be capable of generating a few cheers but is absolutely guaranteed to invite a chorus of jeers. After all, as the Artforum account of this affair pointed out in an interesting coda:
Among the countries currently seeking the return of cultural heritage objects from the museum are Greece, which has repeatedly tried to secure the restitution of the Elgin marbles pilfered from the Parthenon in Athens; Ethiopia, which has called for the restitution of tabots, Christian plaques representing the Ark of the Covenant; and Chile, which has demanded the return of Hoa Hakananai’a, a stone monolith taken from Easter Island.[16]
“Look, I love you guys, but maybe you ought to sit this one out” a Twitter warrior responded. “Unless you plan to return the looted Ethiopian treasures, the stolen Elgin Marbles and permanently return the Benin Bronzes.” Another was “appalled at the hypocrisy” of the institution, with one cutting to the chase by twittering, “Time to give back the swag, guys!”[17]
Ultimately, as the author of the Artforum account explained, “expressing the institution’s solidarity with the black and African American community” is “a move that has invited heated criticism from those who claim the words will ring hollow until the museum reckons fully with the looted objects in its collection.”[18]
Although Emmanuel Macron’s dream remains unrealized, at least for the moment, it is not a forgotten remnant from a vanished past. This is something anyone associated with tribal art needs to spend time considering, because there will be new initiatives, more reports, and in some cases action.
We could do worse than preparing for the day we finally wash up on the shores of the future. Because we may find that shore crowded with folks who share reflections of Macron’s repatriation proposal; people for whom the dream of a great reckoning trending toward social justice remains not only undiminished but revitalized by a powerful sense of urgency.
After all, the future is another country; they do things differently there.
Please note: This column does not offer legal or financial advice. Anyone requiring such advice should consult a professional in the relevant field. The author welcomes readers’ comments and suggestions, which may be sent to him at legalbriefs@atada.org
ENDNOTES
[1] “Stephen Stills Lyrics: For What It’s Worth,” AZLyrics (n.d.), https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/stephenstills/forwhatitsworth.html
[2] Although Zhou’s observation is commonly thought to involve his analysis of the French Revolution of 1789, he was speaking of revolutionary developments in France in 1968. Richard McGregor, “Zhou’s Cryptic Caution Lost in Translation,” Financial Times (June 10, 2011). See, too, “Delanceyplace.com 6/21/11 — Too Early To Say,” Delanceyplace.com (June 21, 2011), https://delanceyplace.com/view-archives.php?p=1711
[3] “Macron Calls Colonialism a ‘Grave Mistake’ During Visit to Ivory Coast,” France24 (Dec. 21, 2019), https://www.france24.com/en/20191222-frence-president-macron-on-official-visit-to-ivory -coast-calls-colonialism-a-grave-mistake
[4] Ibid.
[5] The Savoy-Sarr Report was authored by art historian Bénédicte Savoy, chair for Modern Art History/Art History as Cultural History at the Tecnische Universität Berlin,[5] and economist Felwine Sarr, director of the Civilizations, Religions, Arts, and Communication research center at Gaston Berger University in Saint-Louis, Senegal.[5]
[6] Savoy-Sarr Report, 1.
[7] “Missions: A Bridge Between Cultures,” (Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac, n.d.), http://www.quaibranly.fr/en/missions-and-operations/the-musee-du-quai-branly/#:~:text=; Farah Nayeri, “Museums in France Should Return African Treasure, Report Says,” The New York Times (Nov. 21, 2018), https:/ /www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/arts/design/france-museums-africa-savoy-sarr-report.html/.
[8] Heleluya Hadero, “Benin’s New Museum for Artifacts Looted by France Is Being Built Using a French Loan,” QuartzAfrica (wJuly 23,2019), https://qz.com/africa/1672922/france-will-help-fund-benin-museum-housing-looted-artifacts/
[9] Farah Nayeri, “A New Museum Director’s First Challenge: Which Exhibits to Give Back,” The New York Times (June 5, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/arts/design/emmanuel-kasarherou-quai-branly-museum.html
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Catherine Hickley, “’Time to Give Back the Swag, Guys!’ British Museum Unleashes Twitter Storm With Statement on Black Lives Matter,” The Art Newspaper (June 9, 2020), https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/british-museum-unleashes-twitter-storm-with-statement-on-black-lives-matter
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] “After Solidarity Statement, British Museum Faces Renewed Demands To Give Up Loot,” Artforum (June 12, 2020), https://www.artforum.com/news/after-solidarity-statement-british-museum-faces-renewed-demands-to-give-up-loot-83215
Bill That Will Block Native Art Exports Approved By Senate Committee
STOP Act Update - August 2020
On June 10, 2020, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs took written testimony on the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act of 2019 (STOP Act), S. 2165. ATADA President, Kim Martindale submitted testimony to the committee, a copy of which can be found here: https://atada.org/atada-blog/2020-stop-act-testimony
On July 29, 2020, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs took just three minutes to vote on the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act of 2020 (STOP Act), S. 2165, a substitute for the bill commented on in the testimony submitted on June 10th. The text of the amended bill was not made public before the hearing, but its substance remains largely the same. The vote passes the amended version of the bill on to the full Senate for consideration. Key provisions are listed below. In most respects, the serious negative consequences remain the same as in the version of the STOP act introduced in 2019.
ATADA remains committed to working with all parties to restore sacred and ceremonial items to the tribes while respecting individual’s constitutional rights. Unfortunately, the substitute does little to address the basic flaws in S. 2165, beyond providing an essential mens rea standard for the export prohibition. In fact, the substitute bill contains almost all of the flaws found in the base bill.
