May 28, 2020 is the Deadline for Public Comment on the Chaco Cultural Region Management Plan

- This article was originally published April 6, 2020 on the Cultural Property News website and is reprinted here by permission.

Chaco Cultural Region: Public Comment on Management Plan

Management plan and size of protected area from oil, gas, and mineral extraction in question.

Bonnie Povolny - April 6, 2020

The federal government is now seeking public comment on the future of one of the most significant cultural sites in the United States, the Chaco Culture Historical Park in northwestern New Mexico. In late February 2020, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), announced proposed revisions to the park’s management in a draft Farmington Mancos-Gallup Resource Management Plan Amendment and Environmental Impact Statement. These are the first revisions put forward by the agencies since 2003. The public comment period ends on May 28, 2020.

Pueblo del Arroyo Ancestral Puebloan great house ruins in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, photo by James Q. Jacobs, 12 April 2007, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

The designated Chaco Culture Historical Park was at the center of a vast civilization in what is now the American Southwest – a site of the Ancestral Puebloan culture. Chaco Canyon still holds the remains of grand kivas and great houses – Pueblo Bonito, Una Vida, Peñasco Blanco and others. The Hopi, Zuni, Navajo and Pueblo peoples of the Four Corners region (where Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona meet) all claim ancestral and spiritual ties to Chaco and its connected communities. The most important sites to archeologists were built in the Pueblo II and Pueblo III eras, from about 900 to 1350 AD.

In May of 2019, U.S. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt announced a yearlong moratorium on oil and gas lease sales within 10 miles of Chaco Culture National Historical Park. This move was followed by the passage by the House of Representatives of H.R. 2181, the Chaco Cultural Heritage Area Protection Act in October. The Act will withdraw a ten-mile radius around the park from development – 316,076 acres of federal land rich in oil, natural gas, coal and other minerals. A Senate version, S. 1079, is currently in a holding pattern, still awaiting a vote in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

Increased oil and gas drilling close to the park had sparked concern among New Mexico and Arizona tribes and pueblos, as well as the general public, that encroachment would impact archeological and ceremonial sites in the region. Environmental and archeological groups have voiced concern that energy extraction development so close to the park would impact its status as a World Heritage site and International Dark Sky Park.

In January, the Navajo Nation Council withdrew their support for the ten-mile buffer and voted to approve a five-mile buffer zone instead, stating that the reduced size would allow Navajo land owners greater rights to enable development on their lands.

According to New Mexico’s congressional delegation, the Navajo Nation Council’s decision was based upon a misunderstanding of how the buffer zone would impact Navajo landowners. A joint statement by Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich and Representatives Luján, Torres Small and Haaland pointed out that the Chaco Cultural Heritage Area Protection Act does not affect tribal or private lands or the mineral rights of an Indian tribe or tribal member to trust land or allotment land.

The All Pueblo Council of Governors, archaeological organizations, and environmental groups continue to support a ten-mile buffer, saying that reducing it would leave more than twelve important ancient Chacoan communities, including many more individual sites, vulnerable to destruction by development. A video of the viewscape of the Pierre’s Place Outlier is available; it is the largest of the Chacoan communities in the ten-mile buffer zone and located at its outer edge.

View fullsize

National Park Service map for Chaco Culture National Historic Park.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, both agencies under the Department of the Interior, are requesting comments from the public on the Environmental Impact Statement and on whether a five-mile Federal buffer around CCNHP should be considered.

The draft Resource Management Plan Amendment, Environmental Impact Statement and supporting information are available online at: https://go.usa.gov/xdrjD.

The BLM and BIA will accept comments through May 28, 2020.

Comments can be submitted via the web address, https://go.usa.gov/xdrjD, or by mail to:

Bureau of Land Management, Farmington Field Office, Attn.: Jillian Aragon, Project Manager, 6251 College Blvd, Suite A, Farmington, NM  87402

or to

Bureau of Indian Affairs, Navajo Regional Office, Attn.: Robert Begay, Project Manager, P.O. Box 1060, Gallup, NM  87301

Legal Briefs - March 2020

Emmanuel Macron’s Bold Promise to Repatriate African Objects:
“Hey!  Wha’ Happen’?”

Ron McCoy

In November 2017, France’s president Emmanuel Macron visited the Republic of Burkina Faso, a land which until 1960 was part of his nation’s vast West African colonial empire.[1] Speaking to an audience of attentive students at the national flagship University of Ouagadougou, he focused on the wildly unequal relationship between formerly colonizing European powers and Africa’s formerly colonized peoples.   

The colonial era was buoyed by not just by greed or religious fever but by its own self-affirming ideology.  This ideology condoned and even mandated the removal (through means both fair and foul) of almost inconceivable amounts of sub-Saharan African material culture, i.e. indigenous art forms, from their places of origination and subsequent speedy incorporation into the public and private European collections where they remain to this day.

