The Future Of

Stolen Artefacts

Episode Summary

Hundreds of thousands of stolen, Colonial Era artefacts are on display in Western museums. Will they ever be returned home?

Episode Notes

Hundreds of thousands of stolen, Colonial Era artefacts are on display in Western museums. Will they ever be returned home?

Episode Transcription

Jessica Morrison:          00:00                This is The Future Of, where experts share their vision of the future and how their work is helping shape it for the better.

Jessica Morrison:          00:09                I'm Jessica Morrison. Around the world, untold numbers of artefacts sit in Western museums and libraries, taken from their original homes in places such as Africa and the Middle East, during wars and colonial occupations. In recent years, there have been an increase in calls to return these artefacts, with governments and countries including France, Germany, and the UK finally beginning to make amends. As the practice increases, what is the future for these artefacts? And on the other side of the discussion, the future of the institutions that once held them?

Jessica Morrison:          00:41                To discuss this topic, with me today is Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes, a lecturer in human rights from Curtin University and the winner of the 2019 Australian Humanities Travelling Fellowship. Thank you for coming in today, Yirga.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     00:54    Thank you for having me, Jessica.

Jessica Morrison:          00:55                To start with, what inspired you to become an expert in this field?

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     01:01    Thank you. I think the first sort of trigger for me was the presence of the replica of the Ark of the Covenant, or sometimes called the Tablets of Ethiopia, in the British Museum. These tablets exist in the British Museum, starting from the 1868 at the Battle of Magdala where the British looted these important items of Ethiopia. So the presence of these treasures, which are sacred, spiritually significant treasures is significant for Ethiopians, especially myself included because I grew up in a place called Lalibela in Ethiopia. It's a historical town where King Lalibela in the 13th century carved about 11 churches out of a massive single rock. There's this big rock, as big as a village. And they started carving churches, starting from the roof and created these beautiful churches, which still exist today. And one of the main purpose of these churches was to house the replicas of the Ark of the Covenant, because in the spiritual mythology or belief of Ethiopians, the presence of the Ark of the Covenant represents the presence of God in places where these arks are residing.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     02:27    So all over Ethiopia, in several villages, people gather and make their houses. And in the middle they create a small church and put the Ark of the Covenant in the middle and organise their lives, their social interaction and so on, on the base of this, these spiritual treasures. Now, where the presence of the Ark of the Covenant, when it was taken from Ethiopia and are housed in London ... Of course, there are so many replicas of the Ark of the Covenant that there's a special way of making them in Ethiopia, too. But any Ark of the Covenant, which exists anywhere, represents this sacredness, and the presence of this Ark of the Covenant in the British Museum is a constant offence to this tradition. When I go to the British Museum and I ask myself: "What do I do? How do I relate with these important items of my tradition?" If it was in Ethiopia, if they were housed, for example, in a church, people will bow, will worship, will pray and feel connected with the land and their creators and the society.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     03:41    But if I go to the British Museum, is this a holy place now. Am I going to worship? Am I going to pray? Or am I going to ignore these important spiritual icons, which really define a lot about Ethiopia? Because Ethiopians ... Ethiopia is the only country that was never colonised, and when they fought against the Italian colonisers, they carried the Ark of the Covenant to the war. If the Ark of the Covenant goes to the war with the people, nobody runs away. People will persist. And that is how Ethiopians were able to defeat the Italians and become the only country in Africa that was never colonised. So when these important spiritual icons are taken from Ethiopia and are housed in an institution that sees them as objects, as artefacts, it represents a constant denigration and a de-sacralisation of the spiritual icons of other countries.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     04:45    Now, this is just one example that that comes from Ethiopia, but if you look at other traditions as well, Indigenous Australians or other indigenous people in the world, Africans, their important spiritual icons are taken away from them and they're housed in these institutions. And that makes me think, the value of these important regions in Western museums, as a significant thing to really research on by highlighting, by showing, their significance to the real owners of these treasures.

Jessica Morrison:          05:22                So these treasures that you've just spoken about that hold such an importance to you and what led you into to researching this, have they ... Is there any moves to repatriate them back to Ethiopia or do they still sit in Britain?