The newly revised version of S. 2165:
Undermines constitutional protections guaranteed to American citizens, placing the burden of proof on the applicant, not the government and reversing the American concept of innocent until proven guilty. It places the burden of proof on exporters challenging seizure to show that an item IS lawfully owned, an impossible task when objects have often circulated for more than one hundred years in trade.
Includes a partial mens rea provision requiring knowing violation. One aspect of the revised bill is an improvement on past versions, because a criminal violation exists when an exporter knows that the object was acquired in violation of US law, or because the exporter knowingly failed to follow export permit procedures. However, S. 2165 will subject U.S. citizens and visiting tourists to felony charges, fines, imprisonment, and loss of property based on a vague standard that they in “the exercise of due care should have known” that an object was “unlawfully taken, possessed, transported or sold” “in violation of any Federal law or treaty.”
Potentially restricts commercially made and legal items as tribal heritage. Affects objects of any value, even $1, and both new objects and objects in commercial circulation more than 100 years.
Sets no time-limit for review and gives limitless scope to the objects that cannot be exported. Fails to utilize an established Customs system with clear rules and substitutes a cumbersome one where criteria will be secret, known only to Tribes.
Excludes from possible tribal claims only items made “solely” for commercial purposes, when virtually ALL trade in Native American items for 140 years has been in items made for Native Americans for themselves as well as for sale. The bill then grants Tribes the ability to halt exports even of solely commercial items if Tribes challenge this presumption.
Explicitly allows evidence to be deleted from government records at the request of tribes. S. 2165’s new ‘Deletion from Database” provision provides that on request by an Indian Tribe or Native Hawaiian organization, the Secretary shall delete an export certification application from the database.
Effectively bypasses NAGPRA and ARPA processes for exporting museums and institutions.
Provides $3,000,000 in funding for actions under the bill.
We continue to monitor the status of this proposed legislation. A date for consideration by the full Senate has not been set, nor has a corresponding substitute bill been approved by the House at this time.
In the near future, we will be providing more detailed information on how to contact your representatives to express opinions about this proposed legislation.
Sincerely,
The ATADA Board of Directors
You can read the text of S.2165 by clicking below.
ATADA Written Testimony
June 10, 2020
ATADA Written Testimony on STOP Act of 2019
On June 10, 2020, ATADA submitted the following written testimony to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs regarding the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act of 2019 (STOP Act), S. 2165.
The written testimony can be found in full below. Click here to download a copy of the testimony.
ATADA,[1] Kim Martindale, President
Testimony submitted to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on
The Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act of 2019 (STOP Act), S. 2165[2]
June 10, 2020
This testimony is submitted on behalf of ATADA, the Authentic Tribal Art Dealers Association. ATADA is a professional organization established in 1988 in order to set ethical and professional standards for the art trade. Its membership includes hundreds of antique and contemporary Native American and ethnographic art dealers and collectors, art appraisers, and a strong representation of museums and public charities across the U.S.
ATADA is engaged in intensive community educational work to build understanding of Native American concerns over the loss of cultural heritage. In 2016 and 2017, ATADA adopted Bylaws forbidding trade in items in current ceremonial use,[3] established Due Diligence Guidelines to protect buyers and sellers,[4] and began public education programs[5] working together with tribal representatives.
ATADA has built a highly successful, community-based Voluntary Returns Program for lawfully owned ceremonial objects. The Voluntary Returns Program has brought several hundred important ceremonial items from art dealers[6] and collectors to tribes at no cost since it began in 2016.[7] The vast majority of sacred items that ATADA has returned to tribes have come from collections built 30-70 or more years ago, prior to passage of NAGPRA in 1990. NAGPRA was clearly a wake-up call to collectors and art dealers as well as for museums. It remains the most effective federal tool for ensuring that sacred items are returned to tribes.
ATADA appreciates the opportunity to assist in promoting legislation that protects tribal ceremonial and sacred items, strengthens enforcement of existing laws consistent with citizens constitutional rights and facilitates legitimate trade in legal items. However, the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act of 2019 (STOP Act), S. 2165, fails on all these counts.
This is the third version of STOP introduced since 2016. It replicates and even expands many provisions rejected in prior versions of the bill. Like earlier iterations of STOP, this bill will embargo lawfully owned Indian artifacts, will fail to provide notice to the public of what Indian objects are prohibited from export, will impose burdensome export requirements on very low value items, and allow seizure without constitutional due process.
For all the reasons set forth below, ATADA believes that S. 2165, will not achieve its primary goal—the return of important cultural objects to Native American tribes, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiian organizations. It is constitutionally, procedurally, and practically flawed.
1. The STOP Act undermines constitutional protections guaranteed to American citizens, placing the burden of proof on the applicant, not the government, and reversing the American concept of innocent until proven guilty.
The STOP Act does not require “knowing” wrongdoing for there to be a crime. It does not require proof of violation of NAGPRA, ARPA, or other U.S. law. Export restrictions can be placed on lawfully-owned objects.
The STOP Act provides for criminal penalties of up to ten years’ imprisonment for exporting lawfully owned items without a permit. Despite these heavy penalties, due process is absent. The STOP Act places the entire burden of proof on the exporter, even if the exporter is a tourist.
STOP’s tribal review process for issuing export permits is secret. It is not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. Evidence from tribes on which seizure was based would be withheld, severely limiting opportunities to appeal seizures or refusal to export and denying future access to information for the future.
2. The STOP Act potentially restricts commercially-made and legal items as tribal heritage.
Native Americans have been making ceramics, carvings, jewelry, and weavings for commercial sale for literally hundreds of years.[8] There are hundreds of thousands of Native American antique objects that have circulated in the market for decades, many of which are now said by tribes to to be tribal ‘cultural heritage.’[9] Even Indian art made for sale would be subject to restrictions and secret tribal review. A receipt from a Native American artist does not guarantee that an object is exempt from review and possible seizure.