Macron appears to be eager to put what he sees as the “grave mistake”[2] of European colonialism in the rearview mirror.  “I belong to a generation which was not that of colonization,” he has explained.[3]

“I cannot accept that a large part of cultural heritage from several African countries is in France,” President Macron told the students.  “African heritage can’t just be in European private collections and museums.”  What Macron then unveiled was a sweeping vison born of a confluence of interests and aspirations in which he posited that, yes, “African heritage must be highlighted in Paris, but also in Dakar [Senegal], in Lagos [Nigeria], in Cotonou [Benin].”

Macron represents a nation which, like some others in the West — Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, and Italy spring to mind — historically enjoys what might best be described as a tangled relationship with the peoples of the African continent, thanks to the lingering effects of the profoundly disruptive and disorienting colonial experience.  Although the colonial era may not register much with most Westerners, for Africans (and others) its effects are complex and immediate.  For many of them it remains, as Macron says, “a crime against humanity.”[4]

There is general agreement that colonialism, via what could perhaps best be understood as its second- and third-order effects, manifests itself in virtually all areas of former colonies’ human activity, including the political, economic, and cultural spheres. Colonialism’s legacies are also felt in the societies of the former colonial powers. Until not so long ago, one of the cultures involved in this dynamic perceived the material culture of the other as “primitive art,” exotica hoicked from far away and ensconced in some version of a wunderkammer; those objects signified something else altogether when viewed from the perspective of the pieces’ originating culture.  Those two competing perspectives, and the attitudes they nourish and reinforce, provide the makings for a toxic brew.

Speaking to the students in Burkina Faso, Macron laid out a schedule of sorts for carrying out the restitution of some of the African art in France to Africa.  “In the next five years, I want the conditions to be met for the temporary or permanent restitution of African heritage to Africa,”[5] he pledged.  If Macron’s timeline seemed a bit vague and dizzyingly ambitious, it was probably because what he envisioned was still only ethereally defined.  It was, after all, a more or less inchoate development at best.  Still, it does not require a lot of imagination to foresee emanations from the ideas to which Macron lent his voice being encountered not somewhere way down the road but, rather, soon; definitely a feature of the near-future.  Shortly after giving the speech, Macron reiterated his position in (what else?) a Tweet: “African heritage cannot be a prisoner of European museums.”[6]

Macron’s bold plan for the restitution of material culture on a grand scale is heady stuff.  For some, it represents the culmination of ages of frustration and the emergence of hope for cultural rejuvenation in a region which could doubtless profit from it.  Others see an impossible dream.  Whatever one’s view, any interest or enthusiasm Macron generated with his pledge was tempered by a fundamental question: How, exactly, could or would this revolutionary redistributive act be brought about? 

The amount of material taken out of Africa and deposited in non-African collections is staggering.  It has been estimated that “over 90% of the material culture legacy of sub-Saharan Africa remains preserved and housed outside of the African continent.”[7]  (A figure like that should raise some suspicions and command scrutiny, to be sure, but it remains useful for providing a sense of the scene.) 

Because it figures so prominently in our narrative as a kind of ground-zero for Macron’s plan, let’s take a brief look at the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris.  Musée du Quai Branly ranks as one of the world’s foremost museums, a vast storehouse dedicated to preserving more than 300,000 pieces of ethnographic art from Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, including some 70,000 objects of sub-Saharan African origin alone.[8]  The museum draws on its cosmopolitan setting in aspiring to serve as a force for “creating bridges between cultures,” to the point of offering visitors a “permanent collection area [which] presents 3,500 works geographically without partitions.  The juxtaposition of these works encourages original dialog between the cultures of four continents.”[9] 

Macron’s grand plan and its five-year timeline for completion was revolutionary.  Just how much his proposal rocked some boats started to become clear around November 2018, a year after the Burkina Faso speech.  That’s when the French president received a report on the subject he commissioned eight months earlier.”[10]  The Savoy-Sarr Report was authored by art historian Bénédicte Savoy, chair for Modern Art History/Art History as Cultural History at the Tecnische Universität Berlin,[11] and economist Felwine Sarr, director of the Civilizations, Religions, Arts, and Communication research center at Gaston Berger University in Saint-Louis, Senegal.[12] 

The 2018 Savoy-Sarr Report focused on the delivery of what its authors call “the emancipation of memory.”[13] This is Big Picture stuff, a rather amorphous, global endeavor that can be at least partly attained by restoring to Africa material which was often obtained under decidedly nasty circumstances.  When they looked at what they viewed as “the crux of the problem,” Savoy and Sarr espied “a system of appropriation and alienation — the colonial system — for which certain European Museums, unwillingly have become the public archives.”[14]  (If you have anything at all to do with the museum world you may hear alarm bells ringing and notice some red-and-blue lights flashing just about now.)  According to coauthor Bénédicte Savoy, the ultimate goal does not involve “emptying French or European museums to fill up African ones.”[15]  Instead, she talked of “rebalancing” the currently “extremely imbalanced” situation in which “European museums have almost everything and African museums have almost nothing.”[16]