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     05:35    They still sit in Britain. The British refused to return with them. There has been a constant call to repatriate these important treasures back to Ethiopia, as there have been calls around the world from indigenous people, from governments, for repatriation of their important artefacts. But what also important in the call for a return of these artefacts is that there are contesting or different interests towards these artefacts, depending on how people relate to them. For example, for governments, this is a question of nationalism. It's a question of showing that we have history and politically we have to exist as political society. So it's important for them in that perspective. But within states, there are indigenous people. There are spiritual people who have special connection with these items. Like the tablets, the Tabots, or the Ark of the Covenant in Ethiopia, the way governments see these icons, even within that country, differ from the way people who are spiritually connected with them, see them.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     06:49    So from the point of view of people whose spiritual identity was taken away, this has been a constant grief. There has been a constant call for the repatriation of these items, but from government aside, of course, it depends on the temperature of the time. In recent times, when, for example, the French President Macron says that they are willing to return African artefacts, there was panic, there was a kind of response all over the world. From museums, for example, they see them from the point of view of how they connect with these treasures. So the question becomes quite contentious, but in recent times, it became so important that people become aware of these things. And there's an increased public pressure as well, asking that these historical wrongs have to be amended.

Jessica Morrison:          07:44                You touched on it just briefly there around it depends on the temperature of the time and what's going on, but what are some of the key prompts for these countries that we mentioned earlier to repatriate these stolen artefacts to their original homes?

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     07:59    I think there are important items in terms of the significance of cultures, for example, in recent times. People have become aware that their identity matters at a time where globalisation, a lot of national identities are devalued. Then people started to kind of feel that identity is very important to them. They want to bring back their treasures to their own culture. In other parts, on the other side of the coin, governments also see these items' repatriation, for example, as an important way of healing or reconnecting or getting benefits out of building relationships with countries, which are increasingly becoming detached from them.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     08:49    From the point of view of indigenous people, people who have special spiritual and cultural connection with these, it's a question of cultural survival. You cannot maintain your culture without the material existence of these artefacts, which represents that culture. So in order for cultures to continue to thrive, people need these materials back to their homes. So the struggle of these indigenous peoples or people who have this special connections to artefacts now are starting to be voiced through other channels, and it's become increasingly important that these things be returned.

Jessica Morrison:          09:28                Do you have an idea of the number of stolen artefacts that still need to be repatriated to their homes?

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     09:36    Well, that is a very good question. And it's very hard really to know how many artefacts are stolen. There are hundreds of thousands, for example, about hundreds of thousands artefacts of indigenous first nations peoples exist all over the world, in North America, in Europe. There are for example, about 73,000 Sub-Saharan African artefacts in the British Museum alone. There are like more than 6,000 Ethiopian indigenous Ge'ez manuscripts in all over European museums. This is without considering the artefacts ... Or we call them even "artefacts". We should not call them "artefacts" actually, because these are living treasures. In private collections, for example, there's a massive number of things which are in the hands of private collectors.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     10:33    The reason why we shouldn't call them also artefacts, because take for example, Ethiopian Ge'ez manuscripts, a lot of these were written in the 16th century, in the 15th century, in the 17th, 18th century. About a million manuscripts were written in Ethiopia, in the Ge'ez indigenous languages. Now these books cannot be read by Europeans, by these museums and the libraries which house them, but they can be read by indigenous students in Ethiopia. I have been researching and went to visit these schools. There are hundreds of schools, but the children there do not have textbooks because their textbooks are stolen or looted away. And their teachers can no longer reproduce them because the government of the system doesn't really support them. So these are not just treasures to be displayed for people and visit them. These are living textbooks, which are essential material for people to continue with their tradition and have them.

Jessica Morrison:          11:42                Do you think maybe there needs to be a change in the way that the general population sees these? You've sort of said that around, they're not artefacts, they're treasures. From a personal perspective, and I feel a little ignorant in admitting this, but when I have visited museums, particularly in Canberra, in the nation's, in Australia's, capital, I've looked at these particular artefacts that were not from Australia and thought: "Oh, wow, that's really interesting." And thought of just, "Oh, how lucky am I to view these", without thinking about the connection to the people that own them in their home country. So do you think that there really needs to be a change in the way maybe the general population views this in order to change how they're viewed and then repatriated, potentially?

