Journal articles on the topic 'Cultural property – Repatriation'

Abstract:This article will show how institutions and cultural values mediate changes in the governance of repatriation policy. By examining ownership paradigms and institutional power structures and analyzing the changing discourses before and after the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, it is possible to understand the ramifications of formalizing repatriation. The current binary of cultural property nationalism/cultural property internationalism in relation to Indigenous ownership claims does not represent the full scope of the conflict for Indigenous people within the Western legal interpretations of property ownership. Inclusion of a cultural property indigenism component into the established cultural property nationalism/internationalism ownership paradigm will more accurately represent Indigenous concerns for cultural property. Looking at the rules, norms, and strategies of national and international laws and museum institutions, this article will argue that there are consequences to repatriation claims that go beyond the possession of property and that a formalized process (or semi-formalized approach) can aid in addressing Indigenous rights.

AbstractIn the debate about indigenous cultural property, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of the United States has developed and implemented an unorthodox concept of “cultural affiliation.” The act entitles Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations to claim repatriation of their cultural property—comprising human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony—upon the establishment of a specific shared group identity and a cultural affiliation to an object. The concept of cultural affiliation in the act replaces proof of ownership, or proof that an object was stolen or illicitly removed. It thereby amends traditional standards saturated in notions of property and ownership that have perpetuated since Roman law and allows the evolution of a control regime over cultural property that takes into account the cultural aspects of the objects. On an international level, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) of 2007 stipulates a similar emancipation of indigenous peoples' cultural property claims from notions of property and ownership. This article explores NAGPRA's cultural affiliation concept as it stands between private property and human rights law and brings into focus the concept's elements that go beyond traditional property law. It ultimately looks at the potential and limits of the concept from an international perspective as a standard for other countries that consider implementation of UNDRIP's provisions on indigenous, tangible, movable cultural property.

Considering that the vast majority of the objects constituting Indigenous Peoples’ cultural heritage are now located outside their source communities, the restitution of cultural property has become a pressing issue among Indigenous Peoples worldwide and should be understood as part of Indigenous Peoples’ historical (as well as current) encounter with colonization and its consequences. As such, this article investigates whether international cultural heritage law offers any possibilities for successful repatriation and to what extent the shortcomings of the framework in place could be complemented by alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms and the new mandate of the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Expert Mechanism). First, crucial concepts in the repatriation debates are explained. Next the factual background of the case studies of the G’psgolox Totem Pole and Maaso Kova are presented. This is followed by a discussion of the most pertinent mechanisms of international cultural heritage law and the place of Indigenous Peoples’ rights within such a framework. Subsequently, the concept of ADR is introduced, and the details of the negotiation processes between the Haisla First Nation (Canada) and the Yaqui People (Mexico, the United States) – both with the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm (Sweden) – are presented. Finally, the article evaluates to what extent ADR could be an appropriate mechanism for the settlement of disputes concerningIndigenous Peoples’ cultural property, andwhether the Expert Mechanism is a well-suited body for facilitating the process of repatriating Indigenous Peoples’ cultural heritage.

The movement for restoration of Native American cultural property began with the enactment of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act 1978 followed by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act 1990 (NAGPRA). However, the federal legislation has been restricted because the desecrations of graves and funeral artifacts have continued to be appropriated and transferred from the reservations to their destinations in museums and auctions houses abroad. They have mostly ended up in Europe and are displayed against the will of the Native tribes from whose lands they have been moved. The domestic legal umbrella of NAGPRA does not provides protection when cultural property is resident abroad and the framework of ‘soft’ international law such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation Convention (UNESCO) Convention and UNIDROIT Convention are not sufficient to facilitate their repatriation. The preventative extraterritorial legal regime has not been successful in transferring cultural property and there needs to be an improved mechanism devised to apprehend and to repatriate them to the original owners. This article argues for a framework that is international and which imposes sanctions when the iconographic property that is stolen is moved and is stored or sold for monetary gain and for its return to the rightful owners.

This article explores the rights of Aboriginal peoples in Canada concerning movable Aboriginal cultural property. Although the Canadian constitution protects Aboriginal rights, the content of this protection has only recently begun to be explored by the Supreme Court of Canada in a series of important cases. This article sets out the existing Aboriginal rights regime in Canada and assesses its likely application to claims for the return of Aboriginal cultural property. Canadian governments have shown little interest in attempting to resolve questions concerning ownership and possession of Aboriginal cultural property, and there have been few instances of litigation. Over the last decade a number of Canadian museums have entered into voluntary agreements to return cultural objects to Aboriginal peoples' representatives. Those agreements have often involved ongoing partnerships between Aboriginal peoples and museums concerning such matters as museum management and exhibition curatorship. A recent development has been the resolution of specific repatriation requests as part of modern land claims agreements. The compromise represented by these negotiated solutions also characterizes the legal standards being developed to reconcile existing Aboriginal rights and the legitimate policy concerns of the wider Canadian society.

AbstractThe publication of a book in 2020 that argues against repatriation, on the grounds that it is incompatible with the necessary objectivity required for the production of scientific knowledge, raises issues that most scholars consider long settled. Rather than engage in a detailed review, this commentary revisits the reasons why claims of contributing to universal knowledge are insufficient to justify exploitation of the physical remains, and cultural property, of people who object to specific lines of research and reminds readers that academic freedom is a mitigated freedom that is rooted in responsibilities and norms agreed on within disciplines, all of which today accept repatriation as part of the necessary redress of legacies of exploitation.