3. The STOP Act sets no time-limit for review and gives limitless scope to the objects that cannot be exported.
The STOP Act has no time limit for tribal review. There is no list of forbidden items for export.
STOP provides only for a general description of objects that may be unlawful to export. The documentation burden and delay of STOP’s proposed tribal review system would be a de-facto export ban as the work would not be justified for low value items.
Legitimate business relationships with international partners and art fairs will be curtailed due to concerns over unlimited delays. The lack of a clear definition of what may be exported without a permit will result in the seizure of objects exported in good faith.
4. The STOP Act does not enable self-certification.
A self-certification process under U.S. law would never be a free ride as a false statement would lead to imprisonment, a significant safeguard. ATADA endorses self-certification to ensure a paper trail for exports and to provide true accountability.
5. The STOP Act will harm American small businesses exports, Native and non-Native alike.
ATADA is committed to helping to build markets for Native and non-Native American small businesses and Native craftspeople. The STOP Act’s time-consuming and potentially expensive export process (for which an unstated fee will be assessed) will eliminate small scale exports and place an additional burden on Indian artisans as well as art dealers.
Art and craft production is important in the economies of tribal nations across the U.S., including Native Alaskan sculptors, Northwest Coast weavers and carvers, California basketry-makers, Cherokee Nation beadworkers, and craft marketers from the Plains to the Penobscot people of Maine and others in the Northeast. These and many others are working to build local artist markets in their communities; they are also represented together with hundreds of Native Americans artists from Southwestern tribal nations in galleries and fairs in New Mexico. All these creations of Native artisans are potentially subject to an export ban given The STOP Act’s failure to specifically define what items require certification.
Travel restrictions have already decimated the hopes of thousands of Native artisans dependent on summer sales for the majority of their annual earnings. Imposing export barriers to businesses and tourists alike would threaten the ability rebuild sales venues for Indian art.
6. The STOP Act will harm both U.S. and foreign tourism.
The STOP Act requires tourists as well as commercial exporters to submit photos and forms and obtain permissions for exports as low as $1 value. These requirements will be impossible for most tourists to meet and will taint the domestic market with concerns that buying Indian art is ‘wrong.’ Too broad or too vague criteria would trap many foreign tourists, inevitably resulting in thousands of inadvertent, innocent violations and seizures for technical errors rather than criminal acts.
To give just one example of STOP’s potential for negative impact, the first international news article about seizure of an ordinary object from a tourist for failing to meet STOP’s vague export permitting requirements would seriously harm international tourism to important tourist destinations, such as Santa Fe’s almost 100-year-old Indian Market, which ordinarily draws about 100,000 tourists to New Mexico each year.
7. Consumer confusion will further damage tribal markets.
Public confusion about laws regulating trade can result in unintended harm. A case in point is the federal law banning trade in elephant ivory, which has seriously impacted Native Alaskan craftsmen who legally carve marine mammal ivory.[10] Many Native artisans depend on sales of carved marine mammal ivory, particularly walrus, to pay for necessities like fuel oil through the winter. The federal elephant ivory ban has reduced Native carvers’ earnings by as much as 40%. As Native carver Dennis Pungowiyi explained to Arctic Today, negative perceptions have grown among his customers who believe that owning a walrus ivory sculpture might be illegal, even though it is legal under Alaskan and federal law.[11]
Several U.S. states have gone far beyond federal regulations and passed laws prohibiting trade in all ivories.
The STOP Act’s overbroad, vague provisions would similarly taint other Native artworks with potential illegality and raise the concept that ownership of Native art was harmful to cultural integrity and public interest.
8. The STOP Act provides no funding for a system of review, and no guidance as to how such a system should be organized.
The STOP Act leaves the Department of the Interior to create and fund a system of tribal review from scratch. The system must cover virtually all exported Indian art and artifacts (many of which cannot be identified to specific tribes) from every federally recognized tribe and Hawaiian Native organization. Yet five years after first asking the federal government to establish this system, no tribe has come forward with a plan for coordinating or organizing it.
9. STOP fails to utilize the existing U.S. Customs’ AES export reporting system agreed to by tribes in 2018, sets no low-value threshold.
The AES system used for all commercial exports of $2500.00 or more provides an adaptable online system for tracking exports. Using this $2500.00 threshold would already be far more restrictive than any import/export system for art and artifacts currently in use in market nations.
To compare, in early 2019, the European Parliament enacted legislation requiring a certification system for art imports. Although the EU already has harmonized Customs systems, the European Parliament estimates that it will take 5 years to build a permitting system to manage this. The new EU system requires only a self-certification from importers for most types of artworks, including ethnographic objects such as Native American art. For these, it requires self-certification only for objects over 200 years old AND over 18,000 euros in value.[12] Even so, the burden on art businesses is expected to seriously damage the European market and harm international art fairs, an increasing segment of the art market.[13]
How long would be needed for almost 600 tribes and the Department of the Interior to build an independent system for export permits? The only realistic approach is to utilize an already existing system and to limit the items covered as much as possible in order not to overburden it. ATADA hopes that tribes will join it in seeing the benefit of having a functional system that can start almost immediately rather than confront all the hurdles a new system would create.
10. The STOP Act is bad public policy that will undermine NAGPRA and harm U.S. museums.
U.S. museums and educational institutions that receive any federal funding are already subject to strict NAGPRA rules of compliance that enable tribes to claim museum-owned Native American objects. The STOP Act ignores NAGPRA criteria that an object be a ceremonial or sacred object at the time that it left tribal hands. The STOP Act treats NAGPRA’s definition of “cultural items” as one category when NAGPRA has five separate categories of cultural items with separate statutory definitions.