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     12:27    Absolutely. Absolutely. Because you know what these things represent? From the point of view of indigenous people, Ethiopians or Africans, what these represent is a continuation of colonisation, because there are at least three forms of colonisation. The first one is a colonisation of places. African places and countries were physically colonised in the past. We know that. But there is another form of colonisation, which is a colonisation of knowledge, which we really don't talk about. Because when Europeans take away these treasures from Africa, from indigenous populations and so on, they did it on the assumption, on the belief, that they are actually preserving or taking away something important, because the Europeans view themselves as the custodians of humanity, like they're keeping it in the name of the human race–

Jessica Morrison:          13:23                Mhm.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     13:23    Which represents only themselves. So you see the colonisation of knowledge means that people who produced this knowledge cannot be trusted with their own history, that they cannot really use them for the benefit of humanity. So the entire assumption of keeping these artefacts in Western museums, the argument, rests on this basic idea that these people are incapable of having their own history, unless we hold it for them. So by taking away their history, and if you look into the colonial history of Africa, what happened is first Africa was simply perceived as an empty place, or indigenous people are perceived as primitive. And once they are denied as having history and so on, then whatever they have has to be taken away from them, that legitimises the robbing of their history and putting it in the hands of Western museums and collectors. So de-colonisation is a very important process in this regard, because it kind of brings back to the centre of the importance of these material artefacts or treasures into the hands of people who own them.

Jessica Morrison:          14:47                On the other side of the argument, if I can sort of explore still, can Western institutions that are holding these artefacts, can they benefit from returning them to their original homes?

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     14:58    Absolutely. I believe so because the very foundation of Western institutions, their claim, is that they are keeping it for the benefit of humanity, but at least at this stage, they cannot continue to argue that way, because these places have all the capacity to maintain or to keep these treasures in their own countries. And also the centre, the idea that Europe is the only centre of the world, that the rest of the world has no knowledge or capacity to maintain these treasures, is false. It does not ... Because there are now other important centres of the world where Europe's significance in terms of being the custodian of the world of culture is untenable at this stage. So the argument is lost.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     15:51    But what they can do to be part of this human history and preserving and maintaining these artefacts is to constructively engage with the real owners of these treasures, because for the period that has passed until now, from the time when these artefacts were looted or taken away, to the present, there's a history of preserving them. There's a history of keeping them in their museums. And there is also an ongoing story about this as part of the human story. So it is possible to reconstruct and maintain that history of preservation, and also continue to have interaction with the rest of the world.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     16:33    When I talk about repatriation, it doesn't necessarily mean that every hundreds and thousands of items has to be emptied and taken away and be returned to African countries. Repatriation is a principle, a principle which says that these items belong to the real owners. But what do we do after that depends on the agreement, the relationship that these institutions create with these real owners of these artefacts. So I don't think, and I don't perceive that everything that was taken will be returned back to these countries, but there is a possibility of creating a partnership where countries will have ... For example, these indigenous manuscripts, which are digitised in the West, they have them in a digital form, probably the original manuscripts could go back to Ethiopia and be used by people who are there to reproduce them by hand, because they don't have computers. They cannot really use the digital, and they are not in a digital era back home, back in Ethiopia, unlike in the West.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     17:46    So repatriation is a recognition that an injustice was done and that we recognise that these items are owned by the people from where we took them. But after that, the implementation could be a matter of argument.

Jessica Morrison:          18:02                So the argument isn't to sort of strip all of the world's major museums of artefacts from other countries, but perhaps it could help educate the wider world as to the injustices that have happened, too. Is that an argument?