View fullsize

Man-Shark by Sossa Dede (c. 1890), a Fon statue symbolizing Béhanzin, musée du quai Branly, Paris, France. via Wikimedia Commons

Upon receiving the Savoy-Sarr Report, Macron let it be known the Musée du Quai Branly would repatriate twenty-six objects — including “statues and thrones looted by French troops during a military raid against the once powerful West African Kingdom of Dahomey in 1892”[17]  — and would do so “without delay.”  (This “raid” was the Second Dahomean War of 1892-1894, during which France crushed the power of the king of Dahomey and his army, including its famed Amazon contingent.)  Further, the French government pledged a $22.5 million loan to Benin in order to construct a suitable museum at the southern city of Abomey, a UNESCO World Heritage site where the kings of Dahomey once lived.[18] 

Souleymane Bachir Diagne, a Senegalese professor of French at Columbia University in New York who provided input for the Savoy-Sarr Report, thought those twenty-six objects repreented “a good place to start.”

First, symbolically: This was the kind of restitution that would give full weight to Macron’s promise.  These were spoils of war, taken punitively after a well-documented historical battle, and put in the [Musée d'Ethnographie du] Trocadéro [and subsequently to the Musée du Quai Branly].  They were taken directly from a king, the king of Dahomey.  The second aspect is that some of these works were already lent to Benin.  They were on view at Cotonou in 2006, and drew 275,000 visitors in an African country where people do not usually go to museums.[19]

Whatever else Macron accomplished, he certainly put a challenging goal on the table.  “We should pay attention to how national institutions like the Musée du Quai Branly,[20] France’s pre-eminent ethnographic museum, proceeds with loaning or returning African object to their countries of origin in the next few years,” suggested archaeologist Rachel King, who teaches cultural heritage studies at University College London.[21]  In other words, buckle up your seatbelts, folks, because this could be a real learning experience.

Well, that was then and this is now.  So, here we are two years after Macron’s speech, and where are we? 

That’s what some observers asked recently, when the second anniversary of Macron’s address came around without even one of the twenty-six pieces wending its way from the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris to the still-unbuilt museum in Abomey.  These queries boiled down to some variation of American comedic actor Fred Willard’s trademark “Hey!  Wha’ happen’?”

That question is answered in large part by referring to the Savoy-Sarr Report itself.  In all of its thoroughness, depth, and nuancing, the report — while sometimes swaddled in the sort of opaque prose that relegates so much academic writing to the margins[22] — makes two points abundantly clear. 

First, the ripping-off of African material culture by European colonial powers was a sordid business, and a strong case can be made for returning quite a bit of the African loot.  (And I mean “loot,” in the sense of something that was actually stolen, as in war booty, e.g. those twenty-six pieces at the Musée du Quai Branly.) 

Second, Macron’s ambitious promise remains unfulfilled — for the moment, not necessarily forever, maybe not for long, nobody really knows — because the situation in this instance mirrors the general run of the often-horrendous relationship between Africa and the West.  In other words, it’s complicated.

Alexander Herman, assistant director at Institute of Art and Law (which publishes the Art Antiquity and Law quarterly), points out that while the Savoy-Sarr Report “inspired a great deal of tense discussion in the museum world (both in France and abroad), most commentators agree it was too ambitious to be workable.”  This was perhaps at least partly attributable to the report’s status as “the brainchild of academia, not the balanced submission of practitioners in the field.”[23] 

Significantly, Herman suggests the “unwillingness of the authors to take account of the valuable role played by museums in conserving historical artefacts and educating the public — not to mention the importance of provenance research for the objects at issue” transformed the project “from a call to arms into a veritable pariah amongst many museum practitioners.”[24]  In other words, it appears the Savoy-Sarr Report may have alienated a key constituency, one on which the entire effort is pretty much dependent: museum professionals, among many of whom, according to one knowledgeable observer, the document quickly morphed from “a call to arms into a veritable pariah.”[25]

Stéphane Martin had served as the Musée du Quai Branly’s president (director) for twenty years when the Savoy-Sarr Report dropped in his lap.  To say he found the document unpersuasive and unhelpful is an understatement.  Martin immediately blasted what he saw as the report’s advocacy for “maximal restitution,” criticizing what he saw as an unfair, broad-brush indictment of all collecting with “the impurity of colonial crime.”[26]

Even beyond even that, there’s this: French law regards objects held in the nation’s public museums as “inalienable.” 

Think about that for a sec. 

