Exchanging the inalienable
The politics and practice of repatriating human remains from Museum and Maori tribal perspectives
Helle Jψrgensen
Institute of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
Kandidatspeciale / MA-thesis
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Introduction
Methodology of the study
Theoretical setting
The structure of the thesis
Locating the ethnographic contexts: New Zealand today
Chapter 1 - 'Relics of a dying world': The practice of collection and its legacy
Cultural contact, local heads and lost heads
Chapter 2 - An ancestor's head returns to Aotearoa New Zealand: The response
to a repatriation request at the National Museum of Denmark
Coming into light: The entangled meanings of human remains
Contemplating repatriation: Museums and the logics of exchange
Circulation: The biography of an unidentified man
Chapter 3 - Concerns of the present, legacies of the past: Museums and the politics
of human remains in Aotearoa New Zealand
Redressing history
Institutionalising the inalienability of culture
Chapter 4 - Coming home to the descendants: Tribal care taking and historical
experience
Ancestral homecoming
Historical and contemporary memories of collection
Caring for the dead
Debating repatriation: Reburial or retention?
Relating to history
Appendix 1: Maori glossary
Appendix 2: List of abbreviations
Appendix 3: Map of New Zealand
Bibliography
Newspaper references
Internet references
Museum documents
Archival sources
I owe many people, more than I can possibly mention by name here, my warmest thanks for their openness, support, inspiration, and assistance, without which it would not have been possible to complete fieldwork for this thesis. I realise that for a number of those who have shared their knowledge and experiences with me, it has not been easy to discuss the emotional and controversial topic of my research. This only increases my gratitude for those who gave of their time and knowledge for this project. I hope that what I have written will, in turn, contribute to an increased understanding of what is at stake in the debate on the repatriation of human remains.
To the National Museum of Denmark, the first institution to open its doors for me, I am indebted for much support from current and former employees at the Ethnographic Collection, who generously gave of their time, and provided me with access to the museum's repatriation files. Likewise, employees of both Auckland War Memorial Museum - Te Papa Whakahiku, and Museum of New Zealand - Te Papa Tongarewa, have helpfully given their assistance in interviews and by supplying me with relevant policy documents. TVNZ kindly provided me with access for television records at their superb viewing facilities. Not least, the Maori people I met in Te Tai Tokerau have shared their daily lives, experiences and memories with me, and granted me both hospitality, and insight in the meanings that the topic of repatriation hold to them. All of the people who took time out of their busy lives to see me have contributed with invaluable knowledge and experiences, without which I could not have written the present thesis.
Thanks are also due to my supervisors during synopsis and thesis writing, Katja Kvaale and Inger Sjørslev. Both have provided moral support, as well as insightful and inspiring comments during the progress of my work. I am also grateful to archaeologist Mille Gabriel for supplying me with a copy of her thesis on the National Museum of Denmark, to anthropologist Martin Skrydstrup for an inspiring correspondence and sharing of drafts and literature suggestions, and to Dr. Rangihiroa Panoho for drawing my attention to a number of New Zealand publications related to my research topic.
Several friends and colleagues have given helpful comments on my thesis drafts at various stages, and for this I especially owe thanks to Mette Nygaard Jensen, Hanne Pedersen, Trine Fuglkjær Sørensen, and Inge Merete Jensen.
For financial support for my fieldwork I thank Institute of Anthropology at University of Copenhagen, Overretssagfører P. A. Hansens Legat, and Vordingborg Gymnasiums Legatforening.
I remember
the big museum
Eight or nine years old I was,
and my eyes gaped in disbelief, as I peered into that glass case, and saw grimacing
at me, a mask of agony and anger, a chiselled face
I was horrified
by knowing
it was, he was, a dead Maori. One of MY OWN.
Maori museum curator Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, 1985: 15
Behind the anonymous identification number '322' and a number of no less cryptic codes, such as 'OCSYNE', one of the protagonists of this study was hidden. Although I had sought out many people to assist with knowledge for my research, he was one I never met. He was dead. These and other codes and numbers designated the preserved tattooed head of a long dead Maori man, as he fitted into the categories of identification and registration at the National Museum of Denmark, where he had been for 105 years. There he did not remain. In his 103rd year in the museum, a Maori visitor showed up to reclaim him, sparking off a series of events, which set the deceased out on a new trajectory, this time back to his homeland, New Zealand. Thus it came to pass that a dead man travelled the world back and forth, leaving behind both a paper trail and a number of persons - museum staff and concerned Maori people - with debate and dilemmas, new and old, to handle. And which dilemmas? Why and how did such a preserved head end up in a European museum, what sense is to be made of this, and which responses are to be accorded to it? This study sets out to investigate the complex and contentious issue of repatriation of human remains from museums to indigenous peoples; the actual practice of repatriation as well as the backgrounds of understanding that the involved people in museums and Maori tribes bring to bear on it.
The fact that a repatriation case eventuated at all from the claim to the National Museum of Denmark (NMDK) is due to developments which have taken place internationally for a number of years. In parallel with the acquisition of political independence in many former colonial countries after World War II, the world has seen a resurgence of political and cultural awareness amongst indigenous peoples (Sjørslev 2001a: 45)(1). In this connection, indigenous activists worldwide have repeatedly stated claims for cultural rights, including repatriation (e.g. the Mataatua Declaration, UN-WGIP 1993a). The critique from indigenous peoples has not gone unnoticed, and it has gradually been taken up for consideration in institutional and professional ethics amongst those who handle the contested remains, such as in the guidelines of the International Council of Museums (ICOM 1986, 2001). Especially during the past three decades a steadily growing number of conventions, declarations, policies and guidelines on the cultural rights of indigenous peoples and the management and protection of cultural heritage have been produced, and indigenous rights are currently in the process of being formalised in a UN declaration(2). Where such a development might previously have seemed unthinkable to most museums, debate as well as actual repatriations have increasingly taken place in the museum world, particularly since the late eighties (Layton 1989, Simpson 1996, Hubert & Fforde 2002). Thus, repatriation has become an issue which present-day museums and indigenous peoples must relate to and handle, both as concept, relationship and practice.
The term 'repatriation', derived from the Latin term 'patria', fatherland, refers to return to a country of origin and was originally applied to movements of living people returning from displacement, such as the homecoming of refugees. In the present-day museum context the term is used about material remains from the past, designating "the return of an object of cultural patrimony from a museum collection to a party found to be the true owner or traditional guardian, or their heirs and descendants" (Legget 2000: 29). This concept is not entirely unproblematic to put into practice. On which grounds is it decided which 'objects' ought to be repatriated, and why, not to mention whom might be identified as 'the true owners or traditional guardians'? These issues bring us back to our protagonist and his fate: To whom does such a dead man belong, and which are the forces that set him out on his trajectory? The Maori case can serve as a means of elucidating logics and experiences operating in a growing issue of museum and indigenous politics of culture that is global in scale and implies multiple actors and localities. Thus, the problem that this thesis seeks to explore is the following: How is the repatriation of human remains perceived and practiced in museum and Maori tribal contexts, and which meanings and roles do the remains and their repatriation acquire in this process?
Since the relations and events I have set out to investigate span lengthy periods of time and are international in scope, I have resorted to a number of different sources and methods to grasp them. The topic of my research inevitably meant that to a large extent I had to enter the field 'after the fact', which made written sources - historical and recent - an invaluable component of the study. Thus, in analysing circumstances of the repatriation case from Denmark, I have made use of files from the archive of NMDK, as well as carrying out interviews with staff involved in the repatriation, which took place in 1998. To take into consideration the historical background of the current situation, I have also sought out historical accounts from the period when Maori human remains such as the preserved head entered the collections of museums across the world.
Having covered the ground on the case and its background as far as possible from my part of the world, I set out to follow the debate on the repatriation of Maori human remains to its ethnographic source, spending five months carrying out fieldwork in New Zealand. Here I not only preoccupied myself with the country's two largest museums, Museum of New Zealand - Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa), and Auckland War Memorial Museum - Te Papa Whakahiku (AWMM), but also with the experiences of Maori people from several tribes (iwi) and subtribes (hapu)(3) in Te Tai Tokerau (Northland), the northernmost part of New Zealand's North Island. In both museums I conducted in-depth interviews with staff charged with handling repatriation in practice and policy, just as I collected relevant acts, policy documents and publications that the museums and associated staff have issued on the topic. Likewise I carried out in-depth interviews and conversations with members of northern iwi and hapu to gain insight into their experiences with museums, collection and repatriation, as well as their own practices of care taking for human remains. Just as importantly I had the opportunity to carry out participant observation by living amongst, and visiting, Maori people in the north to learn about the everyday social and cultural relations and practices that form a background for the understandings and debate of repatriation amongst Maori people. To gain further insight into the general debate on repatriation within New Zealand, I also collected a number of media representations such as newspaper and magazine articles, television news items and documentaries. Thus the present study is set in a number of contexts: Historical and recent, policy and practice, international and local - from the goings-on within single museums and tribes, to the ways they enter into relationships with each other and with the contested remains(4).
Understanding repatriation is an exercise that might be carried out on several levels of abstraction and scales of encompassment. Given the larger contexts that the phenomenon is set in, such as the spheres of international politics of both museums and indigenous peoples, it might seem an option to construct the theoretical frame of my thesis around these levels of discourse, as they are expressed in various international declarations and conventions. However, although these larger scales of operation are by implication important contexts of the study, I will not base my study on discourse analysis. The real dilemmas and meanings of repatriation are to be gleaned in practice, and I will therefore endeavour to anchor my analysis firmly in the concrete. Therefore, concrete case material will here be investigated to identify the operating logics and processes, and their wider implications in the field of repatriation.
In part, theoretically I will lean on the notion of the social life of things, specifically by applying the concept of the cultural biography of things, which was introduced by the anthropologists Arjun Appadurai and Igor Kopytoff (both 1986). Importantly, in referring to 'things' here, neither I, nor the original propagators of this approach, mean to imply just artefacts, but in fact anything - hence also human remains - which enters into a form of circulation where it is, at some point of its history, treated in a way similar to an object, notably by being regarded as a saleable commodity. The basic tenet of the approach of these two theorists is that in social terms the value of a 'thing' thus conceived (whether referring to dimensions of moral, economy, aesthetics, or any number of other dimensions of valuation) does not inhere in the thing itself, but is a judgment made by the persons handling it. Furthermore, in being thus handled, the thing may be said to progressively acquire its own biography, predicated on the series of judgments that its various possessors have made on what is possible, desirable and appropriate to do to this thing. Thus, as a strategy to illuminate any phenomenon of concrete historical circulation, one may follow the things themselves and the uses to which they are put, as their meanings can be revealed through the analysis of these trajectories (Appadurai 1986: 5). Conversely, the trajectories of the remains will reflect the classificatory schemes and moral values prevalent in the social and historical contexts that they pass through, including differential valuation not just in passing through time, but also simultaneously, by different actors (Kopytoff 1986: 64, 68, Gabriel 2002).
The concept of the cultural biography does not in itself contain any fixed assumptions about the nature of the subject matter of the biography, and can therefore serve to illuminate the shifts of meaning that are to be encountered as the remains that the study will focus on traverse cultural and historical contexts. The case I shall deal with will show that the trajectories of these remains, the forms of transactions they enter, and the contexts of meaning in which they become embedded, can be conceptualised in terms of theories on exchange and the constitution of identities, values and social relationships. As this thesis aims to demonstrate, analysing the phenomenon of repatriation may in fact contribute to broadening our perspectives on classic anthropological theories in the field of exchange, alienability and inalienability (Mauss 1990 [1925], Weiner 1985, 1992).