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     18:18    Absolutely. What comes as a benefit by creating this, a possibility of healing, of reconnecting, is much more important than these material benefits museum get by collecting entrance fees from visitors and so on. Because you know what? When we look at these, we call them artefacts, but these treasures; what we do is we are responding to the call for justice by a lot of people. And we are also correcting wrongs in how we represent other people's cultures. The tablets that I mentioned from Ethiopia are not treasures. The way we also represent ... Or when we visit museums, we see what curators allow us to see. We don't really see these treasures from the point of view of the narratives, the history that they had from their original places. If you go to Ethiopia ... I mean the British Museum looted artefacts are incorporated into the history of British colonial empire. They are not incorporated in the history of Ghana or Benin or Ethiopia from where these artefacts were taken away.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     19:36    Not just artefacts, human remains, body parts still exist in thousands in different parts, in different museums in the West. Some of these human remains were taken from people who were struggling against the colonial invasion and whose heads were cut off and sent for scientific studies into the West. There's so many parts of human remains that exist within these countries. You see, what we do by saying that this has to be returned, is actually saving ourselves, saving humanity, from this barbaric way of stripping cultures, stripping identities, from other people. And the healing effect would be tremendously important for the general public in discussing the significance of these items. But if we leave them in Western institutions, the narrative of only those who have material interest on this will remain dominant, that: "We are the saviours of other people's cultures. Our colonial history was important. Colonisation is significant. That making that connection with colonialism remains intact."

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     20:51    So the question is, do we prefer a decolonised future – a future where we start to value the culture of other people? We take pride and be happy in the happiness of other people who now enjoy the benefit of keeping these artefacts in our museums until now, and now we are willing to return it back to them and to see that they are reconnected with them. Because these important treasures hold ... These are sources of memory. People remember what happened in the past and reconnect with the future and the present by using these items. But in Western museums, we don't really feel connected with any sort of humanity by going and visiting them. We see them as kind of items of curiosity. We don't really connect them with our own identity. If anything, we connect them with the colonial brutal empire and kind of use them to rewrite in a positive light what colonialism was.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     22:00    So the purpose of these items is actually to kind of hide the crime of colonialism, to make it look like that it was an expedition to save these things for the benefit of humanity, that humanity means us only, those who have access to these museums because indigenous people cannot come and worship or participate culturally in the presence of these artefacts in the West.

Jessica Morrison:          22:26                In your research, are you seeing a potentially brighter future for these countries, particularly who have had their artefacts and their treasures taken?

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     22:37    Yes. Yes, I do. Because one of my research is for example, on what I call knowledge grabbing and epistemic violence. What I mean by that is the grabbing of knowledge means a taking away of these important sources of knowledge, physically, comes with another form of violence, which I call epistemic violence. Epistemic violence is violence by means of knowledge, which means that in many instances through my research I show how the misinterpretation of, the misunderstanding of, the significance of these treasures by scholars who have not enough understanding of these treasures have created what I call a kind of colonial type of knowledge. I can give you an example from Ethiopia where these indigenous manuscripts from Ethiopia were taken away and are held in Western museums. These are written in the Ge'ez language and the only people who are perfect in the language, who can understand the meaning of the language, are Ethiopians who study for more than 30 years in the indigenous traditional school system.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     23:54    But these treasures are now translated in the West by professors, by people, who don't understand the language. They translate them because there is not as such anyone who can oversee the accurate translation of these texts. And because they have the power, the funding and so on to translate these texts, distribute them into the general population, they create a misrepresentation of the culture of that people. And in my recent research, for example, I reviewed one big entire book that was written in mediaeval times in Ethiopia and translated by Western scholars who don't have the training of that language, the training in that language and disseminated it across the world. When I looked into that book and I went back to Ethiopia and asked the scholars, who have also researched, studied, a bit in the Ge'ez literature as well, there's an entire misrepresentation because these scholars created some sensational stories that would make their translation popular in the world.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     25:03    So that just shows you that the existence of these treasures in the hands of people who don't really have special connection with them or the training in them, not only strips away the culture from the people, but also allows them to reproduce misrepresentations or orientalisations of these artefacts or these treasures and misleading the entire world. So museums, universities can create partnerships, can allow the flourishing of knowledge that would benefit all of us because knowledge doesn't have boundaries. My interest in this type of research is not to simply say that these artefacts belong to certain groups of people, it's not out of supporting a particular view of nationalism. It is actually saying that we all will benefit best when these materials are in the hands of people who care for them, who can use them to interpret the world, to reimagine the future so that these people will not continue to grieve about the loss of their cultural treasures. Instead they become part of the world where they also contribute what's best in their cultures.

Jessica Morrison:          26:23                We've spoken a lot about institutions, but there have been reports of artefacts being sold on Facebook in recent months. So I suppose, how and why are people stealing artefacts today and how can we prevent it from happening in the future?