NAGPRA returns are dealt with in a case-by-case process between museums and tribes. Under STOP, tribes have no need to show affinity or substantiate that an object may be claimed.
The STOP Act makes it illegal to export “cultural items” – a term that includes items that are not subject to NAGPRA repatriation. Export by museums for loans or traveling exhibitions of items that were legally acquired decades ago could put museums in violation of the STOP Act.
Objects not subject to NAGPRA could be seized if claimed by a tribe.
11. STOP abandons earlier progress on finding working solutions to preserve heritage.
During the last Congress, our efforts to produce a version of STOP that works led ATADA to work with the Acoma Pueblo and their representatives and produce legislation that banned the export and facilitated the return of illegal sacred and ceremonial items: H.R. 7075, the “Native American and Native Hawaiian Cultural Heritage Protection Act” of 2018.
H.R.7075 accomplished these objectives by grafting an export certification system for Native American items onto the existing Department of Commerce AES system and permitting self-certification for lower value items, insuring speedy and effective implementation, operation, participation and enforcement of an export certification regime without infringing on individual’s constitutional rights.
Despite the burden that H.R. 7075 placed on American businesses, ATADA approved these restrictions in order to assist tribes to achieve their goal of preserving ceremonial and sacred items in the U.S. Regrettably, the STOP Act fails to incorporate compromises agreed to in H.R. 7075.
12. Conclusion.
The STOP Act represents the first time in the United States’ entire history that it has sought to restrict export of art or cultural heritage. Restrictions on any U.S. cultural heritage contravenes long held principles that have emphasized the free trade of cultural property for the public good, and Congress should be wary of enacting such a major statutory change, especially one whose breadth and scope is unlimited and shorn of due process protections.[14]
The problem of loss of tribal cultural heritage will not be solved by passing constitutionally suspect legislation or creating a new, unwieldy, and expensive federal bureaucracy. There are relatively few objects in private hands that actually meet the criteria set forth under NAGPRA or ARPA as objects unlawful to trade. Even fewer are ever exported. The GAO reports for previous versions of STOP counted the total overseas sales of Native American objects (sometimes twice) without identifying any items as actually sold in violation of ARPA, NAGPRA or other US law.
ATADA is strongly supportive of the goal of returning objects necessary for tribal spiritual activities, and of halting all illegal trade in the U.S. as well as abroad. ATADA’s due diligence requirements for dealers, combined with the ATADA Voluntary Returns program, which has brought hundreds of important objects back within just a few years, are models for best business practices and for community-based return programs.
ATADA supports taking steps now to safeguard objects for tribal use. These should include significant federal investment in programs located on tribal lands and the building of safe, secure chapter houses to ensure that cultural objects remain under the control of tribal governments or tribal elders.
Any law passed limiting export should protect U.S. citizens from constitutional abuse by ensuring due process and enabling Freedom of Information Act requests. This requires:
Adopting clear definitions of what can and cannot be exported.
Applying CAFRA provisions to protect unconstitutional and unwarranted seizures.
Exclusions for low value items and tourist purchases.
Self-certification by business to create accountability and enable tracking of exported items.
Limiting export prohibitions to items actually deemed sacred.
ATADA wishes to emphasize its willingness to work together with all interested parties to create legislation that will truly protect important sacred objects and return them to tribes.
ENDNOTES
[1] ATADA, the Authentic Tribal Art Dealers Association, www.atada.org. email director@atada.org, PO Box 45628, Rio Rancho, NM 87174.
[2] This testimony also pertains to the current House version of the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act, S. H.R. 3846. 116th Cong. (2019)
[3] ATADA Bylaws, Article X, Trade Practices, Ethics, And Guarantees. https://www.atada.org/bylaws-policies/
[4] ATADA Bylaws, Article XI, Due Diligence Guidelines. https://www.atada.org/bylaws-policies/
[5] For example, the ATADA Symposium, Understanding Cultural Property: A Path to Healing Through Communication. May 22, 2017, Santa Fe, NM.
[6] ATADA Bylaws, Article X, ATADA Guidelines Regarding the Trade in Sacred Communal Items of Cultural Patrimony. https://www.atada.org/bylaws-policies/
[7] A Journey with Ceremonial Objects, https://committeeforculturalpolicy.org/a-journey-with-ceremonial-objects/
[8] Native American artists created outstanding works of art for sale and trade even before the time of first contact, trading with indigenous American peoples in the Plains and the far West and sending goods to exchange for Mayan and Aztec products southward into present-day Mexico. Contact with the Spanish conquistadors and the settlers that followed them led to development of many Indian arts. To give just one example, Navajo weaving is a traditional art, but it was not until the introduction of sheepherding after contact that there was a large scale expansion of trade in woven goods, blankets and mantas, made both for commercial and domestic use.
[9] For example, American auction houses have recently received ‘cultural heritage’ claims for hand-carved and painted wooden kachinas originally sold by the tribal artist-makers in the 1990s on eBay.
[10] Zachariah Hughes, Lower 48 ivory bans hit Alaska Native carvers, Alaska Public Media, November 7, 2016. https://www.alaskapublic.org/2016/11/07/lower-48-ivory-bans-hit-alaska-native-carvers/
[11] Yereth Rosen, Some U.S. state ivory bans affect Alaska Native carvers. A new federal bill aims to override them, Arctic Today, October 24, 2017, https://www.arctictoday.com/some-u-s-state-ivory-bans-affect-alaska-native-carvers-a-new-federal-bill-aims-to-override-them/
[12] EU Regulation Curtailing Import of Art & Antiquities Now Law, Cultural Property News, June 16, 2019, https://culturalpropertynews.org/eu-regulation-curtailing-import-of-art-antiquities-now-law/
[13] Id.