Repatriation is not only a matter of how the involved parties relate to the contested remains per se, nor of the derived attempts at directing the appropriate destinies and courses of circulation that the remains may enter. It is also a matter of the relationships between the involved parties themselves, with respect to the wider consequences and contexts of the trajectories that the remains enter. Considered from this perspective, the topic may also interpretatively be framed within what might be termed the politics of culture and history, in terms of issues such as the contemporary identity politics of museums as well as the involved indigenous groups, and indeed the nations that are implied in the history of collection. That is to say, in becoming the focus of attention, the contested remains, as we shall see, simultaneously come to carry a symbolic and relational significance, which must also be taken into account if the phenomenon of repatriation is to be understood. To get a grasp on this aspect of repatriation, I will draw on theories of cultural heritage and identity politics, represented by theorists such as the anthropologist Jonathan Friedman (1994), who will be introduced more fully in the course of the analysis.
The chapters of this thesis will each emphasise different perspectives and contexts. First I focus on the historical context of collecting in New Zealand; then on the modern-day museum concerns surrounding the international repatriation of Maori human remains from Denmark to New Zealand. I thereafter turn to exploring the significance of repatriation within the museum politics of New Zealand, and lastly, to current Maori tribal perspectives. In dealing with these different actors and contexts it is not my intention to accord a position of moral privilege either to museum or Maori perspectives, but rather to explore the underlying rationales that are brought to bear in each context with respect to repatriation.
Understanding the current situation and debate on the repatriation of Maori human remains requires knowledge not only of present-day politics of culture surrounding Maori people and their rights. It is also necessary to look into the historical background upon which the current situation and stances concerning the presence of Maori human remains in museums came into being. After introducing the ethnographic setting of the study, I shall therefore proceed to unravel the first part of the story of the preserved head in chapter one, namely: How and why did something such as a dead Maori man end up in a European museum in the first place?
This background being established, in chapter two I move from the general historical conditions to specific present-day reactions to them, and analyse the circumstances that lead to the repatriation of the preserved head from Denmark to New Zealand. In doing this, I do not intend to focus my analysis on the general traits of NMDK as an institution, or the specific Danish context, but rather to make use of the case as an example that allows me to explore the considerations and processes that come into play in an international negotiation of repatriation. The main topic of my interest will thus continue to be the various understandings of such a head and the field of relationships that it enters, being what it is - human remains.
In chapter three I continue to follow the trajectory of the preserved head encountered in Denmark, albeit now again from a broader scope of analysis, as I here turn to explore the environment of debate which the deceased would enter upon his repatriation: The field of museum politics and practice with respect to Maori in New Zealand itself.
Chapter four examines the motivations that may be said to be at core of the current-day debate on repatriation; namely the tribal perspectives on museums and the care taking of the remains of their ancestors. Looking into the questions of what sort of contemporary significance the remains, their history, and associated practices have to Maori people today shall be the last component of the thesis, before rounding off with the conclusion. Now, let me first set the stage for all of this by introducing the relevant social and cultural settings of the study, as I encountered them in New Zealand.
New Zealand, or Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud, as Maori have named it, is a nation that has its background in the colonial history between the British and the Maori, the indigenous people of the country (or, in local terms, the tangata whenua, the people of the land). It is also a nation currently entrenched in the often controversial processes of dealing with the hangovers of this background, in both emotional, political, legal and cultural terms.
Today, Maori constitute 14,7 % of the population of New Zealand, or well over 500,000 persons(5). The majority of these are, in line with historic tradition, to be found on the North Island, in particular concentrated in the top half of it, and mainly living in urban areas, as is also characteristic of the rest of the population of the country. Beyond simply identifying as Maori, people are traditionally affiliated to (and in varying degrees socially and culturally engaged in) different tribes, each belonging as the tangata whenua in a certain territory in which they have historic connections and ancestral claims; although today the majority of Maori do not own or live on their tribal lands. Making up quite a large element of the national population as compared to indigenous peoples in other settler countries, Maori people are a visible part of society in New Zealand, in terms of everyday affairs as well as ideologically; in which regard Maori culture is for instance emphasised ceremonially on formal occasions of the state (Sissons 1993). Unfortunately, Maori - though of course a diverse population group - also occupy disproportionately bad positions in the national statistics on education, health, employment, crime, and similar frames of comparison (Statistics: 2001 Census, Ethnic Groups); a fact which testifies to remaining structural inequalities, and is subject to much debate and criticism (Durie 1998, Webster 1998: chapter 1).
Particularly during the past three decades, New Zealand has witnessed a cultural and political resurgence amongst its Maori population. Activists and leaders have increasingly put pressure on the state to take action against the inequalities that many Maori people experience on a day-to-day basis in terms of disadvantaging social conditions, established by the historical background of dispossession and cultural dominance in the course of colonisation (Walker 1990, Webster 1998). This development has implied a strong involvement of Maori people in the struggle to regain lost or diminished rights in everything from land to intellectual property and cultural heritage. Maori protest as such is not a recent phenomenon, but a steady element throughout the history of New Zealand since colonisation. However, protest has gained much more visibility and impact within recent decades, and Maori have not been in a stronger cultural and political position since the onset of colonisation. This development has also given rise to much debate on the motivations and authority of the cultural rights claims that are put forward by Maori people; an issue that has for instance manifested itself in controversial discussions on the relative presence of cultural continuity and politicisation in current claims. Thus, within an anthropological context, Maori are also known as subjects and participators in heated discussions on theories of culture and history, such as the notion of 'the invention of culture' (Hanson 1989, Friedman 1994, Thomas 1997: 8-11).
In national terms the most important frame of reference for the debate on the rights of Maori people is the Treaty of Waitangi, the political compact with the British Crown that was signed by a number of Maori chiefs in 1840. After being largely ignored politically for more than a century, the Treaty has been accorded increasing legal and political prominence since the mid-eighties(6). Today it is regarded as the foundation of the modern state of Aotearoa New Zealand and of the relationship between Maori and Pakeha (New Zealanders of European descent). In practice this reinterpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi has taken shape as an official embracement of the ideology of biculturalism. Thus, for instance, all governmental institutions operate under both English and Maori denominations, and Maori language, cultural values, forms of knowledge and customary practices are (at least ideally) sought to be incorporated in official contexts and the workings of the state, on equal footing with their European-derived counterparts (Sissons 1993, Durie 1998).
The development towards biculturalism and the renewed reference to Treaty rights also makes itself felt in the museums of New Zealand, and certainly in the country's two largest museums, those that have been the subjects of attention for the present study. Te Papa, situated in the capital, Wellington, is the national museum of New Zealand, and is conceptually founded on the ideal of bicultural partnership, sharing its strategic leadership between a conventional chief executive and a specifically Maori one. As a national museum with obligations to cater to all of New Zealand, Te Papa is aiming to develop relationships with iwi, cooperating on a wide range of activities, such as iwi-based exhibitions. AWMM, also a large and prestigious institution, is a regional museum that belongs in the country's biggest city, Auckland, where it allegedly holds the world's largest collection of Maori taonga, ancestral treasures. Like Te Papa, AWMM is making efforts to integrate Maori aims and aspirations in its activities. Taking regard of Maori values is sought to be furthered by means of such arrangements as incorporating a director Maori at the executive level, and attaching to the museum a Maori advisory council, the Taumata-a-Iwi, made up of members from the local tribes of the Auckland region, who as the tangata whenua are invested with the customary and spiritual authority of the land the museum stands on.
The aspirations wielded by Te Papa and AWMM for the inclusion of Maori people and culture in institutional values and governance principles are stated with explicit reference to Treaty rights, which are written into the acts providing for the various functions of each institution. Hence both of the two museums are now actively seeking to engage Maori people and their perspectives in their work, by such means as consultation, employment of Maori staff on all organisational levels, and by incorporation of correct forms of practice according to custom (tikanga) in the care taking and use of all materials of Maori origin. Both of these institutions also hold Maori human remains, the management and ultimate deposition of which is considered to be an issue of key importance in their relationships with the Maori communities that are part of the public the museums are meant to serve.
As for looking more closely into the concerns of some of the Maori people whose perspectives the museums are trying to accommodate, Te Tai Tokerau, Northland, where much of the fieldwork for this study was conducted, is a region with a comparatively large proportion of Maori residents - around 31,6 % of the region's population. Te Tai Tokerau stretches from above the Auckland region to the very tip of the North Island (see the map of New Zealand, appendix 3), and thus belongs to the subtropical part of New Zealand. The region is green and hilly and well suited for agriculture, for which reason Maori people also concentrated here prior to the arrival of Europeans. The great scenic beauty of the region notwithstanding, making a living here might in financial terms have been more attractive than the case is. Of the Maori people living in the region today, 40,8 % have no formal qualifications, and people are typically employed in agriculture, forestry and fishing, manufacturing and service, with the unemployment rate reaching 21,7 % (as compared to a rate of 16,8 % for Maori nationwide, and higher still when measured against the national unemployment rate of 7,5 % for non-Maori)(7). In terms of history, the north was the first part of New Zealand to become a centre of European settlement and more permanent cultural contact; something which is to date borne in mind for its impacts amongst local Maori people, as it brought about a number of early social and cultural changes (Oppenheim 1973: 20, 33). Today, Maori people in the area are for instance characterized by a multiplicity of religious denominations; Catholic, Anglican and Latter Day Saints, to mention but a few, blending with beliefs and practices of pre-Christian origin(8).
Several tribes belong in the region of Te Tai Tokerau, the number of members in the different iwi ranging widely, from over 95,000 to a couple of hundred persons(9), each iwi in turn consisting of a number of hapu, subtribes, which in most matters of daily life and interaction are more socially relevant than the more encompassing scale of the iwi. As one of my informants explained the local relevance of these levels of tribal affiliations: "iwi is a very general concept hapu is where people actually meet and relate because we have a meeting house, and we go there for all sorts of things, and those are the people we see it's very rare that the whole iwi will turn out at one particular thing". A more intimate level of organisation than that of iwi and hapu is the whanau, the extended family, which is often large, making it possible for its members to draw on wide networks of siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. Indeed, this was often how I made contacts in the field, as talking with one person would lead to recommendations that I should also see a particular cousin or uncle. Social and organisational relations are thus built up on wide-reaching networks of kin and descent, creating a dense grid of relationships within and across the tribes.
One central institution in both local and wider social networks and cultural organisation, generally based on the hapu level, is the marae; the ceremonial gathering place consisting of a forecourt, a meeting house, kitchen and dining facilities, providing the physical and ritual space to meet with larger kin groups and to host visitors. The marae, named after ancestors of the kin groups who belong to them, are the places where important communal occasions such as funerals take place, and hui (meetings) on pressing matters - amongst others, debates on cultural rights - are held (Salmond 1975). Therefore the marae also provide a context in which key cultural practices such as the Maori language, the tradition of oratory, songs, and rituals are allowed to take centre stage, in a society in which these practices have become less of an element in everyday life to many Maori people. By way of example, presently 58 % of the Maori population speak and understand no more than a few words or phrases from the Maori language, and only 9% speak it fluently(10). Similarly, a number of Maori people experience a deficiency in knowledge on issues of traditional importance, such as tribal history, whakapapa (genealogy, or ancestry), and tikanga (custom). Thus, during my fieldwork I experienced locally arranged learning sessions, in which kin groups got together in order to formally practice aspects of tikanga, which they found they were no longer familiar with simply from daily practice.