French law is constructed to work against deaccession of objects form public collections.  This is done through a system of procedural roadblocks designed to make it extremely difficult to legally transfer such an object to some other institution located elsewhere.[27]  In fact, it appears that starting to get ready to commence to begin carrying out Macron’s plan requires nothing less than — for openers — legislation permitting it to wend its way through Parliament, something for which there does not currently appear to be much support.

Whether or not you agree with all, part, or none of Emmanuel Macron’s proposal, still, he’s caught a whiff of something in the wind.  Perhaps you see that wind as blowing for good or, alternatively, ill.  But it’s definitely there, although nothing about that makes anything easier.  Because these matters are…insanely complex affairs involving governments, museums, researchers, special pleaders, the appropriation and allocation of funds, changing laws, bidding and contracting, local politics, drafting committees, planning groups, claims and counterclaims, questions about conversation and preservation, and a multitude of other just plain stuff.  One thing you can say about the report Macron’s speech generated: it insisted more attention be paid to a group least listened to, historically speaking: indigenous peoples.

Consider, in that light, the words of Kwame Opoku, who frequently contributes articles about museums and African cultural objects to the Modern Ghana news website.  Opoku basically considers just cutting to the chase when he suggests Westerners “should keep the looted artefacts until they finally accept that it is wrong and condemnable to steal the artefacts of other peoples and after 100 years pretend they are doing us a great service by even discussing the issues involved.”[28]

Obviously, the goal Emmanuel Macron sketched out for those students in a former French colony just a little more than two year ago still remains out of sight, hidden somewhere over the horizon.  But that does mean it hasn’t or isn’t exerting influence in the larger tribal art world.  This is certainly a topic worth revisiting soon. 

For now, this has been an interesting, cautionary tale.  “Returning material to its homeland is never a simple process,” Alexander Herman of the Institute of Art and Law explains.  “Rather, it is part of a larger web of exchange and cooperation, one primarily built on relationships.  Those relationships neither begin nor end with restitution, which is only one part of a larger story.”[29]

Please note: This column does not offer legal or financial advice. Anyone requiring such advice should consult a professional in the relevant field. The author welcomes readers’ comments and suggestions, which may be sent to him at legalbriefs@atada.org

ENDNOTES

[1] Burkina Faso’s colonial period officially ended in 1960, at which time it was known as the Republic of Upper Volta.   In 1984 the nation underwent a name change when it became Burkina Faso (Land of the Upright People).  Lawrence Rupley, Lamissa Bangali, Boureima Diamitani, Historical Dictionary of Burkina Faso (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2013), ix, liv, 4, 33, 191.

[2] “Macron Calls Colonialism a ‘Grave Mistake’ During Visit to Ivory Coast,” France24 (Dec. 21, 2019), https://www.france24.com/en/20191222-frence-president-macron-on-official-visit-to-ivory -coast-calls-colonialism-a-grave-mistake

[3] Ibid.  Macron has been consistent in his condemnation of France’s colonial activities. “During his election campaign, Macron created a storm of controversy in France by calling the colonisation of Algeria a ‘crime against humanity.’  In a 2017 TV interview, he said French actions in Algeria, which achieved independence in 1962 after eight years of war, were ‘genuinely barbaric, and constitute a part of our past that we have to confront by apologising’.” 

[4] Bénédicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr, The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics (Paris, 2018), 1, hereafter referred to as “Savoy-Sarr Report,” is available in English translation at http://restitutionreport2018.com/sarr_savoy_en.pdf

[5] Anna Codrea-Rado,”Emmanuel Macron Says Return of African Artifacts Is a Top Priority,” The New York Times (Nov. 29, 2017), https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/arts/emmanuel-macron-africa.html

[6] Ibid.

[7] Savoy-Sarr Report, 3.

[8] “Missions: A Bridge Between Cultures,” (Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac, n.d.), http://www.quaibranly.fr/en/missions-and-operations/the-musee-du-quai-branly/#:~:text=; Farah Nayeri, “Museums in France Should Return African Treasure, Report Says,” The New York Times (Nov. 21, 2018), https:/ /www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/arts/design/france-museums-africa-savoy-sarr-report.html/.

[9] “Missions: A Bridge Between Cultures.”

[10] Codrea-Rado. 

[11] “Biography: Bénédicte Savoy,” Collège de France (n.d.), https://www.college-de-france.fr/site/en-benedicte-savoy/Biography.htm

[12] “Felwine Sarr,” OSIWA  (Open Society for Initiative in West Africa, 2020),   http://www.osiwa.org/osiwa_member/felwine-sarr/

[13] Savoy-Sarr Report, 1.

[14] Ibid., 2.

[15] Farah Nayeri.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Heleluya Hadero, “Benin’s New Museum for Artifacts Looted by France Is Being Built Using  a French Loan,” QuartzAfrica (wJuly 23,2019), https://qz.com/africa/1672922/france-will-help-fund-benin-museum-housing-looted-artifacts/

[18] Ibid.