[14] The U.S. has longstanding import policies encouraging the importation of modern and antique artworks, manuscripts, books, scientific, and other cultural objects by making such imports free of duty. The Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Materials Importation Act of 1966, Section 1(b) provides that “The purpose of this Act is to enable the United States to give effect to the Agreement on the Importation of Educational, Scientific and Cultural Materials… with a view to contributing to the cause of peace through the freer exchange of ideas and knowledge across national boundaries.” The Agreement on the Importation of Educational, Scientific and Cultural Materials was opened for signature at Lake Success, on November 22, 1950, 131 U.N.T.S. 25 (1950); The Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Materials Importation Act of 1966, Pub. L. No. 89-651, 80 Stat. 897 (1966). Even earlier, in the U.S. Tariff Act of 1930, Congress exempted antiquities and art objects made before 1830 from duty in order to encourage the free flow of artistic and cultural materials into the U.S. The exemption from duty on antiques and archaeological materials is under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States Revision 7, ch. 97, § XXI (2019), (Works of Art, Collectors’ Pieces and Antiques, Subheading 9705.00.00 to 9706.00.00).
The Online Sale Ends Tomorrow! Don't Miss It!
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Update: The ATADA Foundation COVID-19 Relief Fund
Dear Members and Friends of ATADA,
Thank You to all who have been able to support the ATADA Foundation's effort to help provide assistance to Native American communities during this pandemic.
To date, we have raised over $11,000 towards our original goal of $12,000 - all because of your generosity! We have begun dispersing funds directly to Native community leadership and charitable organizations working directly with those in need.
We can't stop now. The effects of COVID-19 will be ongoing. There are still people in need of assistance and there is much more work to be done. Therefore, our mission to give back to Native American communities is not finished. In order to help meet this continued need, we have set a new fundraising goal of $20,000.
We can do this! Please help us spread the word.
Goal $20,000
Let's make this happen! This is a pivotal moment in history. Together we can give back to the communities and cultures that have given the world great gifts of art, knowledge and traditions.
In the spirit of Giving Tuesday Now, we're asking those who are able to give what you can.
If you are unable to make a donation, we ask that you help us spread the word about this effort so that we can meet - or exceed - our goal and continue our mission.
Thank you again for your generosity.
Sincerely,
The ATADA Foundation Board of Directors &
The ATADA Board of Directors
Your tax-deductible donation can be made online or by personal check.
To donate online:
Visit: atada.org/atada-foundation
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May 28, 2020 is the Deadline for Public Comment on the Chaco Cultural Region Management Plan
- This article was originally published April 6, 2020 on the Cultural Property News website and is reprinted here by permission.
Chaco Cultural Region: Public Comment on Management Plan
Management plan and size of protected area from oil, gas, and mineral extraction in question.
Bonnie Povolny - April 6, 2020
The federal government is now seeking public comment on the future of one of the most significant cultural sites in the United States, the Chaco Culture Historical Park in northwestern New Mexico. In late February 2020, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), announced proposed revisions to the park’s management in a draft Farmington Mancos-Gallup Resource Management Plan Amendment and Environmental Impact Statement. These are the first revisions put forward by the agencies since 2003. The public comment period ends on May 28, 2020.
Pueblo del Arroyo Ancestral Puebloan great house ruins in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, photo by James Q. Jacobs, 12 April 2007, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
The designated Chaco Culture Historical Park was at the center of a vast civilization in what is now the American Southwest – a site of the Ancestral Puebloan culture. Chaco Canyon still holds the remains of grand kivas and great houses – Pueblo Bonito, Una Vida, Peñasco Blanco and others. The Hopi, Zuni, Navajo and Pueblo peoples of the Four Corners region (where Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona meet) all claim ancestral and spiritual ties to Chaco and its connected communities. The most important sites to archeologists were built in the Pueblo II and Pueblo III eras, from about 900 to 1350 AD.
In May of 2019, U.S. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt announced a yearlong moratorium on oil and gas lease sales within 10 miles of Chaco Culture National Historical Park. This move was followed by the passage by the House of Representatives of H.R. 2181, the Chaco Cultural Heritage Area Protection Act in October. The Act will withdraw a ten-mile radius around the park from development – 316,076 acres of federal land rich in oil, natural gas, coal and other minerals. A Senate version, S. 1079, is currently in a holding pattern, still awaiting a vote in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
Increased oil and gas drilling close to the park had sparked concern among New Mexico and Arizona tribes and pueblos, as well as the general public, that encroachment would impact archeological and ceremonial sites in the region. Environmental and archeological groups have voiced concern that energy extraction development so close to the park would impact its status as a World Heritage site and International Dark Sky Park.
In January, the Navajo Nation Council withdrew their support for the ten-mile buffer and voted to approve a five-mile buffer zone instead, stating that the reduced size would allow Navajo land owners greater rights to enable development on their lands.
According to New Mexico’s congressional delegation, the Navajo Nation Council’s decision was based upon a misunderstanding of how the buffer zone would impact Navajo landowners. A joint statement by Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich and Representatives Luján, Torres Small and Haaland pointed out that the Chaco Cultural Heritage Area Protection Act does not affect tribal or private lands or the mineral rights of an Indian tribe or tribal member to trust land or allotment land.
The All Pueblo Council of Governors, archaeological organizations, and environmental groups continue to support a ten-mile buffer, saying that reducing it would leave more than twelve important ancient Chacoan communities, including many more individual sites, vulnerable to destruction by development. A video of the viewscape of the Pierre’s Place Outlier is available; it is the largest of the Chacoan communities in the ten-mile buffer zone and located at its outer edge.
National Park Service map for Chaco Culture National Historic Park.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, both agencies under the Department of the Interior, are requesting comments from the public on the Environmental Impact Statement and on whether a five-mile Federal buffer around CCNHP should be considered.