The present situation regarding the distribution of Maori traditional knowledge is to a large degree the result of previous state policies of assimilation, pursued in decades, meaning for instance that school children were prohibited from speaking Maori, just as in other respects Maori were dealt with through monocultural institutions, and prompted to take up Europeanised ways of life. After WWII, and increasingly during the 1960s, many Maori people migrated from their tribal areas to the cities to seek employment in alleviation of their economic hardships, a development that made the retention of tribal links difficult (Durie 1998: 54 ff.). Even as assimilationist policies were abolished, these factors have rendered it difficult for Maori people to retain and transfer cultural practices and knowledge between generations, particularly because Maori are, demographically, a young people (37,3 % of the Maori population being under the age of 15, as compared to 22,7 % of the general population of New Zealand)(11). Some Maori people consider their lack of proficiency in traditional cultural practices to be embarrassing (O'Regan 1984), and while this may keep some people from joining contexts where they feel that their ignorance of their cultural heritage - their dispossession - is exposed, the marae is also a place where efforts are made to counter the cultural assimilation and reinvigorate the practices and forms of knowledge that are considered quintessentially Maori.
As demonstrated in this introduction, Maori people are a diverse lot situated in different spheres of belonging and in different circumstances of life. Therefore, it must also be stated that the present thesis is not to be read as an attempt to arrive at such a thing as a 'general Maori view of repatriation', a construct that would certainly be a homogenisation of my informants' views. I shall in due course discuss a number of experiences and stances that I found my Maori informants to hold on repatriation. Still, however, the scope of my findings needs to be qualified further. While I have endeavoured to learn about as many perspectives as possible, and have shared the company and heard the stories of people as diverse as tribal leaders (rangatira), people who were unemployed, academics at the university, and the potato peeling ladies in the kitchen of the marae I visited, the focus of my research outside of the museum institutions has remained on the tribal context, centring on people who in actual practice retain relatively strong tribal contacts.
Secondly, my inquiries have - for quite natural reasons, given the focus of my research - had an inclination towards persons who play expert roles in their tribes and who therefore have personal experiences in dealing with human remains and museums, by way of playing practical roles, notably in taking responsibility for negotiating and carrying out repatriation. Thus, especially rangatira and elders (kaumatua), with the knowledge and experiences they have been willing to share, have been important informants to me. But also most of the Maori people I otherwise talked with, whether I bumped into them at hui, or met them casually over a cup of coffee in somebody's kitchen, had some story to recount about repatriation or museums, and often also had strong opinions about both. Furthermore, referring to debate in the news media has given a broader context to the study. However, the reader should bear in mind that the study was conducted with its focus on people who show a concern to the tribal context, including a fairly traditionalist emphasis on values and practices held to be quintessentially Maori; and it is first and foremost about this context that I purport to speak when I refer to Maori people.
Having now established a basis for understanding the field with this overview of the current position of museums and Maori People in New Zealand, I will take a step back in history, to where the museum interest in Maori culture and human remains took shape - foreshadowing the ensuing modern-day dilemmas of repatriation.
Nothing is held so much in veneration by the natives as the head of their chief.
Missionary Samuel Marsden [1765-1838], in Elder 1932:196
The topic of ethnographic collecting has, as one commentator has remarked, gone from theoretical and political obscurity to obloquy in the course of the twentieth century (O'Hanlon 2000: 28). Moral issues including the question of repatriation have increasingly been raised, as critical matters, such as the equity of the transactions that brought ethnographic items into metropolitan collections, have been questioned. In the course of this development, "ethnographic collections have come to be seen as incarcerated sources of indigenous identity" (ibid: 4). The current debate on repatriation thus easily lends itself to shallow range of analysis focused on the more recent politics of culture in the postcolonial context; but as I shall demonstrate in this thesis, if we are to understand the present developments, they must be traced through the longer-term dynamics of the situation (Thomas 1991: 9). The recent developments in the politics of museum collections and indigenous cultural rights therefore call for a focus on the ethnography of collecting, as a means of historicizing present debates, revealing the historically contingent intercultural relations that made collecting - and thus also the subsequent repatriation debate - possible (O'Hanlon 2000: 3-4). This, then, is where I shall commence my enquiry.
Europeans and Maori(12) first entered into cultural and material exchange with each other during Captain James Cook's circumnavigation of New Zealand on the Endeavour in 1769-1770(13). It was not to be long before preserved tattooed heads, such as that later to be encountered in Denmark, entered the history of contact between the two peoples, along with a number of other items that drew the interest of the Europeans, such as Maori woodcarvings and greenstone artefacts. Indeed, the first known purchase of such a Maori head was made in Totara-Nui (Queen Charlotte Sound) in 1770, by the expedition's naturalist Joseph Banks, and that same year 3 more heads were acquired by members of Cook's crew (Salmond 1991: 246 and 1997: 67). The first transaction was made only reluctantly on part of the sellers (ibid), but was nevertheless to be one of many, as cultural contact intensified. Cook's expedition was followed by a steadily increasing stream of European visitors to New Zealand; first came sealers, whalers and traders, and subsequently missionaries and settlers (Salmond 1997: 175 ff.). As I will show, the preserved heads and the practice of collection came to occupy a peculiar position in the continued development of contact between Maori and Europeans.
Already at hearing of these first transactions, questions are prompted as to what made such human body parts turn into an object of trade, and why the heads mentioned had been preserved by Maori in the first instance. Fortunately, as a means to illuminate this phenomenon, several contemporary written sources are to be found, albeit only from the hands of Europeans, since the Maori culture was an oral one and thus did not leave similar accounts. (This, however, is by no means to say that no Maori accounts of the period exist. To this day, stories about such heads and their fate circulate amongst the descendants; but this is a matter which I shall take up separately in chapter four). The single most important source on the European interest in preserved heads and the traditional role of these amongst Maori people is the collector Major General Arthur Gordon Robley. Robley studied the art of Maori tattooing (ta moko) and therefore took particular interest in preserved heads as specimens, of which he himself amassed a collection of no less than 35. In 1896 he published a book on the issue, 'Moko', which remains a source of authority referred to today. The benefit of Robley's book is not least that he compiled a great deal of the widely scattered information already written and published on the issue throughout the entire period of cultural contact and colonisation. I shall therefore draw quite extensively on Robley's accounts in this chapter, supplemented with other sources, as I now turn to discussing the role of the heads and their coming into European hands.
On the part of the European newcomers, those practices of Maori people attracted attention, which most seemed to contrast with their own (Vayda 1970: 560). Amongst these were the various elaborate customs associated with death and warfare; and thus most early European accounts from New Zealand contain some reference to preserved heads (Oppenheim 1973: 13, Robley 1998 [1896]: 131). Take this instance, an experience related by Samuel Marsden, who in 1814 settled at the Bay of Islands in Te Tai Tokerau, as the first missionary in New Zealand: "The first object that struck my eye near where we landed was a man's head stuck on a pole the face appeared beautifully tattooed or carved This sight naturally excited feelings of horror in my breast" (Marsden, in Elder 1932: 151-152). Fear and attraction merge in these observations, and perhaps inevitably the heads became a source of macabre fascination to the Europeans; and sailors, whalers, and traders who came to New Zealand eagerly sought them as curios. In appearing on this scene, the preserved heads even entered world literature: The narrative in "Moby Dick" has scarcely commenced, before one of the main characters, the harpooneer Queequeg, is introduced as a trader in "[em]balmed New Zealand heads" (Melville 1991 [1851]: 18, my insertion in brackets).
At the same time as the heads excited European interest precisely because they were human remains, they were also treated and talked of much as any other curiosities and artefacts that the Europeans took interest in. An example is the way in which the collector Robley himself writes of the preserved heads in his possession, in this excerpt from his lengthy descriptions of their tattoos, hair and other traits, on which he remarks: "The Maori teeth, too, are always splendid; and in the dried head they remain like ivory" (Robley 1998 [1896]: 187-188). One might almost think that the object thus praised was carved from an elephant's tusk. The living, too, were similarly objectified by the collector, spoken of more in the vein of artworks than persons, as it may be gleaned from the explanatory comment to one illustration from Robley's book, marvelling at "a Maori and the prow of [a] war canoe; both showing fine carving" (Robley 1998 [1896]: 91).
The heads with their characteristic incised, or 'carved', tattoos (moko) are here perceived as specimens on a par with material culture. But in beginning with the views of the Europeans, I am going ahead of the events. Before ever any preserved tattooed heads ended up as collection items in the hands of people like Robley, they meant something quite different to Maori people, who had their own reasons for preserving them, according to traditions established long before Captain Cook and the first Europeans arrived with their interests. What were the heads meant for, then, to begin with?
The preserved heads were not intended for sale in their traditional pre-European context. It was customary amongst Maori to preserve the heads of chiefs, who were finely tattooed. The practice was thus a mark of distinction reserved for persons of importance, in the same way that the tattoos that so impressed the Europeans were. When such an important person died, often in battle, the head was severed and underwent a process of conservation. In order to preserve the head, soft parts such as tongue, eyes and brain were removed, the head was steamed and had a stick inserted under the skin to preserve the form of the nose, before it was sun dried and smoked, with the eye sockets stuffed with flax and the lids sewn shut. Heads thus preserved kept the traits that had distinguished them in life: Their facial features, tattoos, and hair, often even pendants in their ears; and the process made them extraordinarily durable. The heads of chiefly friends as well as enemies were accorded this treatment (Robley 1998 [1896]: 135-138). The head was (and is) regarded as the most tapu part of the body amongst the Maori, and even more so that of a chief. The concept of tapu was central to Maori society, and the various observances of its rules were much remarked upon by European observers. It designates a state of varying degrees wherein an object, person or place is temporarily or permanently restricted, or sacred, as opposed to being noa, 'common', profane and unrestricted (Oppenheim 1973: 15-16). Thus the missionary Samuel Marsden stated on the Maori that: "If they worship any idol it is the head of their chiefs" (Elder 1932: 244). Death, too, was held to bring about a state of tapu, and the preserved head of a chief was thus intensely charged with social and cultural significance.
When preserved by friends, the heads were accorded the deepest respect and were kept carefully in secluded spots, so that they might be honourably mourned over, while from time to time being brought out to view for important occasions such as death ceremonials for other relatives, or tribal gatherings. The heads of enemies received a less tender treatment; after preservation they were stuck on poles and exhibited in public, draped with cloaks in as lifelike a manner as possible. Here they were made subject to derision and verbal abuse from their defeaters in a manner similar to what might have been directed at a living person, thus venting the emotions built up in the progress of hostility between the warring parties, and demonstrating that the war fought had been brought to a satisfying conclusion. The importance of the preserved heads in their original Maori context was however not exhausted by their sentimental value, or by the display of enemies as trophies; they also had an integral role to play in the progress and cessation of warfare. Just as a defeated party was forced to surrender its dead for this fate, no settlement of peaceful relations was brought about without the return of the heads taken between the parties. Consequently, not even an enemy's head would be readily disposed of to outsiders, unless the possessor was certain that he would never intend, or need to, make peace with his opponents (Elder 1932: 167-168, Polack 1976 [1840]: 40-41, Robley 1998 [1896]: 136-138).