[19] Jason Farago, “Artwork Taken From Africa, Returning to a Home Transformed,” The New York Times (Jan 3, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/03/arts/design/african-art-france-museums-restitution.html

[20] The Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris.

[21] Nayeri.

[22] You didn’t ask for it, but here’s a small taste: “Guided by dialogue, polyphony, and exchange, the act or gesture of restitution should not be considered as a dangerous action of identitarian assignation or as the territorial separation or isolation of cultural property.” SS 2.

[23] Alexander Herman, “One Year After the Sarr-Savoy Report, France Has Lost Its Momentum in the Restitution Debate,” The Art Newspaper (Nov. 12, 2019), https://www.theartnewspaper.com/comment/one-year-after-sarr-savoy-where-are-we-on-colonial-restitution

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Naomi Rea, “A French Museum Director Pushes Back Against a Radical Report Calling on Maron to Return Looted African Art,” Artnet News (Nov. 28, 2018), https://news.artnet.com/art-world/quai-branly-president-macron-africa-restitution-report-1404364#:~:text=

[27] “Deaccessioning in France,” Museums & Deaccessioning in Europe (Creative Culture Consultancy, Mondriaan Fonds (n.d.), https://www.museumsanddeaccessioning.com/ countries/france/; Herman.

[28] Kwame Opoku, “Miracle Abjured: Stéphane Martin Reiterates His Objection To Restitution Of Looted African Artefacts,” Modern Ghana (Jan. 9, 2020), https://www.modernghana.com/news/978035/miracle-abjured-stphane-martin-reiterates-his.html

[29] Herman.

Legal Committee Report - Winter 2019-2020

To all ATADA Members, Museum Associates, Private Collectors and Supporters of the preservation and study of tribal arts around the world:

Thank you for making ATADA the premier Native American and international tribal art organization in the US. More than ever, ATADA’s voice is being heard in Washington and around the country. Last year, you helped us to protect the interests of small businesses, art fairs, auction houses, small museums and private collectors. You supported our efforts to make common cause with colleagues in the wider art world. You helped us to educate legislators and the public about the dangers of ill-considered laws, treaties and agreements that would sequester all art in the country of origin and infringe on the privacy rights on honest citizens.

2019 and early 2020 have been a very active time for our organization. As we predicted, a new, even more restrictive STOP Act was introduced in 2019 and continues to be a major issue in 2020. New money laundering legislation that would place a heavy financial burden on small businesses and specifically directed against the art and antiquities trade passed the House of Representatives in 2019 and is now being taken up in the Senate. In 2019, we successfully challenged a Montana bill that would have meant the loss of businesses and private collections across that state. 

We have focused our efforts on providing legislators with positive, fact-based solutions. Our work has resulted in the defeat or delay of damaging legislation on federal and state levels. At the same time, we have expanded ATADA’s extremely successful Voluntary Returns Program. Our community-based outreach to tribes stresses partnership with legitimate businesses to protect tribal resources and cultural heritage, advocating together for increased federal support for indigenous peoples.

ATADA is once again fighting the good fight for ethical and responsible trade in tribal and ethnographic art, for preservation, and for access for all. We need your continued support to protect you, your business and your collections in the coming year. Here is just some of what we accomplished in 2019!

---

• MONTANA BILL HB637

  In March 2019, ATADA successfully argued against an attempt to pre-empt private ownership rights in Montana. A legislator had introduced a bill that made it illegal to “purposely or knowingly buy, sell, exchange, distribute, market, or otherwise conduct a commercial transaction for profit that involves an object of cultural patrimony or a sacred object.” Cultural patrimony included virtually any Native American object that had “ongoing historical, traditional, or cultural importance central to an Indian tribe, group, or culture.” The bill gave an Indian-majority burial board, previously tasked with dealing with unmarked graves and other finds of human remains, the job of deciding whether items, including private property of collectors and inventory of businesses, were sacred or inalienable cultural patrimony, and deciding whether current owners or tribal claimants owned them. It did not allow outside experts or appeal.

  The bill, HB 637, could have made the trade and collecting of Indian art and artifacts a minefield for dealers, collectors, and museums, in which they would face severe fines or jail time simply for buying or selling items long in circulation. Thanks to an intensive educational campaign about the harmful effects of the legislation, the bill failed to get out of committee.

• MONEY LAUNDERING LEGISLATION

  In October 2019, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2514, imposing privacy-destroying Bank Secrecy Act anti-money laundering rules on “antiquities” dealers, without defining what an “antiquity” is. ATADA opposes the bill, which is supported by anti-art trade extremists in partnership with vendors who sell anti-money-laundering services. There is no evidence of U.S. money laundering through art. The bill is currently before the U.S. Senate, which is considering expanding it to cover all art dealers.