AbstractAlternative methods of dispute resolution are an important resource in matters of cultural heritage in addressing the return, restitution, and repatriation of cultural property. The purpose of this article is to analyze the situations in which such methods might be preferred to the classical judicial means and to examine the problems that might arise.The article is in two parts. The first part describes the actors as well as the current methods used for the restitution and return of cultural property. The second part explores the types of property that lend themselves to alternative dispute resolution techniques and lists the—often original—substantive solutions that have been used in practice.Alternative methods of dispute resolution enable consideration of nonlegal factors, which might be emotional considerations or a sense of “moral obligation,” and this can help the parties find a path to consensus.

AbstractThis article seeks to contribute to the study surrounding documentation and the illicit trade in cultural property by examining the uses of photography by the international community. Popular and academic literature, news reports, and online databases reveal three primary and interconnected relationships that exist between photography and the trade of cultural heritage. This article presents photography as, first, an aid for the protection and identification of cultural heritage and, second, as a form of evidence to support an ownership claim by a country calling for repatriation.

AbstractThis article offers a critical appraisal of the evolution of Italian cultural heritage law with respect to issues of colonial and war restitution and of control over the import of potentially trafficked cultural property. As Italy is usually considered a “source country” and a victim of historical depredations, a form of “selective blindness” to its colonial past and to its role at the receiving end of both past and current misappropriations of cultural objects is discussed. Some recent restitutions of cultural property taken in times of colonial occupation are also analyzed as signs of a possible change in policy and practice, but the article also highlights the features of political expediency that have influenced them as well as the many legal and practical obstacles still to be faced by restitution and repatriation claims. Finally, the potential effects of recent (mostly international) inputs on Italy’s cultural heritage policy are presented.

In 2020, Europe was the setting for several events that sparked off a broad debate on the need for the decolonisation of thought, practices, spaces, monuments and museums. Historically, several European countries have had a direct or indirect relationship with colonialism and its practices, as well as with the authoritarian ways of managing and exercising power (Cahen and Matos 2018; Cooper and Stoler 1997; Matos 2019). The need to reflect on imperial ruins (Stoler 2013) and to decolonise thought today is therefore understandable. This was not always considered urgent, however. Additionally, there was not always an opportunity for it. In the postcolonial period, debates were limited mainly to academia and, more recently, to the world of museums, where the hot issue of repatriation of artefacts and human remains that were pillaged, stolen, or abusively gathered in the Third World was initiated by the 1970 UNESCO Convention against Illicit Export under the Act to implement the Convention (the Cultural Property Implementation Act) and boosted by the successive UNESCO resolutions on repatriation (Sansone 2017; 2019).

Abstract This article discusses how archeological objects’ “pluralistic identity”—defined as the archeological relic’s life in the ancient world and its afterlife, including its reuse and potential return to its original national context—complicates the protection of archeological heritage on the Italian territory in the shadow of the cultural property nationalism/internationalism dialectic. It begins by reconstructing and discussing the debate underscoring the first retentionist cultural property law in post-Unity Italy. The article then analyzes a series of case studies testifying to the (in)efficacy of such a law—for instance, vis-à-vis political interests—the impact of bilateral agreements for the repatriation of looted archeological property from “universal museums” to Italy as the Nation of origin, and the dilemma over the state’s functions of preservation and fruition. The paper asks whether archeological relics which are understood as state property are indeed the “national(ist)” heritage of one national past and whether and how the national identity that they are thought to epitomize can coexist with an inclusive valorization of their “pluralistic identity” in our contemporary society.

Should cultural property taken by a stronger power or nation remain with that country or should it be returned to the place where it was created? Since the 1990s this question has received growing attention from the press, the public and the international legal community. For example, prestigious institutions such as the J. Paul Getty Museum of Art in Los Angeles and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York have agreed to return looted or stolen artwork or antiquities. British smuggler Jonathan Tokeley-Parry was convicted and served three years in prison for his role in removing as many as 2,000 antiquities from Egypt. Getty director Marion True defended herself against charges that she knowingly bought antiquities that had been illegally excavated from Italy and Greece. New books on the issue of repatriation of art and antiquities have captured the attention of the public. A documentary based on one of these books was shown in theaters and aired on public television. The first international academic symposium on the topic was convened in New York City in January 1995.

In May 1962 French museum administrators removed over 300 works of art from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Algiers and transported them, under military escort, to the Louvre in Paris. The artwork, however, no longer belonged to France. Under the terms of the Evian Accords it had become the official property of the Algerian state-to-be and the incoming nationalist government wanted it back. This article will examine not only the French decision to act in contravention of the Evian Accords and the ensuing negotiations that took place between France and Algeria, but also the cultural complexities of post-colonial restitution. What does it mean for artwork produced by some of France’s most iconic artists – Monet, Delacroix, Courbet – to become the cultural property of a former colony? Moreover, what is at stake when a former colony demands the repatriation of artwork emblematic of the former colonizer, deeming it a valuable part of the nation’s cultural heritage? The negotiations undertaken to repatriate French art to Algeria expose the kinds of awkward cultural refashioning precipitated by the process of decolonization and epitomizes the lingering connections of colonial disentanglement that do not fit neatly into the common narrative of the ‘end of empire'.