The initial unwillingness of Maori people to part with such remains is hardly to be marvelled at, considering the great importance they had to their possessors, emotionally and politically. - And certainly, not all of the heads that ended up in the possession of Europeans were willingly sold: As I shall return to briefly a few pages hence, and in more detail in chapter four, theft and grave robbery, too, was a practice that Europeans actively engaged in, in order to procure the desired curios. When the heads did become subject to sale after all, the cause is to be found in the social dynamics both between Europeans and Maori, and amongst Maori themselves.
Amongst the goods and technologies introduced in New Zealand by the Europeans were muskets, which were to have a profound effect on the scale and impacts of tribal warfare. Warfare was an integral part of the relations between the various iwi and hapu also prior to the arrival of the Europeans. Meticulous accounts of victories, defeats and offences were kept for generations, in order to eventually settle the scores; and cycles of revenge and counter-revenge continually sprang up, as in time defeated parties became able to retaliate. This took place in accordance with the principle of utu, a central Maori concept that carries the meaning of balanced return, compensation, or reciprocity, both in a positive sense, such as the return for a gift, and in a negative sense, as revenge, which can be both immediate and long-term, delayed for generations (Tapsell 1997: 338, Firth 1972 [1959]: 412-415, 421). Prior to the contact with Europeans, tribal hostilities were played out by means of close-quarter fighting with weapons made of stone and wood, and if combat occurred in the open, the defeated might thus make their escape by scattering. As muskets were introduced, that balance was offset and the casualty rates of tribal warfare much increased. First to acquire the new weapons in number were the tribes of the north, as this was an early area of contact and trade with the Europeans. Thus, 1818 saw the beginning of the musket wars fought between Maori; a development much exacerbated when the chief Hongi Hika, of the Ngapuhi iwi in Te Tai Tokerau, was able to acquire a large number of muskets for his tribe after a gainful visit to England in 1920 (Walker 1990: 82-87, Vayda 1970).
Hongi Hika set out with the newly procured muskets to avenge old injuries, gain prowess and plunder, making war on an unprecedented scale, which lead to bloodshed and destabilisation amongst tribes further to the south. By way of illustration, the missionary Samuel Marsden writes of how he was informed by local settlers that one single canoe returning from a campaign by Hongi Hika was seen to arrive carrying 70 trophy heads, while from the same campaign 2,000 prisoners of war were brought as slaves (Elder 1932: 173). The musket wars debilitated Maori society through population decline and concurrent disease and lowering food productions (Walker: ibid, Vayda 1970). Acquiring muskets for self-defence in the escalating tribal wars hastily became a matter of emergency and simple survival to the Maori of the day. Robley relates how an entire ton of flax, the chief article of barter with the Europeans, processed by time-consuming and laborious scraping with shells, could only be exchanged for a single gun (ibid: 138-139, see also Walker 1990: 83). Thus, as Maori found that Europeans were willing to pay exceedingly well for preserved heads as compared to other articles they had to offer, they adapted to this state of affairs and began actively procuring heads for sale.
For quite obvious reasons the heads sold were not those of the vendors' friends and relatives, which were adamantly sought to be protected from such a fate. The growing European demand for preserved tattooed heads by far exceeded the immediately forthcoming supply, and this led to a radical change in the traditional practice and rationale for preserving heads. Not only were the heads of chiefly enemies now targeted as booty rather than as trophies of war, by reason of being sought for the trade; slaves, too, were now drawn into this commoditisation. Rank was (and continues to be) a matter of great importance in Maori society, which, based on the seniority of descent-lines, was divided into chiefs (rangatira), commoners, and slaves (Te Rangi Hiroa 1962 [1949]: 337-338, 401-402). Slaves were prisoners of war, and their descendants, who were traditionally kept to carry out menial tasks, and were liable to be killed at will (Johansen 1954: 178-179). This condition must have eased the process of their commoditisation for the traffic in preserved heads: What had been a practice strictly reserved for distinguishing chiefs and free men now became forced upon slaves, who were tattooed in order that their heads might be preserved and made available for sale. Allegedly, at the height of this traffic, slaves' heads were in some cases even bartered over with European agents of the trade, while the victim was still alive, with promise of delivery upon agreement (Robley 1998 [1896]: 170, 173). The trade in heads thus did not develop evenly from its modest beginnings in 1770, but followed the wider conjunctures of cultural contact and its social effects, the absolute heydays of the trade being the 1820s, fuelled by the musket wars and the increasing demand from European collectors and museums. The imperatives of the collectors are to be looked into more closely a page hence.
With the developments of the 1820s, the commercial circulation of Maori heads reached such heights that 'baked heads' acquired a separate entry amongst the imports at the Sydney customs, and were not uncommonly seen to be traded in the streets there (Robley 1998 [1896]: 171). Terrifying courses of events took place in the name of the profitable trade. The way in which slaves were deliberately dispatched for the traffic in heads has already been mentioned; furthermore instances are reported where relatives chanced to recognize chiefly heads in the hands of European traders, only to be denied any right of involvement when they demanded the heads surrendered, having to see them carried off on European ships (Elder 1932: 498, Robley 1998 [1896]: 178-179). By way of what might be termed poetic justice, if indeed that is not too suave a denomination, some European traders in this article ended up with their own heads decapitated and preserved for utu, revenge.
In the end, the trade in human heads assumed such proportions that it became too much of a scandal and calamity in the eyes of not just the unhappy relatives of the deceased, or of protesting and embarrassed missionaries such as Samuel Marsden, but also of the nearest British authorities. In 1831 the governor of the British colony in New South Wales finally passed orders forbidding the import of heads from New Zealand (Elder 1932: 500-501)(14). In addition to condemning the trade, the proclamation added:
His Excellency further trusts, that all persons who have in their possession human heads, recently bought from New Zealand will immediately deliver them up for the purpose of being restored to the relations of the deceased parties; this being the only possible reparation that can now be rendered (quoted in Elder 1932: 500).
This initiative did not stop the demand that fuelled the trade, and it certainly did not lead to restoration of the heads already in circulation, but it did contribute strongly to a decline in the traffic, along with other factors. The explosive development of the traffic itself prompted Maori to cease preserving the heads of friends, to prevent that they by any means should fall into the hands of enemies, and hence, of traders and collectors (Robley 1998 [1896]: 135, 170). Also, as the possession of muskets became more general, the balance of physical force got more equal and the fatalities of war and the concurrent social upheaval became too great on either side to motivate continued bloodletting, and as surcease was increasingly sought, much of the original imperative to deal in slaves' heads fell away (Walker 1990: 84, Polack 1976 [1840]: 20).
While the European interest in the preserved heads was especially that of a practice deemed exotic and macabre, suitable as museum objects of fascination to a foreign audience, there was another dimension to it too, growing as the impacts of cultural contact and European settlement made themselves steadily more felt. The social upheavals effected by the introduction of muskets instigated a cultural stagnation and population decline amongst Maori, which was to worsen in times to come (Walker 1990: 80-81). Simultaneously with the social upheavals, the ideological impacts of increasing European settlement wrought a number of changes. Missionaries actively discouraged a number of practices, amongst which were those of tattooing and traditional death practices, decrying them as barbarous customs, and attempting, not without effect, to impose upon Maori what they saw as civilised, i.e. Europeanised, behaviour (Elder 1932: 167, Robley 1998 [1896]: 121, Oppenheim 1973: 20-21).
By the late nineteenth century these developments had led to the well-established social-Darwinist assumption amongst Europeans that the Maori culture and people were dying out (Meijl 1996: 312-313). In the words of the contemporary reverend James Buller: "The Maories [sic] are fewer now It is a popular opinion that they are dying out. With many, I fear, the 'wish is father to the thought'" (Buller 1878: 164). The reverend gives as reasons for the decrease: "1. Their intertribal wars 2. Vices imported with colonisation 3. Their transition state", and the most optimistic assertion he has for the situation is that "[p]erhaps the use of English customs will prepare them for an amalgamation with their Anglo-Saxon neighbours. In that case they will become extinct as a people, but merged into a composite body" (ibid.). Therefore, paradoxically a major premise of collection by then was that authentic specimens of arts and practices characteristic of Maori culture had to be salvaged while they were still to be found, for the future benefit of science. This, for instance, was Robley's motive both as a collector and in publishing his book (1998 [1896]: ix-x, 122-123). Ironically, this principle made the collector, who had bought so many heads, albeit at a slightly later point in history, lament that with the trade of the 1820s "[f]reshly done and inferior heads took the place of old and genuine" (ibid: 169).
Increasingly failing to find supplies of human remains available for willing exchange, collectors took to grave robbery to obtain them, holding that their own ends justified the means. This was done knowing that local Maori would grieve, and if possible avenge, any transgression of their highly tapu and venerated gravesites, so that for the collector "[t]he undertaking [of entering a burial cave to remove the contents] was a dangerous one, for discovery might have cost me my life" (Reischek 1933 [1930]: 215, my insertion in brackets). Such sources, then, also had their limitations to collectors, even as such men, here the Austrian collector Andreas Reischek(15), might declare with pride upon securing specimens from a dwindling supply of preserved Maori human remains, that "[now] these ancestors of the Maori adorn the ethnographical collection of the Imperial Natural History Museum" (ibid: 215-216).
Thus, due to a mixture of factors such as the introduction of both muskets and Christianity, in combination with demands from museums and private collectors, preserved tattooed Maori heads entered a peculiar cross-cultural conjuncture. A burgeoning trade in human remains erupted and died out, and the heydays of collection came and went. However, collecting did not die out before a situation had arisen that would allow a present-day museum ethnologist to state in summary on the heads, that by then "every tin pot museum had one" (Simmons, quoted in the Dominion Weekend, 10 March 2001: 21)(16). One such head was that which found its way to the National Museum of Denmark, where it remained in relative obscurity as a part of the collections, till a new development in international politics of culture caught up with it and drew it back into world-spanning circulation and debate once more.
[C]ertain possessions become subjectively unique, removing them from
ordinary social exchange as they attain absolute value rather than exchange
value. The paradox, of course, is that such possessions, from time to time, are
exchanged
Anthropologist Annette Weiner 1992: 37
The one preserved Maori head bought by NMDK in the late 19th century eventually joined the other ethnographic items on display in the so-called Polynesia room of the museum. For their edification on what they here saw in the glass case alongside wooden flutes and greenstone pendants, generations of museum visitors might consult the exhibition guide under the section of New Zealand, which read: "Tattooed male head, which has been stored either as a trophy of victory or as a commemoration of a deceased" (Nationalmuseets vejledninger 1940: 46)(17). Who knows, given the traffic in heads that has already been laid forth for the reader to consider, whether this head was ever meant for either of the purposes stated in the guidebook? Quite regardless of historical fact, whatever that might be, this was what the preserved head had become: A museum item decontextualised from the social and crosscultural relationships and processes that had brought it to its current position. Present-day visitors, too, might have passed the head on their stroll through the ethnographic collections and read the same laconic label, if it had not been for what could be characterized as the coming into light of the head along with a number of other exhibited items in the eighties, as contextualised in a new set of problems, on which we shall now have a look.
