Hat-tip to Alyssa Rosenberg, who wrote an article on ThinkProgress titled How The Annenberg Foundation Secretly Saved Hopi And Apache Artifacts From An Auction, which caught my eye and brought this outcome to my attention.
The art auction world appears to be booming, and nothing is truly sacred when almost anything may go up for bid. We learned about just such a case not long ago, when it was reported by Aji in the edition of * New Day * that came out on Monday, April 8 of this year:
ARTS: HOPI INVOKE UNDRIP TO DEMAND RETURN OF SACRED MASKS
UP FOR PARIS AUCTION
The Hopi have invoked the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples [UNDRIP] in an attempt to stop an auction of sacred objects, including katsina masks. The auction is slated for April 12 in Paris, France. France is a signatory to UNDRIP.
"It is our opinion that these sacred objects should never have left the jurisdiction of the Hopi Tribe. ... It is our position that no one, other than a Hopi tribal member, has a right to possess these ceremonial objects," Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma, the Hopi Tribe's cultural preservation director, wrote in a letter to the firm last week.
According to a Neret-Minet catalog, the collection was assembled by "an amateur with assured taste" who lived in the United States for three decades. An email to the auction house seeking comment was not immediately answered on Wednesday.
Such masks and other objects were, virtually by definition, acquired illegitimately. It's one thing to sell contemporary non-sacred [unused and unuseable] replicas as art; it's another thing entirely to sell the actual masks used in ceremonies. It simply would not have been done. The Hopi are refusing to bid on the masks and other objects. Instead, noting that were the items physically in the U.S., their return could be enforced via the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act [NAGPRA], Hopi officials are asking the French government to step in and ensure that the owner repatriates the items in accordance with UNDRIP.
But, even when some things that are, in fact, regarded as sacred makes it to auction over the protests of a tribe, a nation and a people, sometimes
something totally unexpected happens:
Members of the Hopi tribe were also watching the sale online from Arizona. Unaware of the forces at work on their behalf, they said they became dispirited as item after item sold. Sam Tenakhongva, a cultural director for the Hopi, said when he turned off his lights at 2 a.m., he felt he was saying goodbye to the spirits embodied in the headdresses.
The foundation, however, had enjoyed marked success in the bidding. By the end of the auction, it had spent $530,695 and bought all but three of the 24 Hopi objects and the three other Apache artifacts that the foundation had sought.
And one of the three, a Hopi headdress featuring antelope antlers, had been bought by Mr. Servan-Schreiber on behalf of a couple, Marshall W. Parke, of the private equity firm Lexington Partners, and his wife, Véronique, who had instructed him to obtain what he could as a gift to the Hopis.
This is an example of good news. Of good intentions, and follow-through, by unexpected actors who step in to help to do what is right or to correct a wrong.
There's a little more over the orange omnilepticon (a.k.a. fancy artist's illustration of a Renaissance-era croissant).
All seemed lost as the auction occurred - even the immediate aftermath was referenced in the Overnight News Digest: RIP Nelson Mandela Edition that came out on Monday, 9 Dec, with a blurb from The Guardian:
The Guardian
A French auction house has sold sacred Hopi masks and other contested Native American artefacts for a total of £1m, after ignoring a plea from the US embassy to delay the sale.
As protesters stood outside the Drouot auction house in Paris with banners reading "Sacred masks, sacrilegious sale", 25 vividly coloured Kachina masks went under the hammer inside.
The American Indian Hopi tribe says the artefacts represent their ancestors' spirits and cannot be sold as merchandise. A judge ruled last week that the sale was legal in France.
Sometimes, even when bad things happen (like the items being brought up for auction in the first place), good things can come of it. That doesn't always fully mitigate the initial wrong, nor does it account for the item(s) lost that weren't able to be reclaimed, but it's a start.
Not long ago, I wrote a piece called
The Good Fight which was my attempt to work through my frustrations after
reading and
commenting in a diary by
Dee Oliver-Velez, and again
reading and
commenting in a diary by
Meteor Blades (tho my comment was after I wrote my diary).
I'm still working out my frustrations.
I think the general tendency of cultures to embed elements of racial and social injustice & intolerance in sometimes subtle (and sometimes unapologetically blatant) ways - and then to resist changing such things, maintaining a status quo of disparity and predisposition toward dehumanization, is one of the most frustrating challenges facing any civilizations that wish to claim the mantle of "enlightenment" and "modern civilization."
Indeed, our current definition of "modern civilization" is a far cry from what we appear to want to define it as.1
I'm not the best person to represent or speak out against social and racial injustice. I'm a middle-class white guy. But I can and do speak out, to help raise awareness and in support of my many friends who have had the unfortunate experience of having to live through such affronts to our humanity - many of whom are strong voices in their own right.
I can't speak to the issues from the point of view of having experienced those injustices, of having been on the receiving end or having to navigate my life path through the various obstacles that such inherent, embedded disparities place in front people. I can, however, speak to what I've seen and observed, or to the frustration of trying to influence those who blithely plow forward enacting further injustices, trying to educate them as to why they'd behave differently if the gender, social / economic class, race, religion or sexuality matched their own.
And I can take heart in the growing number of voices who are speaking up, speaking out and being heard as these prejudices are identified & addressed.
I enjoy learning more about the actual histories & cultures of various peoples, reading folks like Dee and Ojibwa, Meteor Blades, Aji and navajo.2 I need to read & participate more in Black Kos - there's so much good work being done there, to illustrate and explain and teach.
I do regularly follow Aji's "This Week in American Indian News" contributions to the New Day series. In fact, here's a couple to check out:
I enjoy learning. I admit that I sometimes feel helpless, frustrated, or even ashamed when I read some of the news of the ongoing struggles that others have to face on a daily basis. But those feelings don't disable me - they empower me. They goad me toward asking questions:
how can I help? What can I do to help spread awareness? What shouldn't I do?
Most of all, I enjoy seeing positive outcomes - maybe not perfect outcomes ("perfect" is something rare, idealized, and perhaps not always what we really want even when we achieve it), but happier outcomes than we expected.
The story of how many of the Hopi and Apache artifacts were picked up by a beneficent buyer for the sole purpose of repatriating them to their proper place among the people who created them & held them sacred is one such story.
I hope to see and hear about many more.
Namaste.
Footnote(s)
1 Another piece I'd written, from long ago: Civilization's African Toll: From The Cradle of Civilization to a Grave of Indifference, which originally appeared here on ePluribus Media.
2 Congrats, navajo, Director of Community Building! For those who didn't know about her new position, you can read the previous link for the announcement, and continue on in her inaugural diary.