AbstractA number of recent works have explored the value of scholarly efforts to “unpack” museum collections and examine the constitutive networks and histories of objects. The interrogations of collections through methods such as object biographies and itineraries imparts important knowledge about the institutions, disciplines, and individuals who made museum collections, contribute to deeper understandings of the roles of objects in creating meaning in and of the world, and suggest implications for future practice and policies. This article examines the object itinerary of a cultural property item of negative heritage: a three-dimensional painted plaster work of craft-art originally designed to symbolize the scientific practice of anthropology in early twentieth-century Germany and later associated with wartime collecting during World War II, the history of American archaeology, and the modern repatriation movement in museums.

TheBonnichsendecision has been heralded as a victory for anthropology, because it appears to vindicate the position of the plaintiffs who brought their suit in order to be allowed to conduct scientific research on a 9,000-year-old skeleton from North America. It appears to be a defeat for Native Americans, who view this skeleton as an ancestor and who would prefer to see the remains of this individual returned to the ground to continue the long journey back to the earth. In fact, this polarized view of the case returns the discourse surrounding repatriation to a previous level in which arguments were made over the question, “who owns the past?” While this may be a rhetorically satisfying problem to wrestle with, it does not capture the true nature of how archaeology can engage with Native people in the process of understanding ancient lives. It presumes that the past exists as a form of property. Under this simplistic construction, human remains can exist as property and can be owned by one group or another.

The application of the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (“NAGPRA”) creates unique practical and doctrinal results. When considering the application of the current law concerning judicial review of final agency action under the APA to NAGPRA, it is evident that the law is simultaneously arbitrary and unclear. In the Ninth Circuit’s holding in Navajo Nation v. U.S. Department of the Interior, the Court applied final agency action doctrine in a manner that was legally correct but administratively unworkable. The Court’s opinion contravenes both the reasoning behind the APA final agency action doctrine and the purposes of both NAGPRA and the APA. The holding further allows for a finding of a final agency action despite the fact that the application of NAGPRA is the beginning of a process that will result in its own final agency action – the determination of which tribe owns the remains and artifacts. Such a result ignores sensitive issues of cultural patrimony (the identification of cultural heritage as to specific sets of remains or sacred object) associated with the NAGPRA inventory process, which requires that Native American remains and sacred objects found on federal land be inventoried by the federal agency that manages that land. The unworkability and legal incoherence of the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Navajo Nation stems from an underlying final agency action doctrine developed to protect property rights that fails to properly consider the unique context of cultural heritage rights implicated by statutes such as NAGPRA. These rights involve the recognition that human remains and ceremonial objects belong to a specific culture. The application of final agency action doctrine invites legal claims before anyone can adequately determine what culture the remains and artifacts belong to. Because of this, the courts or Congress must develop an alternative set of rules to be used when dealing with a final agency action that implicates the cultural heritage rights associated with ancient remains and sacred objects. Such an action would account for the unique nature of the rights in question. Doing so would make administrative agencies better equipped to provide inclusive protections to minority cultures in the performance of their duties.

Objects that were estranged from ex-colonies and are now kept in overseas museums serve as archives of the past, a past largely disrupted by colonialism. For Vanuatu, some objects of cultural heritage that are kept in museums have been recently reconnected to their original places, lineages, and even individual owners. The Lengnangulong sacred stone of Magam Village in North Ambrym is one such object, even though it is only one example in a rich tradition of carved sacred stones. As alienated and contested property in Vanuatu, Lengnangulong is kept and exhibited in the Pavillon des Sessions of the Louvre Museum in Paris, which is a contested exhibition space in itself. Here, I provide an update on discussions regarding ownership and kopiraet (Indigenous copyright) that have been accelerating in Vanuatu in recent years and on claims for repatriation of this important valuable.

Distinguished anthropologist Michael Moerman's donation of his ethnographic fieldwork materials in 2005 to the Anthropological Archives of the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre (SAC) posed new and compelling questions to the SAC's archival management staff. They have sought to strike a balance between the academic needs of users and the ethical and legal considerations in the management and distribution of tangible and intangible cultural property from the source communities where Moerman did his research. Endeavouring to develop a protocol for the management of an ethnographic archival database, the SAC is aware of its obligation to build awareness of the cultural rights of the source community as the rightful owners of this cultural property. By incorporating the views of multiple stakeholders in a previously binary division of materials as ‘sensitive’ or ‘non-sensitive’, it is trying to take into account a diversity of views about access to these cultural materials. One aim of our research was, thus, to highlight the role of the archivists themselves by asking them to review and question their own processes and contributions to the management of anthropological archives. We expect that the conclusions and observations drawn from this study will be used to create a SAC protocol for cultural information management and distribution. Though the Tai Lue source community that Moerman studied in the 1960s does not have a pre-existing cultural protocol to determine the parameters surrounding digital repatriation and access, the community's opinions and reflections will be fully considered in the creation of the SAC protocol for use as an initial guideline. Thus, the second aim of our research was to elicit and examine the community's reactions to ethnographic material deriving from it, in order to highlight the issue of a community's collective right to be involved in preservation of and access to such material.