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     26:37    That is a great question because the sad reality is there is still a market for it. There are so many wars happening all over the world. And as it was in the past, if you look at the collections in British Museum, and in other museums, these collections exist in colonisers, in colonial countries. And that is because when people went out to these colonised places, when war was happening, for example, colonial wars, museums on institution would send us their own representatives to look for artefacts and bring them back home. So these were collected at the backdrop of, behind wars and violence. So still that happens today whenever there are wars, there are conflicts, there is an increasing interest to have these items collected. I am not sure about the intention of Facebook, whether they would go ahead with this notion of repatriation, for example, tracing them back to their real owners because the public doesn't have control of Facebook, but it is really interesting to have awareness that what we see online in museums might mean so much for people who don't have access, who don't have access to these things.

Jessica Morrison:          28:01                In an ideal world, how could we all work together globally to return artefacts to their original homes?

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     28:08    I think that is possible and a very important. We need to start to reimagine the future that allows all societies, all cultures, to participate and contribute the best within them. And for that to happen, we have to stop this hierarchy, the claim that: "Because we have good facilities ... On the basis of our facilities these things must be ours." We have to instead come with the perspective that honours the relationships and ideals of all cultures together. I think that can be created only through public pressure. Of course, governments, politicians are now talking about this. They want to return back these items, but there are also ongoing concerns.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     28:59    The concern is that with the return of these artefacts to governments may not respond to the needs of indigenous people who are powerless within those countries, because what we have seen, for example, in many parts of Africa and other places is the westernisation of the State. States hold and create similar institutions like the West, museums and so on. So if the population is changing museums from Western museums to African museums, for example, it may not address the question of justice, the question of having those spiritual relationships for indigenous people. So it is important to accommodate all interests within different countries, and value the importance of these things.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     29:52    For example, in Australia, indigenous treasures are important for all of us in having that connection with this country, with this land and with Indigenous first nations people. Because if we look at artefacts only as serving the interest of one particular group, we will lose the big picture, because the history of one group is also the history of the human race. In the same way Europeans like to say that their history belongs to the history of all people, we have to also think that's the history of indigenous populations – Africans, Asians, and so on – is also the history of humanity. And the question is how do we actually value "all", and create a mechanism, a dialogue across cultures through research, through exchange of ideas and knowledge for a future that would allow all of us to be part of it? So if we are guided by that spirit, by that principle, then repatriation will not be a question of competing nationalisms between different states; it becomes a matter of nurturing diversity, nurturing dialogue and a pluriversal world.

Jessica Morrison:          31:08                And just lastly, why is that history or history in general so important for the future?

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     31:16    Because history is not about the past. We create history to reimagine or to think about the future. We cannot really talk about everything that happened in the past. We don't have the time. We cannot do it. What we do is we select what happened in the past, depending on what we want in the present and in the future. And we create a narrative that would guide us into the future. If you really look into how history has been used in the past, we go to museums and places of war memorials, places that honour violence in most parts, that is something that really tries to tell us about the present and the future. Because we choose in history often wars and we connect those words to kind of show to the world and to tell ourselves that we came from a particular violent place. But that can change because in the past, it's not only war, there were also traditions, cultures, love, literature, art, and so on. By remembering those cultures and artists and great things, we can create a narrative that would guide us into a better future.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     32:31    If we continue to imagine history as a history of war, the history itself become a war against the future. How do we change the future to become a space that would guide us into peace, into valuing cultures, involves decolonising this colonial war-like understanding of the past by re-imagining and recreating it with narratives that are beautiful, that are inclusive of all cultures.

Jessica Morrison:          33:03                Thank you, Yirga, for coming in and sharing your knowledge and passion on this topic. Certainly sounds like there's a lot to do in this space, but it was incredibly interesting to hear about the future of these artefacts or "treasures" as you refer to them. So thank you so much.

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes:                     33:16    Thank you.

Jessica Morrison:          33:18                You've been listening to The Future Of, the podcast powered by Curtin University. Leave us a comment wherever you find this episode. We love to hear from our listeners. And if you've got something out of the episode, please remember to rate us. You can also subscribe and share any of our episodes. Remember to find them in the feed. Until next time. Bye for now.