The draft Resource Management Plan Amendment, Environmental Impact Statement and supporting information are available online at: https://go.usa.gov/xdrjD.
The BLM and BIA will accept comments through May 28, 2020.
Comments can be submitted via the web address, https://go.usa.gov/xdrjD, or by mail to:
Bureau of Land Management, Farmington Field Office, Attn.: Jillian Aragon, Project Manager, 6251 College Blvd, Suite A, Farmington, NM 87402
or to
Bureau of Indian Affairs, Navajo Regional Office, Attn.: Robert Begay, Project Manager, P.O. Box 1060, Gallup, NM 87301
Legal Briefs - March 2020
Emmanuel Macron’s Bold Promise to Repatriate African Objects:
“Hey! Wha’ Happen’?”
Ron McCoy
In November 2017, France’s president Emmanuel Macron visited the Republic of Burkina Faso, a land which until 1960 was part of his nation’s vast West African colonial empire.[1] Speaking to an audience of attentive students at the national flagship University of Ouagadougou, he focused on the wildly unequal relationship between formerly colonizing European powers and Africa’s formerly colonized peoples.
The colonial era was buoyed by not just by greed or religious fever but by its own self-affirming ideology. This ideology condoned and even mandated the removal (through means both fair and foul) of almost inconceivable amounts of sub-Saharan African material culture, i.e. indigenous art forms, from their places of origination and subsequent speedy incorporation into the public and private European collections where they remain to this day.
Macron appears to be eager to put what he sees as the “grave mistake”[2] of European colonialism in the rearview mirror. “I belong to a generation which was not that of colonization,” he has explained.[3]
“I cannot accept that a large part of cultural heritage from several African countries is in France,” President Macron told the students. “African heritage can’t just be in European private collections and museums.” What Macron then unveiled was a sweeping vison born of a confluence of interests and aspirations in which he posited that, yes, “African heritage must be highlighted in Paris, but also in Dakar [Senegal], in Lagos [Nigeria], in Cotonou [Benin].”
Macron represents a nation which, like some others in the West — Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, and Italy spring to mind — historically enjoys what might best be described as a tangled relationship with the peoples of the African continent, thanks to the lingering effects of the profoundly disruptive and disorienting colonial experience. Although the colonial era may not register much with most Westerners, for Africans (and others) its effects are complex and immediate. For many of them it remains, as Macron says, “a crime against humanity.”[4]
There is general agreement that colonialism, via what could perhaps best be understood as its second- and third-order effects, manifests itself in virtually all areas of former colonies’ human activity, including the political, economic, and cultural spheres. Colonialism’s legacies are also felt in the societies of the former colonial powers. Until not so long ago, one of the cultures involved in this dynamic perceived the material culture of the other as “primitive art,” exotica hoicked from far away and ensconced in some version of a wunderkammer; those objects signified something else altogether when viewed from the perspective of the pieces’ originating culture. Those two competing perspectives, and the attitudes they nourish and reinforce, provide the makings for a toxic brew.
Speaking to the students in Burkina Faso, Macron laid out a schedule of sorts for carrying out the restitution of some of the African art in France to Africa. “In the next five years, I want the conditions to be met for the temporary or permanent restitution of African heritage to Africa,”[5] he pledged. If Macron’s timeline seemed a bit vague and dizzyingly ambitious, it was probably because what he envisioned was still only ethereally defined. It was, after all, a more or less inchoate development at best. Still, it does not require a lot of imagination to foresee emanations from the ideas to which Macron lent his voice being encountered not somewhere way down the road but, rather, soon; definitely a feature of the near-future. Shortly after giving the speech, Macron reiterated his position in (what else?) a Tweet: “African heritage cannot be a prisoner of European museums.”[6]
Macron’s bold plan for the restitution of material culture on a grand scale is heady stuff. For some, it represents the culmination of ages of frustration and the emergence of hope for cultural rejuvenation in a region which could doubtless profit from it. Others see an impossible dream. Whatever one’s view, any interest or enthusiasm Macron generated with his pledge was tempered by a fundamental question: How, exactly, could or would this revolutionary redistributive act be brought about?
The amount of material taken out of Africa and deposited in non-African collections is staggering. It has been estimated that “over 90% of the material culture legacy of sub-Saharan Africa remains preserved and housed outside of the African continent.”[7] (A figure like that should raise some suspicions and command scrutiny, to be sure, but it remains useful for providing a sense of the scene.)