AbstractOne of the last frontiers of the pre-Christian Sámi religion and cosmology from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can be found recorded as embedded systems of knowledge on a range of noaidi-shaman drums kept in museums across Europe. Missionaries and clergymen as well as explorers who sought interest in the magical powers of the Sámi noaidi collected these artefacts during witchcraft trials and persecutions throughout Sápmi, the Sámi homeland areas. Insomuch as the drums being taken away from their owners and shipped from their homelands to other countries, their safeguarding, security and preservation as ancient sources of knowledge in museums is seldom discussed. As a consequence, the investigation presented here is a case study concerning the disappearance of a Sámi noaidi drum sent to a museum in France that has its origins in Swedish Sápmi, which I was informed about in 2017 prior to a visit to Paris for a seminar concerning the Sámi and their culture in Finland. The loss of the drum has only recently become known, and raises a series of important questions concerning responsibilities museums have with regard to the protection of property belonging to the Sámi as well as the repatriation and return of cultural heritage with regard to historical artefacts.

AbstractWhile practitioners of the legal and art and culture industries have traditionally believed their businesses to be independent of the other, the escalating battle over the repatriation of cultural property teaches otherwise. The antiquities market has flourished despite the increase in litigation surrounding some works and the number of works repatriated in recent years, making interdisciplinary study of the market more relevant and necessary than ever. This study establishes that the number of antiquities sold with legally- significant provenance information is steadily increasing as a result of the legal environment. Also, these objects are less risky and therefore sell for higher prices than works with no recorded history of ownership. Finally, evidence indicates that the occurrence of a legal event causes a slight, short drop in the market, followed by a significant rise in prices for the objects with reliable provenance information. In the end, the auction market for Italian antiquities is inexorably linked to activities that have ramifications for the legality of collecting these works.

Although there is no special agreement for displaced persons, as in the case of refugees, they are protected under their national laws and human rights laws and are protected according to the rules of international humanitarian law during armed conflict as determined by the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The search for displaced persons' rights should not be limited to relevant conventions, since many of the rights of displaced persons will be found in the basic human rights conventions to which the displaced person should first benefit before being displaced. The status of displacement does not conceal the rights of the displaced as a human being, but should add to it new rights arising from the conditions that have arisen and the importance of this issue is greater. National authorities are unable or unwilling to fulfill their obligations, as well as the protection of the rights of refugees and the obligations of States provided for in the provisions of the International Refugee Convention Of 1951, which include assistance in the provision of food, adequate shelter, health care and education, the right to asylum, the provision of travel documents, the provision of refugees, the guarantee of fundamental human rights and the facilitation of voluntary durable solutions of repatriation Or integration into host societies, making international protection a necessity. International law underlines that civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights should be exercised without discrimination on grounds such as "national or social origin, property or other grounds." States must also eliminate any form of discrimination. Economic, social and cultural rights to ensure the progressive realization of economic, social and cultural rights and to the maximum extent of the resources available (for the State party).

SummaryThe article deals with the growth of the art collections of the Lithuanian national and municipal museums during WWII, a period traditionally seen as particularly unfavourable for cultural activities. During this period, the dynamics of Lithuanian museum art collections were maintained by two main sources. The first was caused by nationalist politics, or, more precisely, one of its priorities to support Lithuanian art by acquiring artworks from contemporaries. The exception to this strategy is the attention given to the multicultural art scene of Vilnius, partly Jewish, but especially Polish art, which led to the purchase of Polish artists’ works for the Vilnius Municipal Museum and the Vytautas the Great Museum of Culture in Kaunas, which had the status of a national art collection. The second important source was the nationalisation of private property during the Soviet occupation of 1940–1941. This process enabled the Lithuanian museums to enrich their collections with valuable objets d’art first of all, but also with paintings, sculptures and graphic prints. Due to the nationalisation of manor property, the collections of provincial museums, primarily Šiauliai Aušra and Samogitian Museum Alka in Telšiai, significantly increased. The wave of emigration of Lithuanian citizens to the West at the end of the Second World War was also a favourable factor in expanding museum collections, as both artists and owners of their works left a number of valuables to museums as depositors. On the other hand, some museum valuables were transported from Vilnius to Poland in 1945–1948 by the wave of the so-called repatriation of former Vilnius residents who had Polish citizenship in 1930s. The article systematises previously published data and provides new information in order to reconstruct the dynamics of the growth of Lithuanian museum art collections caused by radical political changes, which took place in the mid 20th century.

The most recent opinion in the so-called Kennewick Man or Ancient One (as many American Indians choose to call the skeleton) case by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unfortunately resurrects some very old and contentious issues in America. Indians mostly view the opinion as one more echo of the same old story of Native American property issues raised in the courts, but they also understand that some implications may be broader. The most direct impact of the opinion is that the Umatilla people will not be allowed to return the Ancient One to the earth, but others could be portents of a larger resurgence of anti-Indian sentiment and scientific colonialism in America. Specifically, though not directly stated as such, the court's opinion supports a notion that archaeological materials are a public heritage, no matter their culture of origin. In addition, by affirming the plaintiffs' position, the court essentially declared archaeologists and associated scientists to be the primary stewards of that heritage, much to the chagrin of many American Indian people. Along the way, the court reinforced the idea that scientifically generated evidence has greater validity than oral tradition in court, outright denying oral tradition's validity and undercutting a major intention of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Worse still, the court reflects—and by its decision supports—an idea that there may be a “white” or European history for the Americas that predates the arrival of Indians. The most damaging and long-term impact is that the decision reinforces fundamentally erroneous definitions and stereotypes about Indians as tribes, which has plagued Indian-white relations for generations.