It is hardly a coincidence that the International Council of Museums published its first code of ethics in the year 1986(18). It was time for an attempt to catch up with a by then growing critical debate on museums and their roles both historically and in the contemporary world. That debate occasioned the need to navigate increasingly conflicting institutional obligations and perceptions of the collections held by museums. Questions surrounding the fate and uses of what museums held as specimens were at the time becoming a problematic issue for cultural institutions worldwide. The postcolonial self-consciousness of tribes, ethnic groups and former colonies generated increased attention and critique of museums, and new disputes took the matter of discussion beyond the classic scholarly debate on how best to display museum objects, to the questioning, in many instances, of the moral rightness of collecting and display per se (O'Hanlon 2000: 28, Handler 1985: 193, Clifford 1988: 247 ff.). Thus, the issue that is to be analysed here is not the debate on representation, which was also a central topic of discussion in the museum world at the time (O'Hanlon 2000: 2). The problem to be addressed is a more radical one: Namely the fact that certain items in the possession of museums are by some critics considered to be unsuitable as objects of collection or display, quite regardless of the applied mode of representation.
NMDK did not then define a formal written repatriation policy of its own, and still has not done so, but in terms of repatriation practice the Head of the Ethnographic Collection has stated to operate in concurrence with the ICOM code of ethics (Gabriel 2002: 29). According to this code "[t]he primary duty of the museum is to preserve its collections for the future and use them for the development and dissemination of knowledge, through research (...)[and] displays" (ICOM 2001: 2.9). On the other hand the code has also recognised that the museums themselves are not the only ones who hold a legitimate interest in their possessions, in particular when it comes to 'collections of human remains and material of sacred significance'. The same code states that the handling and use of such material "must be accomplished in a manner consistent with [both] professional standards and the interests and beliefs of members of the community, ethnic or religious groups from which the objects originated" (ICOM 2001: 6.6).
Insofar as requests for repatriation are an obvious case in point, where a clash of values may arise between the stated institutional objectives of preservation, dissemination of knowledge, and compliance with contemporary interests in the communities of origin, such a document is in this respect of an ideological character, more so than it is practically applicable. Ethical conduct is advocated in the successive versions of the code, but not specified beyond the exhortation to address requests "expeditiously with respect and sensitivity" (ibid). Thus, a critical issue for any museum remains that of how to tackle the ambiguity of such sensitive material held in its collections. We should therefore ask, what are the underlying principles according to which the dilemmas of respecting divergent perspectives on items in a museum collection are acted upon. I suggest that to elucidate actual practice at NMDK, we may begin by looking towards exchange-oriented theories of the role of material objects in the constitution of social groups and identities, as exemplified by the concept of inalienable possessions developed by Annette Weiner (1985, 1992)(19).
Weiner, building on ethnographic material from a number of societies in Oceania, including Maori, concerns herself with the fundamental processes of social exchange and identity formation. She argues that classic anthropological theories of the constitution of value, social identities and relations through exchange, harking back to the writings of Marcel Mauss, have overlooked the central social significance of simultaneous efforts of keeping, in which some possessions become inalienable to their owners, attaining an absolute value beyond exchange value (Weiner 1985, 1992). Thus, families, descent-groups, and even nations, keep items ranging from heirlooms to royal regalia, which attain status as an intrinsic and authenticating part of their collective identity. The primary value of such inalienability is expressed through the power these objects have to define the owners' identity in an historical sense, acting as a vehicle for bringing the past into the present, thus creating a semblance of continuity (Weiner 1985: 210). The value created through keeping must therefore also be seen in relation to the constant social needs and threats of exchange and loss, and in this way Weiner holds social exchange to be implicitly motivated by efforts of 'keeping-while-giving' (1985: 223-224, 1992: 5 ff). Her theoretical scope of inquiry is thus centred upon material objects and the ways in which their values may be associated with being kept, rather than circulated (ibid: 211).
While her theory is developed by means of ethnographic examples from Oceania, Weiner holds that creating inalienable possessions is universally practiced (1992: 155). Though she does not herself draw any parallels between the principles operating in the ethnographic contexts that she builds her theory on, and the Western tradition of museum collections, her theory opens up for analysis also in this context. In the case of museums it might similarly be argued that the collected items attain status as inalienable possessions, as they are here preserved and kept out of ordinary commodity exchange and circulation, being endowed with value by representing the identity of groups and societies (Pannell 1990). After all, as one museum anthropologist has remarked in the context of repatriation debate, the commonly accepted raison d'être of the museum institution is precisely that of 'keeping things' (Anderson 1990a: 97). This again brings us back to the dilemma of how museums are to respond to indigenous claims on their collections.
The critical development in museum politics that is exemplified by ICOM's successive codes of ethics did not go unreflected at NMDK. As the now retired Head of the Ethnographic Collection recounted to me, the first step in dealing with sensitive items such as human remains was to remove them from display, to prevent that people in the communities of origin should take offence at the exposition of the remains to 'macabre interest'. Here an interpretation is brought to bear, in which the exhibition and the interest from the public, which was previously construed as cultural and historical edification, comes to be seen as an act of violation. Moreover, not just a violation of the human remains, but of the community of origin. Hence the head becomes symbolic of relations between Maori people and its current possessors. Consequently, in 1988 the preserved head, along with other items deemed to be of a sensitive character, was taken out of its place in the exhibition room to be deposited in one of the museum storerooms, and was since then by tacit agreement, rather than explicit policy, kept from being put on display, as were all human remains held in the Ethnographic Collection at NMDK(20).
Then, human remains were deemed unsuitable for one of the major purposes of the museum, namely display, but were still kept as part of the collection. Not just the preserved Maori head, but human remains as a general type of material were accorded a special status in the Ethnographic Collection at NMDK; but that was not by itself enough to motivate a complete exclusion from the museum context. Within the Western museum context, such a preserved head, like in other contexts slaves and relics, may be seen as belonging to an anomalous category of objects that can be seen as both persons and things, giving such remains an ambiguous status (Geary 1986: 169, Kopytoff 1986, Pentz 2000). But then why respond as NMDK did? The concept of inalienability may shed some light on the situation.
According to Weiner, inalienable possessions may be differentiated in two classes: those that should never circulate, and those that under certain circumstances may be given to others, while still retaining affective qualities constituting the original owner's identity and thereby creating an emotional lien upon the receivers (1985: 212). Significantly, the matter which Weiner draws forth as the manifestation of 'the ultimate in inalienability' is precisely human remains, buried or deposited in caves and considered to be tribal property (ibid: 219). The preserved head and similar remains at the museum thus transgress categories of both inalienability and distinctions between persons and objects. As I will argue, what might be suggested from the course of action at NMDK in the case of the preserved head, is that the notion of ultimate inalienability on the part of the community of origin seems not to have been completely erased, but to have been implicitly present in the choice of removing the remain from display.
Thus, the coming into light of certain collection items as problematic objects with an ambiguous status also meant their going out into darkness: The awareness and ethical attention newly accorded to the preserved head at the museum was followed by its relocation from the exhibition to a storeroom, a place where it was unlikely to become the subject of attention from anyone, for whatever purpose. As NMDK's subsequent course of action will demonstrate, this is not to be interpreted as a calculating attempt to hide sensitive materials away from potential claimants. It is rather to be seen as a way of both recognising contemporary indigenous feelings of involvement with remains in the museum's possession, and sidestepping the entanglement of meanings that give such human remains their ambiguous character, while still honouring the institutional purpose of preservation and keeping. In effect, the disposition was an act of balancing two sorts of inalienability: That of cultural origin, and that of being part of a museum collection.
Out of sight, however, is not quite the same thing as out of mind: The head had not yet had its last visitor at the museum; only the visits to follow were of an entirely different nature, demonstrating the entanglement and instability of meanings, in which the head was now situated. As discussed in chapter one, such preserved Maori heads had been scattered over museums worldwide in the course of cultural contact and colonisation. However, their positioning in a global network of relations did not end with their withdrawal from circulation in the nineteenth century. The Ethnographic Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, was one other institution in which such a preserved head was to be found (Lind 2002), and this had come to the attention of a Maori woman who had settled in the country. She took to visiting the remain, which to her was a deceased more so than a museum object. As she heard from the staff here that a similar Maori head was located in the neighbouring country Denmark, she contacted NMDK to seek an agreement about making visits in the storerooms here, too. A cultural attachment had been asserted, on the basis of what must be interpreted as the woman's conception of the head as inalienable - and the connection was accepted at the museum.
The head now became the receiver of visits, crying and ritualised calling from the woman, who later on when I sought her out, told me that while she did not fault the individual members of the museum staff, but Western culture, for the predicament of the head, it was painful for her knowing of, and seeing the deceased "so far away from home", caught up as it seemed to her, in a "prison of preservation"(21). These terms capture the paradoxical position of the head: For the visiting Maori woman an ultimate inalienable possession out of place; but for NMDK a cultural relic respectfully kept. Importantly, however, the preserved head was by means of these visits instated in a subject relation, rather than an object relation, as had hitherto been the case in its museum career. Furthermore this was a culturally motivated relation, which the museum in its own terms did its best to accommodate and respect. The head was once more part of social relations reaching outside of the museum.
This modus vivendi would most probably still have prevailed today, if the question concerning the museum's possession of the preserved head had not been brought to the fore by yet another unexpected visitor. As staff at the museum recounted to me, one August day in 1996 a Maori man from New Zealand arrived unannounced at NMDK, inquiring in general terms into its holding of Maori human remains. He was told about the head, the only such remain in the possession of NMDK; and after two hours of queries concerning the possibilities of repatriation for the purpose of returning the remain to its source community, the man left without further specification of his intentions. Such more or less informal inquiries into the holdings of the museum are not unusual, and more often than not no further claims ensue from them. Thus at NMDK no additional notice was taken of the occasion, other than recording it on a slip of paper. However, the museum's journals reveal an ongoing course of events in this case. On the 11th of November 1996 a formal letter from the Trust Board of the visitor's iwi arrived, referring to the meeting at the museum and requesting the return of "the human remains of our Ancestor" for interment, with the iwi Trust Board as the prospective receiving agent(22). The standing of the preserved head in the museum had now gone from being associated with the broad question of showing ethical and cultural awareness, to the challenge of making an explicit decision on the proper context of inalienability in which to interpret the head.
In spite of the great number of conventions, declarations and ethical guidelines in circulation concerning the cultural rights of indigenous peoples, in practical terms materials removed from their context of origin in pre-colonial or colonial time remain in a legal void. On an international level there are no formal and binding laws or structures through which claims for such materials may be argued with any force other than that of ethics (Barkan 2002: 17-18)(23). In legal terms NMDK was therefore not compelled to initiate repatriation upon the request, and the museum could quite easily have excused itself from so doing, if the management had been adverse to it(24). The preserved head had been physically alienated from its original possessors for more than a century, and NMDK could have insisted on conceptualising its possession of the head in terms similar to those of a commodity relationship, where purchase equals permanent rights of ownership, and thus have dismissed the claim. Yet it did not. Which other frame of logic was then operating in making a decision on the museum's course of action?