• STOP ACT III

  A third version of the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony (STOP) Act, S.2165, H.R. 3846, was introduced in July 2019. Sponsors claimed the STOP Act would “prohibit the exporting of sacred Native American items and increase penalties for stealing and illegally trafficking tribal cultural patrimony.”

  The 2019-2020 STOP Act requires a permit for export of items as low as $1 in value and keeps secret what can’t be exported. It can require every person carrying or shipping an Indian item out of the U.S., including small items purchased by tourists, to submit a photograph and a form through a federal system that will have to be created from scratch. Each item will be subject to tribal review by the 568 federally registered tribes, Hawaiian organizations and Alaskan villages. The review system will operate in secret, and without any time limit.

  Because the bill can include commercial items, it will force people to guess whether they need to apply for a permit. There is not even a way to find out the reason for a seizure through a Freedom of Information Act request and there is little an exporter can do to appeal.

  In 2018, ATADA worked together with tribes and legislators to craft a bill that was designed to enhance protections for Native American cultural heritage. It established a practical system for export based around a U.S. Customs system already in place, enabled tribal review, punished violators, and at the same time, allowed businesses to self-certify low value items so the trade in Indian arts and crafts would not come to a halt. The legislative session ended with that bill still in committee and unfortunately, the 2019 STOP Act fails to consider the solutions agreed to in 2018.

  In early 2020, Board member Bob Gallegos met with 14 legislative offices to talk about ATADA’s community-based work and to show them how the latest version of the STOP Act would discourage all trade in Indian art, harm Native artisans, destroy value in legally-owned private property, and undermine due process.

• AUCTIONS, ART FAIRS, SMALL BUSINESSES AND COLLECTORS AT RISK

  Anti-art trade activists continue to challenge private collecting, museum donation, and traditional sales venues in other ways. The Association on American Indian Affairs continues to seek tribal pre-approval of auction and other sales of antiques and even contemporary artworks such as kachinas and other carvings. ATADA’s bylaws establish protections against all unlawful sales and encourage the return of sacred items in current use to tribes, but ATADA policies also insist on federally-mandated constitutional and privacy rights of citizens to lawfully trade, collect, and donate artworks to museums.

  In all these ways and more, ATADA is working to keep you and your collections safe from government overreach. We’ve done great work but our resources are exhausted, and we need your help to meet these challenges.

You can make that difference right now!

Please contribute today!
Make your check payable to the ATADA Legal Fund and mail to:

David Ezziddine
Executive Director, ATADA
PO Box 157
Marylhurst, OR 97036

You can also support the Legal Fund by making an online contribution or by donating an item for auction! For more info, check out: atada.org/legal-fund

Questions? Contact David at director@atada.org
Visit www.atada.org/legal-issues to learn more about ATADA actions.

ATADA is a 501(c)(4) organization; gifts to ATADA and the ATADA legal fund are not tax deductible.

ATADA’s tax status enables it to work directly in Washington and elsewhere to make real change for your benefit.

ATADA Foundation Update - Letter from the President

New Year's Day Greetings from the President of the ATADA Foundation

As we start this new decade I would like to tell you about some of the notable funding opportunities that we accomplished in 2019.

• $1,000 donation to Children's programs through the Acoma Museum and to their library for book purchases.

• Donation of five pieces of pottery made by Acoma matriarch potters from the 1960's with a value of approximately $1,600.

• $5,000 donation to pay for an indigenous Fijian curator at LACMA'S show "Fiji - Art and Life in the Pacific." The Prime Minister of Fiji attended the opening ceremony and thanked everyone who was involved, along with the deputy senior director publicly thanking the ATADA Foundation for its support.

• $3,500 donation to support the upcoming "Apsaalooke Woman and Warriors" exhibition organized by the Field Museum and the Neubauer Collegium.

• $1,500 donation to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to fund the travel of a young Fijian performer and artist, Jahra Rager, as part of the Met's "World Cultures Festival: Dance" during the closing weekend of the "Atea" exhibition.

As more problems arrive with repatriation and other issues, I believe whole heartedly that the above examples are where we can find a "middle" path with indigenous people everywhere and honor their cultural heritage.

In the spirit of goodwill, I am asking you, as members, to make a donation to the ATADA Foundation so we might continue and expand our mission in the coming year. Whether your donation is $50.00 or $5,000.00, it does make a difference.

As President of the foundation, I wish to donate the first pledge of $500 as we enter this new decade and hope to inspire others to follow.
Happy New Years!

Thank you for your continued support.

Mark Blackburn
President, ATADA Foundation
mblackburn@aol.com
808-228-3019 (m)

View fullsize

“God House” dance by Fijian performer Jahra Rager at the Metropolitan Museum.