Abstract:An overview of both the theoretical approach and the set of actions taken during the last decade by Greece – a country with a profound historical background and rich cultural heritage – to face the problem of the illicit trade of cultural goods. The article contains not only statistical data on recent cases of thefts, clandestine excavations, confiscations, and repatriations of cultural goods but also information on law enforcement and the effort to establish a network to fight the phenomenon on an international level. Aspects such as conforming to the international law, monitoring auctions of antiquities, raising people’s awareness, and reinforcing the current security status of museums and archeological sites are taken into consideration as successful methods for protecting the cultural heritage.

By bringing together existing literature on the wider repatriation debate, and examining how different strands within the discussion influence, benefit or constrain one another, it is the hope of the author that this work will add to, weave together and potentially illuminate existing scholarly and professional discussion of repatriation from museum collections, with a view to understanding how these interactions will continue to build or develop in future. This is neither a justification nor an exploration of a particular stance on this contentious issue in museum practice, but rather an investigation of the inner workings of the repatriation movement and the legislation, professional obligations and discussion which surround it. Keywords: Repatriation; cultural proprerty; museology

The author examines the policies pursued by Belarus on the prevention of international illegal trafficking in antiquities and cultural goods. Clarifications of Article 230 of the Criminal Code of Belarus are proposed. The findings and recommendations could inform the ongoing work on amendments to the Code on Culture, negotiation of international agreements, and strengthening of the safeguards for the repatriation of cultural property under temporary exportation.

The Swiss Federal Council and the Government of the Hellenic Republic (hereinafter ‘the Parties’) in application of the November 14, 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, to which both countries are a party, and in pursuit of relevant applicable provisions at the Parties, in consideration that theft, looting and the illicit import, export and transfer of ownership of cultural property representing harm to the cultural heritage of mankind, endeavoring to make a contribution to maintain and secure cultural heritage and to prohibit and prevent the illegal transfer of cultural property, in the belief that cooperation between both countries may constitute an important contribution in this regard, endeavoring to ease the repatriation of illicitly imported, exported and having its ownership illegally transferred cultural property and to strengthen contacts between both countries with regard to cultural exchanges, have agreed as follows.

Who owns antiquities? This question has plagued the global community in recent times and has opened dialogues between former colonial Western countries and their past colonized nations whose property is exhibited. This essay examines the conflicting perspectives of ownership in the repatriation of the Bust of Nefertiti between Berlin, Germany and Egypt. By analyzing the effects of European occupation in Egypt and the Western dominance in foreign cultures during the Age of Imperialism, a moral argument arises questioning the legality of the Bust’s removal. This article will review the historical significance of the Bust of Nefertiti in terms of its original intent as well as its removal to Germany and transformation into a global artwork and how this has affected her proposed return to Egyptian ownership.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is steward to vast cultural resources across public lands and in museum collections. Like other land-managing agencies, its resource protection strategy includes Federal enforcement of cultural property laws. Between 2007 and 2013, a case code-named Operation: Cerberus Action recovered more than 100,000 objects, mainly consisting of artifacts from the American Southwest, through undercover operations, evidence gathering, seizure, and forfeiture. Prized by collectors and stockpiled as part of illicit ventures, most of the artifacts have little-to-no provenience. To address the immense quantity of material and best meet the public interest, the BLM developed a decision-tree with criteria to determine appropriate disposition options. This process involved three intensive phases: (1) identification; (2) return or repatriation; and (3) assessment of the remaining items to inform disposition based on specific criteria. In this third phase, artifacts are categorized for curation, education, conveyance to tribes beyond the scope of NAGPRA, another public use, or ultimately, destruction. This paper summarizes the case, addresses the legal foundations for determining ownership, presents the significance criteria for disposition, and concludes with a reflection on the opportunities and challenges of this endeavor, which may guide similar efforts in the future.

The recovery of stolen assets is a fundamental principle of the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC). By including this element in the said Convention, the international community recognizes the negative impacts on countries and populations deprived of the billions of dollars that are diverted each year by their corrupt leaders and public officials. The confiscation and restitution of these illicitly acquired funds may benefit affected, generally poor, countries in urgent need of resources to finance, for example, social programs or infrastructural projects. As these assets are essential for the well-being of the population, their repatriation can thus contribute to repairing the damage caused by the embezzlement. This paper intends to analyze the way in which fundamental human rights are susceptible to being violated by the illegal acquisition of personal wealth; these are essentially economic, social and cultural rights. Furthermore, the paper tries to identify who the victims are. It shows not only the necessity of punishing the perpetrators of corrupt practices but also underlines the need to guarantee that their fundamental rights, such as the presumption of innocence and the guarantee of property rights, are respected in the process of asset recovery. Approaching the issue of asset recovery with a human rights perspective it becomes clear that asset recovery is a process whereby it is essential to respect not only the victims’ interests but also to preserve the rights of all persons concerned.