"One must give back to another person, what is really part and parcel of his nature and substance, because to accept something from somebody is to accept some part of his spiritual essence", Marcel Mauss concluded in his seminal essay on the principles of exchange and obligation involved in the act of giving (Mauss 1990 [1925]: 16). The concept of inalienability discussed in the above was Weiner's theoretical re-conceptualisation of the dimension of keeping, which Mauss' original work did not fully recognize in its focus on cycles of giving and the way these compelled receiving and reciprocating. However, the paradox remains, that inalienable possessions can be lost to the possession of their original owners. Having already applied the concept of inalienability, it might now be productive to return to Weiner's theoretical font of origin, to see how the principles of keeping and exchanging are negotiated when the matter in question is something as paradoxical as an 'ultimate inalienable' long having been kept in alien hands (Weiner 1985: 219, 1992: 37).
If the gift as a generic phenomenon is held to be effective because in a symbolic sense it continues to possess something of the substance of the giver, how much more would this not hold for human remains, being, as they are, in the most concrete sense, of the substance of their originators? And although not a gifting relationship in the conventional terms of a continual exchange of gifts and countergifts, repatriation undeniably appears as a form of giving, which begs the question of whether we might not elucidate the phenomenon by means of the Maussian understanding of exchange(25). Notably, I am not hereby implying that the preserved head was received, or considered, as a gift at NMDK. What I will suggest is that some of the insights we owe to Mauss' analysis of the principles operating in gift exchange may, by way of analogy, be applied to repatriation. Indeed, the perspective may not be so far fetched after all: In the letter from the requesting iwi Trust Board, a promise was also set forth that "[i]n accordance with our customs we will reciprocate in a manner befitting your kindness", though the offer remained unspecified. The claim for repatriation was thus skilfully phrased in a mode that sought to establish a relationship of mutual obligation, reflecting the principle that "a gift that does nothing to enhance solidarity is a contradiction" (Douglas paraphrasing Mauss, in Mauss 1990 [1925]: x).
On the part of NMDK, this wooing for exchange, presented by a hitherto unknown party of uncertain standing, affected an evolving chain of activity and considerations prior to deciding upon the proper reply. Being human remains, the preserved head was, as demonstrated in the above, already conceptually and physically set apart as material entailing particular ethical obligations, and therefore as perceived at the Ethnographic Collection of NMDK also in principle liable to repatriation upon request from representatives of the culture of origin. The envisaged transaction, though, was not so simple. The course of action applied at NMDK was firstly to draw on an informal network of colleagues with experience from New Zealand, in an attempt to both confirm the identity of the claimants and to gauge the local context and the possible motives for the request. As the Head of the Ethnographic Collection explained to me, "it might be an individual person who ... for some reason or other raises a claim. It might be political, or for other reasons. So we would want to know who it is that approaches us"(26). What such concerns illustrate is not only the museum's obligations as institutional keeper and protector of its possessions, but also the fact that more than the preserved head itself was at stake in the prospective transaction. In accepting such a claim, something more than a possession is exchanged; the act will invariably also be one of recognition, in that if one gives things, it is because one is giving respects, acknowledging obligations towards the receiver (Mauss 1990 [1925]: 59). Precisely therefore it was incumbent on the museum as a prospective donor to ascertain to what sort of purpose and partner it committed itself, bearing in mind the fact that exchange also lends itself to strategies for enhancement of prestige and political status (ibid: 47).
What eventuated from the enquiries conducted in New Zealand, was the verification that the letter of request did in fact come from the iwi Trust Board concerned, but also that there was nothing to indicate or confirm any special association between that particular iwi and the preserved head, for which NMDK had no information on provenance other than the general identity as 'Maori'. Furthermore, a letter from the anthropologist conducting these informal inquiries for NMDK sounded the caution that "there is a lot of political unrest surrounding the heads"(27), indicating that repatriation to an iwi might implicate the museum in local political controversies beyond its ken. In the end, the iwi Trust Board was not recognised by the museum as an exchange partner, and we might note, with Mauss, that "[t]o refuse to give is to reject the bond of alliance and commonality" (1990 [1925]: 17). Significantly, though, that did not amount to a refusal of repatriation per se, as we shall now see.
Apparently NMDK did feel obliged on account of the claim that had been made for the preserved head, even in refusing a relationship with the claimants. The preserved head's inalienability with the culture of origin was thus not questioned once it had been posed as a direct claim, and as I found in the journals, this is how NMDK later represented the case to the Danish Ministry of Culture:
[R]epresentatives of the Maori population of New Zealand, who express a strong emotional binding to these ancestor heads, have in recent years been very active in tracing these heads at museums and reclaiming them In our museum the practice has been that we recommend 'human remains' for return when representatives of the culture of origin express their wishes for it(28).
This understanding of human remains in museums thus makes for a case where the inalienability associated with a possession necessitates that it is set (back) in 'circulation', rather than kept by its present possessor.
The dilemma in this case was thus not predicated on the assessment of the item requested for repatriation, but on the issue of 'alliance and commonality' alluded to above - that is, on the politics of exchange, as NMDK contemplated the possible consequences of engaging in a relationship with the claimant iwi. This problem was circumvented as the museum chose to proceed with the case by involving a third party, one that had ironically not put forth any claims for the head in question. Amongst the information from the inquiries conducted in New Zealand was also the fact that repatriations of Maori human remains, including preserved heads, in a number of cases had been sought by, and made to, the Museum of New Zealand - Te Papa Tongarewa. A national museum, unlike a Maori iwi operating on a scale and logic unfamiliar to NMDK, was an institution with which NMDK shared commonality and could enter into a relationship, without risking to compromise itself. Therefore the ultimate solution to the dilemma of both handling the dimension of politics, and heeding claims for returning inalienable material, was to approach Te Papa and indicate willingness to repatriate the head on an institution-to-institution base. If NMDK did not seek to keep the head, at least it made sure that it was kept within an institutional structure for which it could safely vouch, supporting this disposition by the understanding that Te Papa is "operated in cooperation between the indigenous population, the Maori, and representatives of the settler society"(29). As a further remark, which illustrates how the logic of gift giving may subtly enter this form of exchange, one of the staff suggested to me that the repatriation of the head might also in part be perceived as a 'gesture' in association with the reopening of the Museum of New Zealand in 1998! Thus, in contemplating repatriation, both current understandings of the material in question, and the principles and politics of exchange come into play.
Finally, then, repatriation was agreed upon with this new partner, and between the museums it was arranged that two representatives from Te Papa, one a Pakeha and the other the Maori chief executive, were to travel to Copenhagen in December 1998 to have the head handed over at NMDK with due ceremony in terms of Maori protocol(30), and then accompany it on its travel back to New Zealand. As I was told by staff, at NMDK a certain tension initially arose between the potentialities of leaving the event to unfold on its own terms of exchange and ceremony, or objectifying and 'anthropologising' it by making it subject to documentary efforts in keeping with the institutional purpose of creating cultural and historical records. Was it not, some of the staff speculated in preliminary discussions, an obligation of the museum, which for so long had held the head in custody, to preserve knowledge of the final disposition of it, by means of photographs, interviews, and the like? Here, perhaps, we see manifested the last impulse towards some form of keeping-while-giving. But in the end, the question of creating further documentation was not brought up to the two couriers from New Zealand. The preserved head was now situated in a set of relationships where such an act would have been experienced as both painful and embarrassing to all of the participants. As one of the staff present at the event rendered it: "You can't stop; when such a man [the Maori chief executive of Te Papa] is standing there crying, and talking Maori to the head, why, then you can't walk over and prod him on the shoulder, saying 'excuse us, could you wait a while, we have to fetch a camera'"(31). Here again we see how, corresponding with Weiner's characterisation of inalienable possessions as having primary importance as markers of continuity, the preserved head's implication in living cultural practice, as an ultimate inalienable possession capable of drawing forth intense, culturally motivated emotions, takes on key importance in shaping attitudes to what constitutes proper dispositions surrounding it at the museum.
Having analysed the ethics and politics of the more recent events and relationships surrounding the repatriation of the head, it is now time to readjust my focus and have a closer look at what sort of biography the museum history of the head would add up to. Here, I thus apply the theoretical lens of Arjun Appadurai and Igor Kopytoff, investigating the meanings that may be revealed by the trajectories of the head. Delving into the particulars of shifting valuations and the accompanying practical courses of action as they have evolved in time and space will add a perspective which both links the choices of the implied actors and, by way of contrast, reveals much that is obscured from view at any one point in time. It will be seen that the biographical layers of events and phases are subject to shifting retrospective and prospective emphasis on the part of the implied actors, and thus not just proceed, but interrelate in the course of history. Focusing here on the museum perspective, and remembering that the theme of any biography is of necessity selective, to our purpose the overarching trajectory that might be reconstructed for the head is the story of being subject to a sequence of exchange in various guises that implies first going from New Zealand to the Danish museum and then, in the repatriation, back.
Appadurai argues that "what creates the link between exchange and value is politics, construed broadly" and, furthermore, that "the politics of value is in many contexts a politics of knowledge" (Appadurai 1986: 3, 6). With the term 'politics' the intention is here to refer to the dynamics of relations, assumptions, and contests pertaining to power (ibid: 57). If practice shows us the kinds of meanings with which a collected item has been charged, then inquiring into the politics of knowledge and culture associated with collecting and exhibition shows why and how the collected object is subject to different valuations, and the importance which this has. Politics thus raise questions such as how, and by whom, collecting values are recognised, and how the judgement of the material changes (Pearce 1995: 32). Thus, I will here investigate how such politics apply along the historical trajectory that developed in the case of the preserved head in Denmark.
As for making out the beginning of this biography, by and large we can only speculate. The deceased was, before entering the trajectory which concerns us here, a living man; Maori, from New Zealand - and here, seemingly, our horizon of knowledge ends, as regards the life of this specific person. He is likely to have been a slave; the preserved head has been judged by an ethnologist to be tattooed post mortem, which would seem to indicate that the procedure was carried out with trade in mind, rather than to distinguish a chief (Dr. Dave Simmons, personal communication). Thus, if a slave, the dead man at NMDK, even before his head was preserved, was already implicated in a world-spanning system of ethnographic commoditisation, trade, and production of cultural knowledge, fuelled by collection.
Upon death and preservation, the head, by whatever means, found its way into the system of 19th century circulation of ethnographica, exchanged as a commoditised article of trade. As I learned from the museum's journals, it is from the onset of contact in 1893 between NMDK and a dealer in ethnographic objects, Mr. G. A. Frank from London, that a more certain and detailed trajectory can be traced. The original correspondence and final receipt of the purchase have remained in the museum's archive, and can now assist in shedding a bit of light on the circumstances of acquisition(32). NMDK had specifically sought such a head for its collection and ordered specimens for review. Thus Mr. Frank opens the first letter of his to be found in the archive by stating: "at last I have the pleasure to send you the box containing the 2 Maori skulls". Apparently being of an enterprising nature, Mr. Frank took the opportunity to send along a number of 'various other specimens' with an attached price list, the contents ranging, amongst other items, from two much cheaper Dayak skulls, to New Guinean bowls and a Javanese sarong; a list from which the sheer variation in the contents and their origins speaks volumes of the networks of collection and trade in ethnographica of the day (see also Welsch 2000). Obviously these various articles had already circulated through other links, prior to coming to England and into the hands of Mr. Frank. Short of being 'old' and 'very fine' - adjectives clearly meant to vouch for authenticity in order to raise both interest and price - the Maori heads came with no information whatsoever. NMDK kept the one head for a price of £ 35, no small sum in those days. The preserved heads had, in the perceptive collector Robley's words, become "subject to all the vicissitudes that affect the value of other works of art" (Robley 1998 [1896]: 193), becoming valuable (and expensive) as they became scarce in supply.
