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MUSEUMS AND REPATRIATION: REPAIRING OLD WOUNDS AND CREATING NEW PARTNERSHIPS Natalie Shykoluk The responsibility of museums regarding the repatriation of artifacts is not equal across the globe. In North America and Australia, continents which are former European colonies and have large aboriginal populations, repatriation has become a significant issue for museums, university collections, and archaeologists. In comparison, many Western museums assert their claims to artifacts from other cultures by virtue of moral universalism (Besterman, 2006:432), or what is right for me is also right for you. Unfortunately, there is no world-wide consensus with respect to how museums should approach repatriation; rather, each organization or institution must create its own policies based on its context within a community and the values it espouses. For example, the American Association of Museums Code of Ethics addresses the shifting ethical paradigms museums in todays society face through its ethical commitment to changing societal conditions, values, and ideas (2000, in Besterman, 2006:435). It is important to understand that ethical museums are also socially responsible museums. When we discuss repatriation of First Nations and American Indian cultural material, we need to understand as museum professionals and the public that these cultural groups may not necessarily share our views of how history should be preserved, or even whether some parts of a cultures past should be shared at all (e.g., the churinga used by Australian aboriginal men in rituals (Besterman, 2006:432)). Bergman (1996:1) associates this desire to preserve and promote traditional cultural practices among indigenous groups with the notion that ``The unique religious and secular items each culture creates are fundamental to its continuity. Also, First Nations peoples in Canada pursue the repatriation of their cultural material from museums as a way of reasserting control over how their cultures are depicted [because] they help define Aboriginal identity (INAC, 2007:3). Assimilation tactics used by Europeans assisted in separating indigenous peoples from their cultural practices, just as the collection of their cultural material served to separate aboriginal people from their identity. As these cultures experience a renewed interest in wanting to understand and practice traditional their culture, they look to museums to return culturally significant and sensitive items to assist with this reconnection. Since museums have relationships with people and not things (Besterman, 2006:431), these relationships need to be nurtured and maintained through dialogue and respect. Museums have a duty to uphold the publics trust, which in turn necessitates repatriating culturally sensitive material to repair

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relationships with the cultures these artifacts originally belonged to, or to those cultures who can demonstrate a link between prehistoric cultures and the cultural material in question. In todays society, museums are at a crossroads: they are dedicated to making their collections as widely accessible as possible, yet have an ethical responsibility to ensure what they make accessible to the public is not does not supersede the values and beliefs of the originating culture (Besterman, 2006:432). Current practices in museum management acknowledge that museums must continue to operate while respecting cultural diversity. This relates to the premise that people have different beliefs and values with respect to traditions, heritage, and material remains of the past (AMA, 2001:40). Museums must also wrestle with the fact that they have long been scholarly institutions dedicated to understanding and representing past cultures. Subsequently, when culturally sensitive material is removed from a collection (or is not collected in the first place), it may impact the body of knowledge available from which to study and further our understanding of other cultures. Anderson (2009:6-7) discusses how government/political influence and the mandate of serving the public interest (the instrumental argument) affect museum planning and operations. This is best articulated by Anderson when he states The ideal value proposition for museum leadership keeps the intrinsic and the instrumental in proper balance, pursuing research, conservation, and interpretation, while fostering broad public participation[and] without neglecting the ongoing needs of the collection and its experts (2009:7). This dichotomy between making knowledge accessible and keeping some knowledge away from the public is challenging and can sometimes create conflict among and between museum professionals, academia, cultural groups (e.g., First Nations, Australian aboriginals), and the public. Therefore, museums must balance needs of the public, museum patrons, and originating cultures, while working in partnership with these groups and museum professionals to ensure collections remain accessible, informative, and respectful. Arango (2009:11) advocates that museums can act for the common good when the public acts as a willing participant in the development and success of museums. When faced with a request to repatriate an object housed in a museum collection, museum professionals and/or trustees need to therefore balance their museum s obligation to public trust with the needs and values of the cultural group requesting repatriation. Museums are by their very nature

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dedicated to preserving the past for future generations. However, the need to ensure its collections were obtained ethically from indigenous or other groups must outweigh a museum s mandate to preserve, display, and study cultural material. Therefore, it would be difficult to put a price on the repatriation of an object when that object may have been stolen or acquired unethically (e.g., through coercion, deceit, for less than fair value) in the past. Many First Nations groups in Canada, as well as indigenous groups around the world, want to work with museum professionals to understand how to preserve repatriated cultural material. In other cases, preservation of the material is not part of the values of a culture because they do not view decay of materials in the same way Western cultures do. In all cases, it would be incumbent on the museum to work with the group (and within the repatriation policies/laws of a country) in question to determine whether payment is required, exchange of knowledge can occur, or whether it is the repatriation of material without the expectation of financial or other gain on behalf of the museum.

LITERATURE CITED: Alberta Museums Association (2001). Standard practices handbook for museums, 2 ed. Museum Excellence Series: Book 1. Edmonton, AB: Alberta Museums Association. Anderson, M.L. (2009). Museum values. In S. Halo, and M.-T. AIvarez (Eds.). Beyond the turnstile: making the case for museums and sustainable values (pp. 5-7). Lanham, MA: AltaMira Press. Arango, P. (2009). Transmitting the legacy. In In S. Halo, and M.-T. AIvarez (Eds.). Beyond the turnstile: making the case for museums and sustainable values (pp. 10-12). Lanham, MA: AltaMira Press. Baird, J.R., Solanki, A., and Askren, M. (2008). Returning the past: repatriation of First Nations cultural property: four case studies of First Nations repatriation. Vancouver, BC: UBC Museum of Anthropology. Bergman, E. (2006). Reversing the flow of traffic in the market of cultural property. The Journal of the South and Meso American Indian Rights Center 10(2):1-5. Besterman, T. (2006). Museum ethics. In S. Macdonald (Ed.). A companion to museum studies (pp. 431441). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (2007). Sacred and secular artifacts. Report of the Royal Commission on aboriginal peoples. Retrieved September 25, 2012 from the World Wide Web http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/webarchives/20071211060616/http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ ch/rcap/sg/si56_e.html
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