This article represents the next step in our ongoing effort to understand the online human remains trade, how, why and where it exists on social media. It expands upon initial research to explore the 'rhetoric' and structure behind the use and manipulation of images and text by this collecting community, topics explored using Google Inception v.3, TensorFlow, etc. (Huffer and Graham 2017; 2018). This current research goes beyond that work to address the ethical and moral dilemmas that can confound the use of new technology to classify and sort thousands of images. The categories used to 'train' the machine are self-determined by the researchers, but to what extent can current image classifying methods be broken to create false positives or false negatives when attempting to classify images taken from social media sales records as either old authentic items or recent forgeries made using remains sourced from unknown locations? What potential do they have to be exploited by dealers or forgers as a way to 'authenticate the market'? Analysing the data obtained when 'scraping' image or text relevant to cultural property trafficking of any kind involves the use of machine learning and neural network analysis, the ethics of which are themselves complicated. Here, we discuss these issues around two case studies; the ongoing repatriation case of Abraham Ulrikab, and an example of what it looks like when the classifier is deliberately broken.

This article represents the next step in our ongoing effort to understand the online human remains trade, how, why and where it exists on social media. It expands upon initial research to explore the 'rhetoric' and structure behind the use and manipulation of images and text by this collecting community, topics explored using Google Inception v.3, TensorFlow, etc. (Huffer and Graham 2017; 2018). This current research goes beyond that work to address the ethical and moral dilemmas that can confound the use of new technology to classify and sort thousands of images. The categories used to 'train' the machine are self-determined by the researchers, but to what extent can current image classifying methods be broken to create false positives or false negatives when attempting to classify images taken from social media sales records as either old authentic items or recent forgeries made using remains sourced from unknown locations? What potential do they have to be exploited by dealers or forgers as a way to 'authenticate the market'? Analysing the data obtained when 'scraping' image or text relevant to cultural property trafficking of any kind involves the use of machine learning and neural network analysis, the ethics of which are themselves complicated. Here, we discuss these issues around two case studies; the ongoing repatriation case of Abraham Ulrikab, and an example of what it looks like when the classifier is deliberately broken.