One shrewd 19th century observer aside, as recent critics notice, there has been a general lack of scholarly acknowledgement and attention to the processes of commoditisation that were one important feature of the way in which various collection items in spe entered both academic disciplines and the logics of museums as cultural institutions (Phillips & Steiner 1999: 3, O'Hanlon 2000). As I shall demonstrate, it will be worthwhile to keep an eye on the circumstances of economy, though it is a dimension that I will show to be submerged in the proceeding parts of the biography. As Robley went on to remark in his reflections, such heads, once safely lodged in museums, were not supposed to be subject to further commodity (or other) circulation (ibid). The dimensions of valuation that took precedence after the purchase, on which the museification of the head hinged, were of other sorts.
Though museum staff of later days were (with no success) to search the archives of NMDK high and low for any more specific information on the origin of the head pending repatriation, obviously its individual history and tribal origin had been considered of no particular importance in the museum economy of knowledge at the time of its acquisition. If indeed such information had been thought to be of value or relevance at the time, probably at least some sort of speculative account would have been provided by the seller, in order to increase interest in his goods. But then, collecting per se served to establish claims to knowledge, by means of the very possession of the collected items, which were to function as evidence of, and ways of access to, cultural realities outside the compass of the viewers' experiences (Phillips and Steiner 1999: 3). Indeed, knowledge was at the time thought of as unproblematically embodied in material objects, which were deemed all the more important and worthy of preservation as the peoples which were the subject matter of ethnographic interest did not leave other tangible traces of their past, such as written histories (Stocking 1985: 114, O'Hanlon 2000: 5).
This frame of perception - that the materiality of the obtained specimens constituted knowledge in itself - may then in part account for the fact that prior to the efforts for repatriation, the preserved head had in fact been subject to no research of any sort while at the museum. Robley, thorough as he was in his own studies, registered its very presence at NMDK in a list of museum holdings of specimens printed in his book (Robley 1998 [1896]: 204), and many years later, in the 1980s, an ethnologist from New Zealand also noted its existence, when checking the inventories of various museums. The head's very being there, rather than attempts at increasing scholarly knowledge about it, was to all appearances the paramount concern, insofar as anyone did concern themselves with the head after its entry into the museum. The meaning of the head was thus quintessentially that of being part of the collections in the museum, where, amongst a number of other Maori items, it partook in the institutional representation of the world(33). This operation was thus carried out by taking the displayed objects out of specific sets of relationships - cultural, historical and intersubjective - and making them serve as ethnographic metonyms standing for the more abstract phenomenon of Maori culture (Clifford 1988: 220).
As I have demonstrated, with the coming of the critical indigenous and museological debate in the eighties, the head again came to be seen as having a potential culturally and emotionally salient relationship with present-day Maori people; a relationship reflecting back on the museum's own standing. The changing museum perception of the head implied a shift to emphasising a previous historical layer of its biography, constituting the head as a sensitive reminder of circumstances of collecting judged to be unethical by present-day standards. Simultaneously it demonstrated an understanding of the head as a potential symbol of the conditions and relationships that are sought to be redressed in the current quest for indigenous cultural rights. If the preserved head was still thought of primarily as a museum object, it was now additionally an object with an implicit political dimension to it, as it was also evident in the later contemplations surrounding the claim for repatriation. Ultimately, in being subject to Maori visits and ritualised attention at the museum, and later, to claims for return, the head was from a Maori perspective accorded the status of an ancestor, a dimension emphasized and culminating in the repatriation to New Zealand.
The dimension of economy that was operating at the entry of the head into the museum is at this point conspicuous in its absence. In leaving Denmark, arrangements had to be made (somewhat ironically, perhaps, in such a case) to comply with current legislation protecting cultural property. Permits and documentation had to be supplied, and here, in the accompanying documents for the customs authorities, we find the head carefully registered as having 'no commercial value'(34). Events in the intervening biography of the preserved head had thus erased from view its status of more than a century ago, as a commodity worth £ 35. While it might seem self-evident to many that human remains should not be estimated in economic terms, neither past nor contemporary estimations of values (economical or ethical) should be taken for granted. The valuation had more to do with the particular transaction and the set of relationships that the head was now part of - the circumstances surrounding the repatriation - than with any independent judgement of its continuing commercial potential. The trade history of such remains is in fact not just a phenomenon of the 19th century: Also within the latest decades, such old preserved Maori heads have occasionally, though by no means often, been offered for sale, individually or as part of collections (Simpson 1996: 235, The Dominion Weekend 10 March 2001: 21)(35).
The valuation of the head from the museum's side, then, is a moral judgment, not a financial one: An implicit assessment of what sorts of biographical trajectories the head, as currently perceived between the transacting parties, might enter and not. Brought into play in making judgments on the proper fate of such human remains are thus conceptions of the relationship between their humanness and object status, ethics and historicity, all entangled in particular social and cultural relationships as they are played out both in the present and over time. Arguably, then, the shifts and differences in treatment and perceptions of the head along its biographical trajectory reveal moral as well as political economies standing behind the visible exchange transactions (Kopytoff 1986: 64). To carry the level of abstraction beyond this one head and the specific actors engaged in handling its fate, it seems that such cases may hold potential for enlightening anthropological inquiries about the negotiation of cultural knowledge and categories through forms of practice and materiality.
Having followed the trajectory of the deceased thus far, we have seen how conceptions and interests ranging from pecuniary gain to the construction of knowledge as possession, and ancestral inalienability, have predicated a series of physical relocations and forms of transactions. On the final note the preserved head had travelled the world for the second time; and notably, travelled from one museum institution to another - not from a museum to a tribe. Numerous working days and resources had been spent on the matter in both museums, and from an institutional point of view the affair was considered to be a success: Repatriation had taken place. Still, going beyond the surface relations and the immediate contentment of the involved actors, one might ask what difference it makes, if any, which - or whose - storeroom such a head is held in. NMDK not only transferred the preserved head to New Zealand in genuine recognition of the ethical sensitivity of its continued presence in the collection. The institution also in another sense conveniently managed to displace the encapsulating problem of resolving the ambiguous particulars of the case as an issue of indigenous rights and motives in a museological context. But back in the country of origin, what becomes of the entanglement of categories, histories and relationships, in which we have seen the head embedded? To begin to answer that question, we shall have to consider what sort of significance such matters have in the context of the politics of museums and Maori culture in New Zealand, to which I now turn my attention.
All communities
have cause to blush when they recall some incidents far in
their past. New Zealanders
shudder at the scale of savagery that has left
human heads from this country in European collections.
The New Zealand Herald 3 July 1998, editorial: A10
Repatriation, in New Zealand as elsewhere, is not a phenomenon that can be adequately understood outside the wider context of current institutional and (inter)national attempts at redressing history (Barkan 2002). In this respect, repatriation of Maori human remains is inevitably tied up with the politics of culture in a postcolonial context. As Jonathan Friedman (1994: 117) has pointed out, with specific reference to the politics of postcolonial cultural revival in the Pacific, cultural realities are always produced in specific sociohistorical contexts. This makes it necessary to account for the processes that generate those contexts in order to account for the nature of both the current practice of identity and the production of historical schemes. A discussion of the contemporary meanings and roles of repatriation and Maori human remains in New Zealand will therefore also make more sense when it is held up against the historical background of the positions that museums currently hold in relation to Maori people. This issue will thus be the starting point of analysis in this chapter.
As I will demonstrate, the debate on repatriation in New Zealand entails paradoxes of dealing with inalienable possessions circulating outside of their original context of meaning, as well as the historical and present constitution of relationships through exchange. The current situation thus poses the question of how to handle the legacy that the museums of New Zealand hold: The tangible remains that they possess, the histories these carry, and the relationships with the living people who are associated with these possessions and have their own expectations on what should happen to them. In using the term 'possession' here, I refer to it in the sense of having physical control over something, rather than in the sense of having rights of ownership. As it will be demonstrated in this chapter, ownership is in many respects a problematic concept, with regard to the situation of the Maori human remains under discussion here.
The current relationships between Maori people and museum institutions, especially within New Zealand, are created both by, and against, the history they share. As discussed in chapter one, items such as the preserved Maori heads were implied in an intertwining process of colonisation and ethnographic collecting, which towards the end of the nineteenth century culminated with a final rush to salvage what was by then held to be the last remnants of traditional Maori culture, before its anticipated demise through Maori extinction or, at best, assimilation with the Pakeha (Meijl 1996). The incorporation of such remains into museum collections thus implied both a specific temporal position and a form of historical narration; and as we shall see, so does the debate on their repatriation. Thus the topic of collecting and museums cogently re-enters the current scene of debate, where the once-predicted cultural extinction has failed to take place, and the people whose demise was expected now self-consciously defend their culture as a set of values and practices to be lived, as we have seen it in the Maori cultural revival of recent decades (Sahlins 1999). Being defended against are thus institutional conditions such as those revealed in an anecdote from a report on Maori exhibitions perspectives, in which "A Maori child was heard to ask the question of [sic] a teacher about a Maori display in a museum about when the people to whom the objects belonged died out" (Te Papa 1989, unpaged).
The practices of collecting and the associated academic institutions such as museums have thus come under intense criticism from Maori people, reflected for instance in the writings of the Maori decolonisation theorist Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999). According to Smith, collecting is to be seen as part of a colonial legacy of fragmentation and alienation of matters as diverse as territories, ancestral remains and cultural knowledge, in short, of an entire cultural 'estate'; thus tearing apart the material connection between people, their places, their beliefs and practices (ibid: 61, 89). Furthermore, this legacy has continued to make itself felt, as
[the] collective memory of imperialism has been perpetuated through the ways in which knowledge about indigenous peoples was collected, classified and then represented in various ways back to the West, and then, through the eyes of the West, back to those who have been colonized (ibid: 1-2).
Such claims might be said to mirror the above anecdote of a Maori child's meeting with a museum exhibition in the eighties, and though Smith's stance may appear to express a radical position, during my fieldwork I found that it does in fact accord with quite widely shared opinions amongst Maori people. (I will return to these in chapter four.) In this respect it is hardly surprising that the starkest critiques of past and present academic imperialism in fields such as museology, history, and anthropology (e.g. Trask 1991) come not from the independent Pacific, but from New Zealand and Hawaii, where the indigenous populations continue to exist encompassed within settler societies, as minority groups with a keenly felt sense of past oppression and present marginalisation (Munro 1994: 233, Jaarsma 2002: 53). The historical background of ethnographic collections is therefore not only a matter of academic interest, for it has left a distinct and long lasting resentment of museums and academic research amongst many Maori people (Smith 1999: 83, O'Regan 1984, Munro 1994, Meijl 2000). The dominant Maori image of the museum in generic terms has thus for long been that of an exclusively Pakeha institution, of which one of my informants, a man from an iwi in Te Tai Tokerau, could state, that "the museums, in days gone by, were an empire onto themselves". Contemporary developments towards the inclusion of Maori people and perspectives in the museums of New Zealand thus depart from a situation where, less than two decades ago, even a museum curator could make the summary comment that "for almost all Maori people, the museum represents a place of death, of bones, of plunder and relics and pillage" (Te Awekotuku 1985: 15). Such an understanding, with the prominent position it accords human remains in its characterisation of the museum, renders the repatriation of Maori human remains an important element of the institutional development towards coming to terms with the past that is shared by museums and Maori people.