Because it figures so prominently in our narrative as a kind of ground-zero for Macron’s plan, let’s take a brief look at the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. Musée du Quai Branly ranks as one of the world’s foremost museums, a vast storehouse dedicated to preserving more than 300,000 pieces of ethnographic art from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, including some 70,000 objects of sub-Saharan African origin alone.[8] The museum draws on its cosmopolitan setting in aspiring to serve as a force for “creating bridges between cultures,” to the point of offering visitors a “permanent collection area [which] presents 3,500 works geographically without partitions. The juxtaposition of these works encourages original dialog between the cultures of four continents.”[9]
Macron’s grand plan and its five-year timeline for completion was revolutionary. Just how much his proposal rocked some boats started to become clear around November 2018, a year after the Burkina Faso speech. That’s when the French president received a report on the subject he commissioned eight months earlier.”[10] The Savoy-Sarr Report was authored by art historian Bénédicte Savoy, chair for Modern Art History/Art History as Cultural History at the Tecnische Universität Berlin,[11] and economist Felwine Sarr, director of the Civilizations, Religions, Arts, and Communication research center at Gaston Berger University in Saint-Louis, Senegal.[12]
The 2018 Savoy-Sarr Report focused on the delivery of what its authors call “the emancipation of memory.”[13] This is Big Picture stuff, a rather amorphous, global endeavor that can be at least partly attained by restoring to Africa material which was often obtained under decidedly nasty circumstances. When they looked at what they viewed as “the crux of the problem,” Savoy and Sarr espied “a system of appropriation and alienation — the colonial system — for which certain European Museums, unwillingly have become the public archives.”[14] (If you have anything at all to do with the museum world you may hear alarm bells ringing and notice some red-and-blue lights flashing just about now.) According to coauthor Bénédicte Savoy, the ultimate goal does not involve “emptying French or European museums to fill up African ones.”[15] Instead, she talked of “rebalancing” the currently “extremely imbalanced” situation in which “European museums have almost everything and African museums have almost nothing.”[16]
Man-Shark by Sossa Dede (c. 1890), a Fon statue symbolizing Béhanzin, musée du quai Branly, Paris, France. via Wikimedia Commons
Upon receiving the Savoy-Sarr Report, Macron let it be known the Musée du Quai Branly would repatriate twenty-six objects — including “statues and thrones looted by French troops during a military raid against the once powerful West African Kingdom of Dahomey in 1892”[17] — and would do so “without delay.” (This “raid” was the Second Dahomean War of 1892-1894, during which France crushed the power of the king of Dahomey and his army, including its famed Amazon contingent.) Further, the French government pledged a $22.5 million loan to Benin in order to construct a suitable museum at the southern city of Abomey, a UNESCO World Heritage site where the kings of Dahomey once lived.[18]
Souleymane Bachir Diagne, a Senegalese professor of French at Columbia University in New York who provided input for the Savoy-Sarr Report, thought those twenty-six objects repreented “a good place to start.”
First, symbolically: This was the kind of restitution that would give full weight to Macron’s promise. These were spoils of war, taken punitively after a well-documented historical battle, and put in the [Musée d'Ethnographie du] Trocadéro [and subsequently to the Musée du Quai Branly]. They were taken directly from a king, the king of Dahomey. The second aspect is that some of these works were already lent to Benin. They were on view at Cotonou in 2006, and drew 275,000 visitors in an African country where people do not usually go to museums.[19]
Whatever else Macron accomplished, he certainly put a challenging goal on the table. “We should pay attention to how national institutions like the Musée du Quai Branly,[20] France’s pre-eminent ethnographic museum, proceeds with loaning or returning African object to their countries of origin in the next few years,” suggested archaeologist Rachel King, who teaches cultural heritage studies at University College London.[21] In other words, buckle up your seatbelts, folks, because this could be a real learning experience.
Well, that was then and this is now. So, here we are two years after Macron’s speech, and where are we?
That’s what some observers asked recently, when the second anniversary of Macron’s address came around without even one of the twenty-six pieces wending its way from the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris to the still-unbuilt museum in Abomey. These queries boiled down to some variation of American comedic actor Fred Willard’s trademark “Hey! Wha’ happen’?”
That question is answered in large part by referring to the Savoy-Sarr Report itself. In all of its thoroughness, depth, and nuancing, the report — while sometimes swaddled in the sort of opaque prose that relegates so much academic writing to the margins[22] — makes two points abundantly clear.
First, the ripping-off of African material culture by European colonial powers was a sordid business, and a strong case can be made for returning quite a bit of the African loot. (And I mean “loot,” in the sense of something that was actually stolen, as in war booty, e.g. those twenty-six pieces at the Musée du Quai Branly.)
Second, Macron’s ambitious promise remains unfulfilled — for the moment, not necessarily forever, maybe not for long, nobody really knows — because the situation in this instance mirrors the general run of the often-horrendous relationship between Africa and the West. In other words, it’s complicated.
Alexander Herman, assistant director at Institute of Art and Law (which publishes the Art Antiquity and Law quarterly), points out that while the Savoy-Sarr Report “inspired a great deal of tense discussion in the museum world (both in France and abroad), most commentators agree it was too ambitious to be workable.” This was perhaps at least partly attributable to the report’s status as “the brainchild of academia, not the balanced submission of practitioners in the field.”[23]
Significantly, Herman suggests the “unwillingness of the authors to take account of the valuable role played by museums in conserving historical artefacts and educating the public — not to mention the importance of provenance research for the objects at issue” transformed the project “from a call to arms into a veritable pariah amongst many museum practitioners.”[24] In other words, it appears the Savoy-Sarr Report may have alienated a key constituency, one on which the entire effort is pretty much dependent: museum professionals, among many of whom, according to one knowledgeable observer, the document quickly morphed from “a call to arms into a veritable pariah.”[25]
Stéphane Martin had served as the Musée du Quai Branly’s president (director) for twenty years when the Savoy-Sarr Report dropped in his lap. To say he found the document unpersuasive and unhelpful is an understatement. Martin immediately blasted what he saw as the report’s advocacy for “maximal restitution,” criticizing what he saw as an unfair, broad-brush indictment of all collecting with “the impurity of colonial crime.”[26]
Even beyond even that, there’s this: French law regards objects held in the nation’s public museums as “inalienable.”
Think about that for a sec.
French law is constructed to work against deaccession of objects form public collections. This is done through a system of procedural roadblocks designed to make it extremely difficult to legally transfer such an object to some other institution located elsewhere.[27] In fact, it appears that starting to get ready to commence to begin carrying out Macron’s plan requires nothing less than — for openers — legislation permitting it to wend its way through Parliament, something for which there does not currently appear to be much support.
Whether or not you agree with all, part, or none of Emmanuel Macron’s proposal, still, he’s caught a whiff of something in the wind. Perhaps you see that wind as blowing for good or, alternatively, ill. But it’s definitely there, although nothing about that makes anything easier. Because these matters are…insanely complex affairs involving governments, museums, researchers, special pleaders, the appropriation and allocation of funds, changing laws, bidding and contracting, local politics, drafting committees, planning groups, claims and counterclaims, questions about conversation and preservation, and a multitude of other just plain stuff. One thing you can say about the report Macron’s speech generated: it insisted more attention be paid to a group least listened to, historically speaking: indigenous peoples.