IntroductionThe debate about the responsibility of museums to respect Indigenous peoples’ rights (Kelly and Gordon; Butts) has caught our attention on the basis of our previous research experience with regard to the protection of the tangible and intangible heritage of the San (former hunter gatherers) in Southern Africa (Martin and Vermeylen; Vermeylen, Contextualising; Vermeylen, Life Force; Vermeylen et al.; Vermeylen, Land Rights). This paper contributes to the critical debate about curatorial practices and the recovery of Indigenous peoples’ cultural practices and explores how museums can be transformed into cultural centres that “decolonise” their objects while simultaneously providing social agency to marginalised groups such as the San. Indigenous MuseumTraditional methods of displaying Indigenous heritage are now regarded with deep suspicion and resentment by Indigenous peoples (Simpson). A number of related issues such as the appropriation, ownership and repatriation of culture together with the treatment of sensitive and sacred materials and the stereotyping of Indigenous peoples’ identity (Carter; Simpson) have been identified as the main problems in the debate about museum curatorship and Indigenous heritage. The poignant question remains whether the concept of a classical museum—in the sense of how it continues to classify, value and display non-Western artworks—will ever be able to provide agency to Indigenous peoples as long as “their lives are reduced to an abstract set of largely arbitrary material items displayed without much sense of meaning” (Stanley 3). Indeed, as Salvador has argued, no matter how much Indigenous peoples have been involved in the planning and implementation of an exhibition, some issues remain problematic. First, there is the problem of representation: who speaks for the group; who should make decisions and under what circumstances; when is it acceptable for “outsiders” to be involved? Furthermore, Salvador raises another area of contestation and that is the issue of intention. As we agree with Salvador, no matter how good the intention to include Indigenous peoples in the curatorial practices, the fact that Indigenous peoples may have a (political) perspective about the exhibition that differs from the ideological foundation of the museum enterprise, is, indeed, a challenge that must not be overlooked in the discussion of the inclusive museum. This relates to, arguably, one of the most important challenges in respect to the concept of an Indigenous museum: how to present the past and present without creating an essentialising “Other”? As Stanley summarises, the modernising agenda of the museum, including those museums that claim to be Indigenous museums, continues to be heavily embedded in the belief that traditional cultural beliefs, practices and material manifestations must be saved. In other words, exhibitions focusing on Indigenous peoples fail to show them as dynamic, living cultures (Simpson). This raises the issue that museums recreate the past (Sepúlveda dos Santos) while Indigenous peoples’ interests can be best described “in terms of contemporaneity” (Bolton qtd. in Stanley 7). According to Bolton, Indigenous peoples’ interest in museums can be best understood in terms of using these (historical) collections and institutions to address contemporary issues. Or, as Sepúlveda dos Santos argues, in order for museums to be a true place of memory—or indeed a true place of recovery—it is important that the museum makes the link between the past and contemporary issues or to use its objects in such a way that these objects emphasize “the persistence of lived experiences transmitted through generations” (29). Under pressure from Indigenous rights movements, the major aim of some museums is now reconciliation with Indigenous peoples which, ultimately, should result in the return of the cultural objects to the originators of these objects (Kelly and Gordon). Using the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA) as an illustration, we argue that the whole debate of returning or recovering Indigenous peoples’ cultural objects to the original source is still embedded in a discourse that emphasises the mummified aspect of these materials. As Harding argues, NAGPRA is provoking an image of “native Americans as mere passive recipients of their cultural identity, beholden to their ancestors and the museum community for the re-creation of their cultures” (137) when it defines cultural patrimony as objects having ongoing historical, traditional or cultural importance, central to the Native American group or culture itself. According to Harding (2005) NAGPRA’s dominating narrative focuses on the loss, alienation and cultural genocide of the objects as long as these are not returned to their originators. The recovery or the return of the objects to their “original” culture has been applauded as one of the most liberating and emancipatory events in recent years for Indigenous peoples. However, as we have argued elsewhere, the process of recovery needs to do more than just smother the object in its past; recovery can only happen when heritage or tradition is connected to the experience of everyday life. One way of achieving this is to move away from the objectification of Indigenous peoples’ cultures. ObjectificationIn our exploratory enquiry about new museum practices our attention was drawn to a recent debate about ownership and personhood within the context of museology (Busse; Baker; Herle; Bell; Geismar). Busse, in particular, makes the point that in order to reformulate curatorial practices it is important to redefine the concept and meaning of objects. While the above authors do not question the importance of the objects, they all argue that the real importance does not lie in the objects themselves but in the way these objects embody the physical manifestation of social relations. The whole idea that objects matter because they have agency and efficacy, and as such become a kind of person, draws upon recent anthropological theorising by Gell and Strathern. Furthermore, we have not only been inspired by Gell’s and Strathern’s approaches that suggests that objects are social persons, we have also been influenced by Appadurai’s and Kopytoff’s defining of objects as biographical agents and therefore valued because of the associations they have acquired throughout time. We argue that by framing objects in a social network throughout its lifecycle we can avoid the recurrent pitfalls of essentialising objects in terms of their “primitive” or “traditional” (aesthetic) qualities and mystifying the identity of Indigenous peoples as “noble savages.” Focusing more on the social network that surrounds a particular object opens up new avenues of enquiry as to how, and to what extent, museums can become more inclusive vis-à-vis Indigenous peoples. It allows moving beyond the current discourse that approaches the history of the (ethnographic) museum from only one dominant perspective. By tracing an artwork throughout its lifecycle a new metaphor can be discovered; one that shows that Indigenous peoples have not always been victims, but maybe more importantly it allows us to show a more complex narrative of the object itself. It gives us the space to counterweight some of the discourses that have steeped Indigenous artworks in a “postcolonial” framework of sacredness and mythical meaning. This is not to argue that it is not important to be reminded of the dangers of appropriating other cultures’ heritage, but we would argue that it is equally important to show that approaching a story from a one-sided perspective will create a dualism (Bush) and reducing the differences between different cultures to a dualistic opposition fails to recognise the fundamental areas of agency (Morphy). In order for museums to enliven and engage with objects, they must become institutions that emphasise a relational approach towards displaying and curating objects. In the next part of this paper we will explore to what extent an online museum could progressively facilitate the process of providing agency to the social relations that link objects, persons, environments and memories. As Solanilla argues, what has been described as cybermuseology may further transform the museum landscape and provide an opportunity to challenge some of the problems identified above (e.g. essentialising practices). Or to quote the museologist Langlais: “The communication and interaction possibilities offered by the Web to layer information and to allow exploration of multiple meanings are only starting to be exploited. In this context, cybermuseology is known as a practice that is knowledge-driven rather than object-driven, and its main goal is to disseminate knowledge using the interaction possibilities of Information Communication Technologies” (Langlais qtd. in Solanilla 108). One thing which shows promise and merits further exploration is the idea of transforming the act of exhibiting ethnographic objects accompanied by texts and graphics into an act of cyber discourse that allows Indigenous peoples through their own voices and gestures to involve us in their own history. This is particularly