LACMA presents a groundbreaking exhibit on Fijian art, displayed for the first time in the U.S.

View fullsize

Fijian Prime Minister, Frank Bainimarama, at the opening ceremonies of Fijian exhibition at LACMA.

ATADA Foundation Update: Fijian Exhibition at LACMA

The ATADA Foundation is proud to be a supporter of LACMA’s exhibition, “Fiji: Art and Life in the Pacific”.
Our gift assisted in providing for a Fijian curator to consult on the exhibition which was attended by the Prime Minister of Fiji, Frank Bainimarama.

This exhibition is the first of its kind to be mounted in the United States and features over 280 artworks from major international collections.

The exhibition continues through July 19, 2020.

For more information, visit:
www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/fiji-art-life-pacific

Fijian Prime Minister, Frank Bainimarama, at the opening ceremonies of Fijian exhibition at LACMA.

Legal Briefs: NAGPRA Repatriations through October 9, 2019

by Ron McCoy 

Those of you who regularly check out this column know it frequently addresses goings on associated with the United States’ Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990.  Although NAGPRA recently figured in a thus far unsuccessful attempt to “repatriate” an orca from Miami’s Seaquarium,[1] the aspect of this law that usually garners attention here is somewhat different.  That’s because ATADA’s intended audience composed of of curators, dealers, and collectors of tribal art are probably more concerned with the law’s provision for repatriating certain types of objects of indigenous (American Indian and Native Hawaiian) origin from institutions which satisfy its broad definition of “museums.”[2]

NAGPRA zeroes in on “cultural items”[3] falling into one or more of five categories: human remains, associated funerary objects, unassociated funerary objects, sacred objects, and cultural patrimony. Of these categories, two receive attention here: sacred objects and cultural patrimony. (Occasionally, because of historic or other considerations, we also take note of transfers involving unassociated funerary objects.)

Under NAGPRA, a “sacred object” is a piece “needed by traditional Native American religious leaders for the practice of traditional Native American religions by their present day [sic] adherents.”[4]  As for “cultural patrimony,” a piece qualifies for inclusion in this category if it has

“ongoing historical, traditional, or cultural importance central to the Native American group or cultural itself, rather than property owned by an individual Native American, and which, therefore, cannot be alienated, appropriated, or conveyed by any individual regardless of whether or not the individual is a member of the Indian tribe or such Native American group at the time the object was separated from such group.”[5]

Occasionally, notices of intent to repatriate per NAGPRA appear in the Federal Register.  These represent the agreement reached between one or more claimants and the museum (as defined by NAGPRA) responsible for the item(s) in question. That agreement specifies the party or parties to which the item(s) will be repatriated by the museum, pending the filing of a competing claim. Unless otherwise noted, quotations include here are drawn from those notices.

Haudenosaunee/Iroquois Miniature False Face Mask
Sacred Object/Object of Cultural Patrimony

Colgate University, Longyear Museum of Anthropology, Hamilton, NY (Oct.9, 2019): Sometime early in the twentieth century an unidentified member of the Oneida Indian Nation gave Hope Emily Allen (1883-1960),[6] an independent scholar of some renown who focused on medieval mystical traditions, “a miniature false face mask or medicine mask,” which she “added to her own personal collection.” The little mask remained with Allen throughout her life.  In 1962, two years after her death, it was sold to the museum.

This notice does not describe the piece, but relies, instead, on the sort of standard language one associates with Haudenosaunee repatriation claims dealing with False Face masks; specifically, these “are not only sacred objects used in the performance of medicinal ceremonies, but are also considered objects of cultural patrimony that have ongoing historical, traditional, and cultural significance to the group.” 

The museum determined that for purposes of NAGPRA the miniature mask was both a sacred object and object of cultural patrimony which should be repatriated to the Oneida Indian Nation in New York.

Three Tesuque Ceramic Vessels, Comanche Dance Headdress and
Painted Buffalo Robe
Sacred Objects/Objects of Cultural Patrimony

Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY (Oct. 9, 2019): This notice deals with five items: three ceramic pieces ­­– a pitcher, storage jar, and seed bowl­ – as well as a headdress and painted buffalo hide robe evidently used in Tesuque Pueblo’s Comanche Dance. These objects joined the museum’s collections at various times between 1901 and 1967.

Stewart Culin (1858-1929), a pioneering and prodigious ethnographer,[7] obtained the headdress – “made from hide, dyed hair, horn, and fabric” – and the painted buffalo robe (“the painted design is of the ‘box-and-border’ type, which is found throughout the central Plains”)[8] from Benham Indian Trading Company in Albuquerque in 1907. 