In a nation aspiring to biculturalism and thus basing its self-legitimation on the validation of both Pakeha and Maori constituents (Sissons 1993), the image of museums as representative of colonial oppression is untenable. And if the moral question of redressing historical injustices has become an issue of growing international concern in the past decades (Barkan 2002: 16-17), then New Zealand is certainly a nation in which this issue makes itself most prominently felt, as framed in terms of the newly embraced principles of the Treaty of Waitangi (Kawharu 2002: 296-298, Ward 1993). The broader political and legal context of the position that museums are in with respect to redressing grievances of the past is a national development in governmental and organisational policies and practices that has developed since the Treaty of Waitangi Act (1975). This act established the Waitangi Tribunal to inquire into Maori Treaty grievances, and has given rise to a process of claim settlements, which, though not progressing as fast as all claimants would prefer, has impacted upon a wide array of issues, and prompted Treaty rights to be incorporated in an array of legislation (Kawharu: ibid). This development in the moral understandings of the historical relationship between Maori and the Pakeha settler society has also effected a reconsideration of the roles and obligations of museums in relation to Maori people. Repatriation is in this context perceived as an integral element of relationship building between the museums and Maori tribal groups (Te Papa 2001: 4, AWMM Annual Plan 2003/2004: 7). The relationship between museums and Maori tribes within New Zealand is now conceptualised according to an ideal of reciprocity, in which the envisaged common goal is "the dynamic perpetuation of culture and identity" (Tapsell 2002: 290).
As we may glean from the discussion in the above, the fate of collected Maori human remains, and hence also the topic of repatriation, touches on the general relationship between museums and Maori people. For instance, in the Annual Plan of AWMM, databasing and return of human remains explicitly figure as actions to be implemented as part of the institution's measures to achieve "recognition by Maori and others as a fine and appropriate location for taonga [i.e., ancestral treasures]" (AWMM 2003/2004: 12, my insertion in brackets). Perhaps we may then, to paraphrase Weiner, see the development in repatriation as a way of 'giving back in order to keep'? Here, the repatriation of collected human remains is perceived as a precondition of a positive relationship between Maori people and museums; an action that in its recognition of Maori rights and values is also legitimising the continued museum possession of taonga, the Maori artefacts which remain significant collection items to museums, and are by Maori held to be significant as ancestral treasures. Indeed, some of my Maori informants have commented to me that giving back ancestral remains to the descendants, and thus recognising their rights, would in their eyes enhance the status of the museums. As one man argued to me, concerning his hopes for repatriation:
[T]here are still descendants ... Maori still exist the way I think about it is the more institutions actually give up power, cede power, the more powerful they become giving up accumulated wealth to receive what we would term mana [in this context translatable as authority].
These concerns again mirror the insights developed in terms of exchange theory in chapter two, illustrating that "exchange is always, in the first instance, a political process, one in which wider relationships are expressed and negotiated" (Thomas 1991: 7). The character of any exchange transaction - in this case repatriation - thus at once reflects and constitutes relations between groups. Most importantly, it inevitably has a historical dimension and thus mediates conditions and relations that are not wholly constituted just within the current frame of exchange (ibid: 7-9).
With the repatriation of Maori human remains as a means of redressing the past, the hope is that, as the Maori director of AWMM has expressed it: "If negotiations of contestable items originate from museums, rather than tribes, it will undoubtedly foster a sense of goodwill, trust and partnership" (Tapsell 2002: 288). The logic operating here decidedly recalls the Maussian principle of exchange as a key practice in the constitution of alliance and solidarity between the contracting parties (Mauss 1990 [1925]: 6-7, 17). However, the classic anthropological perception of museum items points out that they have become what they are precisely by being withdrawn from the local social systems of exchange in which they originally acquired their meaning (Sjørslev 2001b: 37-38). By way of a preliminary consideration, the question has recently been asked: Does it then make sense to conceptualise the circulation of museum items which have undeniably passed through long and complicated series of different exchange forms, in terms of reciprocity? And is it thus possible to perceive the world in a historical light as a global system of exchange (ibid: 41-43)? The conclusion of the present analysis is: Yes.
In this respect it must furthermore be emphasised that exchange is not simply the transfer of possessions, but also significantly involves elusive moral values such as rightness and justice. In this way repatriation, like other forms of exchange, "involves a continual struggle to give, claim, or redistribute some elusive existential good - such as recognition, love, humanity, power, presence, honour, or dignity" (Jackson 2002: 42). Thus, repatriation, as a complex process that constitutes and gives expression to multiple social institutions and concerns, may be conceptualised as a total social phenomenon (Mauss 1990 [1925]: 3, 6-7). The aspect of recognition between the parties involved in exchange is a key element in the process of repatriation, and it is also in this respect that the notion of museums themselves initiating repatriation negotiations with the descendant communities is rendered socially significant.
As anthropologist Marshall Sahlins has emphasised in his theorisation of reciprocity, there is a reciprocal connection in which the material flow of exchange underwrites or initiates social relations (Sahlins 1972: 186-190). Here, with regard to repatriation to Maori descendant groups from AWMM and Te Papa, we might identify a different pattern of relationships from the one exemplified in the international repatriation of the preserved head from NMDK. Whereas the Danish museum had no specific interest in engaging in a direct relationship with a Maori tribal group, such relationships are precisely that which is sought for the corresponding museum institutions within New Zealand, as a necessary means to amending a historically strained set of relationships. Thus, within recent years both AWMM and Te Papa have initiated extensive research plans to prepare for international and internal repatriation of Maori human remains on a proactive, rather than merely reactive, basis(36). Te Papa, in its capacity as the national museum of New Zealand, has recently received government funding towards this purpose, after having already for more than two decades been engaged in repatriation activities, as well as functioning as a repository for the Maori human remains that have been repatriated from other institutions. Indicating the wider relational significance of the development towards repatriation of collected Maori human remains, a member of the staff at Te Papa commented to me: "[T]hat process of reconciliation, of coming to terms and understanding those times is going to be full of emotions, but we will be better for it as a nation".
Repatriating Maori human remains is however not just a matter of institutional goodwill. A major problem with respect to the return of these human remains to their descendants is that of establishing provenance, in order to know which specific tribal groups to approach for the discussion of further dispositions concerning the remains. Koiwi, bones, in the possession of the museums are in many cases, though far from universally, accompanied by archival references to the sites or regions from which they were originally removed. It has therefore been possible for several returns and reinterments of koiwi to take place internally in New Zealand (e.g. Auckland Institute and Museum 1988-1989: 15-16, see chapter four for more on this). However, the museums are at present still left with a body of human remains, many of which are unprovenanced beyond their general identity as Maori, a fact that motivates the current diligent research programmes, which are to establish the identity of the remains that are currently in the possession of public institutions. Amongst the still unprovenanced remains waiting to be identified, we also find the vast majority of the preserved tattooed heads. As we shall see, this situation poses a number of questions regarding the status and management of the remains while they continue to be in the possession of museum institutions.
As it is evident from the case I analysed in chapter two, the problem of determining provenance, as well as the museum politics of exchange, favour institution- to-institution relationships in international repatriations. In academic debate it has been remarked on repatriation that it is in fact a common state of affairs that the items concerned are placed in the possession of another museum upon their return, which may establish a new relation of ownership, but seems to position the items in an institutional context and logic similar to the one they were repatriated from (Handler 1985: 194, Sjørslev 2001b: 43). In the present case, however, we find an institution such as Te Papa conceptualising its involvement in the repatriation and holding of returned remains with the assertion that:
Maori human remains held within institutions continue to contain Matauranga Maori (Maori knowledge) which can only belong to Maori [These] human remains are part of a living culture, and as such it should be recognised that there are genealogical links with descendants in New Zealand, and those peoples have an interest in the ongoing care and placement of these remains (Te Papa 2001: 10).
This stance clearly expresses a logic of cultural inalienability, in which an essential relationship of identity is posited between the collected remains and contemporary Maori people. Notably, the remains are here associated with an intangible component, 'Maori knowledge and living culture', which emphasises the implication of the remains in contemporary cultural practice and identity. Such relationships between tangible remains and social identities have been theorised by the anthropologist Richard Handler, who has analysed the role of material objects in ethnic and national perceptions of 'having a culture' (Handler 1985).
Handler points out that the very materiality of tangible objects renders them eminently suitable to stand for the identity of a social collectivity, such as an ethnic group or nation, thereby validating its existence and in effect making it possible for culture to be objectified and imagined as the possession of such a collectivity (ibid: 193, 210-211). This is a process in which the very materiality of the concerned possessions comes to signify an objectivity that reflects back on the represented collectivities and associated intangibles such as cultural identity and values. As Handler notes, and as the preceeding discussions in the present thesis have demonstrated, this relationship also makes material remains into symbolic objects around which social legitimation as well as conflict can be effectively condensed and played out (ibid). What we are seeing at present with respect to repatriation, especially in the context of museums within New Zealand, might be described as a process of legitimising museums and recognising Maori by means of the same powerful medium.
However, the current problem of determining provenance, with a view to initiate direct negotiations on the fate of the remains with the relevant descendant groups, means that at present most of the collected remains continue to stay in an institutional context. This is the case, even as the concerned institutions step away from the notion of owning the collected remains or using them for traditional museum purposes, such as display and research for scientific purposes. In this respect the current situation of the remains amply demonstrates the paradoxes involved in dealing with inalienable possessions circulating outside their original context of meaning. Both at AWMM and Te Papa, institutional policy and practice is being adjusted to accommodate this situation. In the following discussion, I will focus mainly on Te Papa, which as the national museum of New Zealand has taken on an all-encompassing engagement in repatriating collected Maori human remains.
An overarching argument behind Te Papa's work for the international repatriation of collected Maori human remains is that "the cultural and knowledge base context must contribute to the overall management and care of these ancestors. In order to do this, remains must be in the country from which they originated" (Te Papa 2001: 7). This stance reflects the bicultural aspirations of the museum, according to which the immediate benefit of repatriation is that the remains can be managed in accordance with Maori cultural values and practices. These are sought to be integrated into the practice of the museum, for instance through the use of appropriate karakia, prayers, during any handling of the remains (Koiwi Tangata Policy - Summary Information n.d.). In being returned to New Zealand, the remains thus continue to be physically located in an institutional setting, but are made subject to separate policies and excluded from the museum's collections and their purpose. The Maori human remains at Te Papa are kept in a wahi tapu, a consecrated repository, which is closed to the public, and to which access is restricted to a few members of the museum staff.
In this way the culturally appropriate management of collected Maori human remains has become a matter of institutional legitimacy, and rather than referring to a traditional museum logic of collection and ownership, Te Papa refers to its role in holding the remains as that of a kaitiaki, a guardian (Te Papa 2001: 5). This stance is also reflected in the way Maori staff at Te Papa explained to me how they relate to the remains that are held at the museum:
[W]e are looking after them, we are taking care of them there is a special relationship there, because to us they are our ancestors, and it is not as if they are totally removed from us; they are actually