the case since Indigenous peoples are using technologies, such as the Internet, as a new medium through which they can recuperate their histories, land rights, knowledge and cultural heritage (Zimmerman et al.). As such, new technology has played a significant role in the contestation and formation of Indigenous peoples’ current identity by creating new social and political spaces through visual and narrative cultural praxis (Ginsburg).Online MuseumsIt has been acknowledged for some time that a presence on the Web might mitigate the effects of what has been described as the “unassailable voice” in the recovery process undertaken by museums (Walsh 77). However, a museum’s online engagement with an Indigenous culture may have significance beyond undercutting the univocal authority of a museum. In the case of the South African National Gallery it was charged with challenging the extent to which it represents entrenched but unacceptable political ideologies. Online museums may provide opportunities in the conservation and dissemination of “life stories” that give an account of an Indigenous culture as it is experienced (Solanilla 105). We argue that in engaging with Indigenous cultural heritage a distinction needs to be drawn between data and the cognitive capacity to learn, “which enables us to extrapolate and learn new knowledge” (Langlois 74). The problem is that access to data about an Indigenous culture does not necessarily lead to an understanding of its knowledge. It has been argued that cybermuseology loses the essential interpersonal element that needs to be present if intangible heritage is understood as “the process of making sense that is generally transmitted orally and through face-to-face experience” (Langlois 78). We agree that the online museum does not enable a reality to be reproduced (Langlois 78).This does not mean that cybermuseology should be dismissed. Instead it provides the opportunity to construct a valuable, but completely new, experience of cultural knowledge (Langlois 78). The technology employed in cybermuseology provides the means by which control over meaning may, at least to some extent, be dispersed (Langlois 78). In this way online museums provide the opportunity for Indigenous peoples to challenge being subjected to manipulation by one authoritative museological voice. One of the ways this may be achieved is through interactivity by enabling the use of social tagging and folksonomy (Solanilla 110; Trant 2). In these processes keywords (tags) are supplied and shared by visitors as a means of accessing museum content. These tags in turn give rise to a classification system (folksonomy). In the context of an online museum engaging with an Indigenous culture we have reservations about the undifferentiated interactivity on the part of all visitors. This issue may be investigated further by examining how interactivity relates to communication. Arguably, an online museum is engaged in communicating Indigenous cultural heritage because it helps to keep it alive and pass it on to others (Langlois 77). However, enabling all visitors to structure online access to that culture may be detrimental to the communication of knowledge that might otherwise occur. The narratives by which Indigenous cultures, rather than visitors, order access to information about their cultures may lead to the communication of important knowledge. An illustration of the potential of this approach is the work Sharon Daniel has been involved with, which enables communities to “produce knowledge and interpret their own experience using media and information technologies” (Daniel, Palabras) partly by means of generating folksonomies. One way in which such issues may be engaged with in the context of online museums is through the argument that database and narrative in such new media objects are opposed to each other (Manovich, New Media 225). A new media work such as an online museum may be understood to be comprised of a database and an interface to that database. A visitor to an online museum may only move through the content of the database by following those paths that have been enabled by those who created the museum (Manovich, New Media 227). In short it is by means of the interface provided to the viewer that the content of the database is structured into a narrative (Manovich, New Media: 226). It is possible to understand online museums as constructions in which narrative and database aspects are emphasized to varying degrees for users. There are a variety of museum projects in which the importance of the interface in creating a narrative interface has been acknowledged. Goldblum et al. describe three examples of websites in which interfaces may be understood as, and explicitly designed for, carrying meaning as well as enabling interactivity: Life after the Holocaust; Ripples of Genocide; and Yearbook 2006.As with these examples, we suggest that it is important there be an explicit engagement with the significance of interface(s) for online museums about Indigenous peoples. The means by which visitors access content is important not only for the way in which visitors interact with material, but also as to what is communicated about, culture. It has been suggested that the curator’s role should be moved away from expertly representing knowledge toward that of assisting people outside the museum to make “authored statements” within it (Bennett 11). In this regard it seems to us that involvement of Indigenous peoples with the construction of the interface(s) to online museums is of considerable significance. Pieterse suggests that ethnographic museums should be guided by a process of self-representation by the “others” portrayed (Pieterse 133). Moreover it should not be forgotten that, because of the separation of content and interface, it is possible to have access to a database of material through more than one interface (Manovich, New Media 226-7). Online museums provide a means by which the artificial homogenization of Indigenous peoples may be challenged.We regard an important potential benefit of an online museum as the replacement of accessing material through the “unassailable voice” with the multiplicity of Indigenous voices. A number of ways to do this are suggested by a variety of new media artworks, including those that employ a database to rearrange information to reveal underlying cultural positions (Paul 100). Paul discusses the work of, amongst others, George Legrady. She describes how it engages with the archive and database as sites that record culture (104-6). Paul specifically discusses Legrady’s work Slippery Traces. This involved viewers navigating through more than 240 postcards. Viewers of work were invited to “first chose one of three quotes appearing on the screen, each of which embodies a different perspective—anthropological, colonialist, or media theory—and thus provides an interpretive angle for the experience of the projects” (104-5). In the same way visitors to an online museum could be provided with a choice of possible Indigenous voices by which its collection might be experienced. We are specifically interested in the implications that such approaches have for the way in which online museums could engage with film. Inspired by Basu’s work on reframing ethnographic film, we see the online museum as providing the possibility of a platform to experiment with new media art in order to expose the meta-narrative(s) about the politics of film making. As Basu argues, in order to provoke a feeling of involvement with the viewer, it is important that the viewer becomes aware “of the plurality of alternative readings/navigations that they might have made” (105). As Weinbren has observed, where a fixed narrative pathway has been constructed by a film, digital technology provides a particularly effective means to challenge it. It would be possible to reveal the way in which dominant political interests regarding Indigenous cultures have been asserted, such as for example in the popular film The Gods Must Be Crazy. New media art once again provides some interesting examples of the way ideology, that might otherwise remain unclear, may be exposed. Paul describes the example of Jennifer and Kevin McCoy’s project How I learned. The work restructures a television series Kung Fu by employing “categories such as ‘how I learned about blocking punches,’ ‘how I learned about exploiting workers,’ or ‘how I learned to love the land’” (Paul 103) to reveal in greater clarity, than otherwise might be possible, the cultural stereotypes used in the visual narratives of the program (Paul 102-4). We suggest that such examples suggest the ways in which online museums could work to reveal and explore the existence not only of meta-narratives expressed by museums as a whole, but also the means by which they are realised within existing items held in museum collections.ConclusionWe argue that the agency for such reflective moments between the San, who have been repeatedly misrepresented or underrepresented in exhibitions and films, and multiple audiences, may be enabled through the generation of multiple narratives within online museums. 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