Consider, in that light, the words of Kwame Opoku, who frequently contributes articles about museums and African cultural objects to the Modern Ghana news website. Opoku basically considers just cutting to the chase when he suggests Westerners “should keep the looted artefacts until they finally accept that it is wrong and condemnable to steal the artefacts of other peoples and after 100 years pretend they are doing us a great service by even discussing the issues involved.”[28]
Obviously, the goal Emmanuel Macron sketched out for those students in a former French colony just a little more than two year ago still remains out of sight, hidden somewhere over the horizon. But that does mean it hasn’t or isn’t exerting influence in the larger tribal art world. This is certainly a topic worth revisiting soon.
For now, this has been an interesting, cautionary tale. “Returning material to its homeland is never a simple process,” Alexander Herman of the Institute of Art and Law explains. “Rather, it is part of a larger web of exchange and cooperation, one primarily built on relationships. Those relationships neither begin nor end with restitution, which is only one part of a larger story.”[29]
Please note: This column does not offer legal or financial advice. Anyone requiring such advice should consult a professional in the relevant field. The author welcomes readers’ comments and suggestions, which may be sent to him at legalbriefs@atada.org
ENDNOTES
[1] Burkina Faso’s colonial period officially ended in 1960, at which time it was known as the Republic of Upper Volta. In 1984 the nation underwent a name change when it became Burkina Faso (Land of the Upright People). Lawrence Rupley, Lamissa Bangali, Boureima Diamitani, Historical Dictionary of Burkina Faso (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013), ix, liv, 4, 33, 191.
[2] “Macron Calls Colonialism a ‘Grave Mistake’ During Visit to Ivory Coast,” France24 (Dec. 21, 2019), https://www.france24.com/en/20191222-frence-president-macron-on-official-visit-to-ivory -coast-calls-colonialism-a-grave-mistake
[3] Ibid. Macron has been consistent in his condemnation of France’s colonial activities. “During his election campaign, Macron created a storm of controversy in France by calling the colonisation of Algeria a ‘crime against humanity.’ In a 2017 TV interview, he said French actions in Algeria, which achieved independence in 1962 after eight years of war, were ‘genuinely barbaric, and constitute a part of our past that we have to confront by apologising’.”
[4] Bénédicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr, The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics (Paris, 2018), 1, hereafter referred to as “Savoy-Sarr Report,” is available in English translation at http://restitutionreport2018.com/sarr_savoy_en.pdf
[5] Anna Codrea-Rado,”Emmanuel Macron Says Return of African Artifacts Is a Top Priority,” The New York Times (Nov. 29, 2017), https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/arts/emmanuel-macron-africa.html
[6] Ibid.
[7] Savoy-Sarr Report, 3.
[8] “Missions: A Bridge Between Cultures,” (Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac, n.d.), http://www.quaibranly.fr/en/missions-and-operations/the-musee-du-quai-branly/#:~:text=; Farah Nayeri, “Museums in France Should Return African Treasure, Report Says,” The New York Times (Nov. 21, 2018), https:/ /www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/arts/design/france-museums-africa-savoy-sarr-report.html/.
[9] “Missions: A Bridge Between Cultures.”
[10] Codrea-Rado.
[11] “Biography: Bénédicte Savoy,” Collège de France (n.d.), https://www.college-de-france.fr/site/en-benedicte-savoy/Biography.htm
[12] “Felwine Sarr,” OSIWA (Open Society for Initiative in West Africa, 2020), http://www.osiwa.org/osiwa_member/felwine-sarr/
[13] Savoy-Sarr Report, 1.
[14] Ibid., 2.
[15] Farah Nayeri.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Heleluya Hadero, “Benin’s New Museum for Artifacts Looted by France Is Being Built Using a French Loan,” QuartzAfrica (wJuly 23,2019), https://qz.com/africa/1672922/france-will-help-fund-benin-museum-housing-looted-artifacts/
[18] Ibid.
[19] Jason Farago, “Artwork Taken From Africa, Returning to a Home Transformed,” The New York Times (Jan 3, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/03/arts/design/african-art-france-museums-restitution.html
[20] The Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris.
[21] Nayeri.
[22] You didn’t ask for it, but here’s a small taste: “Guided by dialogue, polyphony, and exchange, the act or gesture of restitution should not be considered as a dangerous action of identitarian assignation or as the territorial separation or isolation of cultural property.” SS 2.
[23] Alexander Herman, “One Year After the Sarr-Savoy Report, France Has Lost Its Momentum in the Restitution Debate,” The Art Newspaper (Nov. 12, 2019), https://www.theartnewspaper.com/comment/one-year-after-sarr-savoy-where-are-we-on-colonial-restitution
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Naomi Rea, “A French Museum Director Pushes Back Against a Radical Report Calling on Maron to Return Looted African Art,” Artnet News (Nov. 28, 2018), https://news.artnet.com/art-world/quai-branly-president-macron-africa-restitution-report-1404364#:~:text=
[27] “Deaccessioning in France,” Museums & Deaccessioning in Europe (Creative Culture Consultancy, Mondriaan Fonds (n.d.), https://www.museumsanddeaccessioning.com/ countries/france/; Herman.
[28] Kwame Opoku, “Miracle Abjured: Stéphane Martin Reiterates His Objection To Restitution Of Looted African Artefacts,” Modern Ghana (Jan. 9, 2020), https://www.modernghana.com/news/978035/miracle-abjured-stphane-martin-reiterates-his.html
[29] Herman.