The ceramic pieces came from three sources: Colonel James Stevenson (1840-1888),[9] a geologist of broad interests who served with the Hayden Survey from 1872-1878 and joined John Wesley Powell’s fledgling Bureau of American Ethnology in 1879, obtained the pitcher at Tesuque in 1879.[10] The museum bought the storage jar in 1902 from “Captain” C.W. Riggs,[11] an enterprising dealer in Native American objects, who acquired it at Cochiti sometime between 1876 and 1891. The seed bowl came to the museum via an estate donation in 1967.

The descriptions of the objects referenced by this notice are far more helpful than the pithy, astonishingly uninformative text linked to far too many NAGPRA notices of intent to repatriate. Many of the notices leave readers unable to visualize what sort of object is being discussed. This would appear to negate NAGPRA’s capacity for educating curators, dealers, and collectors with specifics about the objects covered by its broad umbrella.  But here, for example, we learn that the storage jar Riggs picked up at Cochiti “is decorated with black designs – corn and circular motifs – on white pigment; the lower portion is painted red….it’s [sic] solid lines (without ceremonial breaks), wide mouth and tapered lower half, lack of human and animal figures, and presence of floral motifs all support a Tesuque origin.”[12] 

The museum concurred with claimants’ contention that the five pieces qualified as sacred objects and objects of cultural patrimony under NAGPRA, and should be given to the Pueblo of Tesuque in New Mexico.

Three Coast Salish Masks
Sacred Objects

The Field Museum, Chicago, IL (Sept. 3, 2019): “At an unknown date, three cultural items [masks] identified as Salish in the Field Museum’s records were removed from an unknown location and sold to H. Stadhagen [sic], a purveyor of indigenous material culture.”  In 1902, Charles Newcombe (1851-1924),[13] a British physician and ethnographic researcher whose career found him collecting numerous pieces of indigenous Northwest Coast manufacture for various institutions, purchased the masks from “H. Stadhagen’s [sic] Indian Curio store in Victoria, B.C.” on behalf of the museum. Stadthagen’s was one of the early entrepreneurial establishments that helped transform Northwest Coast indigenous art into a business, and also turned Victoria into the effective hub of that enterprise.[14]

The notice states the museum’s intention to return the masks to the Samish Indian Nation in Washington. Unfortunately, the notice does not tell us anything about the masks’ appearance, much less their role in Salish life beyond the formulaic statement that they “are an integral part of rituals and ceremonies performed by Coast Salish traditional religious leaders.”

Five Haundenosaunee/Iroquois (Cayuga) Wooden Masks
Sacred Objects

New York State Museum, Albany, NY (Aug. 5, 2019): The museum received five wooden Haudenosaunee masks as donations from poet, philanthropist, and Indian rights activist Harriet Maxwell Converse (1836-1903).  According to the notice, “one of the medicine faces was reportedly made in Canada about 1779.” The museum agreed with the Haudenosaunee Standing Committee on Burial Rules and Regulations:[15] the five masks should be transferred to the Cayuga Nation in New York.

Although the notice mentions five masks, it provides no description of them or their role in Haudenosaunee society, and produces no information about provenance beyond that already noted. As a side note, by my rough count no fewer than seventy-five masks and nine wampum belts that Converse gave to the museum have been repatriated since NAGPRA went into effect.

Winnebago Medicine Bundle
Sacred Object

Nebraska State Historical Society, DBA History Nebraska, Lincoln, NE (Aug. 5, 2019):  In 1922, Robert B. Small donated a Winnebago bundle to the museum. Small, who worked as a clerk at the Winnebago Agency, received it more than fifty years earlier ­­– meaning, circa 1870 – as a gift from Joseph Harrison, a Winnebago. According to Harrison, the bundle “had kept away the evil spirit and also given him good luck in war and in peace.”  He evidently trusted it would perform a similar function in Small’s life. (As the notice explains, “Harrison gave the bundle to his old friend…believing it would bring him good fortune too.”)

Although the notice describes the bundle as a sacred object which should be turned over to the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, it provides absolutely no helpful information about the piece, its provenance, contents, function, associations, or role in Winnebago culture.

Blackfeet Beaver Medicine Bundle
Object of Cultural Patrimony

Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Plains Indian Museum, Cody, WY (July 19, 2019):  According to the notice, in 1965 artist-collector Paul Dyck (1917-2006) obtained a circa-1860 Blackfeet Beaver Medicine Bundle from Dan Bull Plume, Sr., of Browning, Montana.[16] Pioneering anthropologist, Clark Wissler (1870-1947) described this type of physically large, spiritually potent manifestation of sacral power as “the bundles par excellence.”[17]

The notice informs us that Dyck loaned the bundle to the museum in 2006. In 2007, a year after Dyck’s death, his foundation changed that loan into a gift.  The following year, “members of the Blood Tribe (Canada) Spiritual Advisors, consisting of Horn Society advisors and members, viewed the Beaver Medicine Bundle…, confirmed its identity, and affirmed that Beaver Bundle Ceremonies associated with this bundle are still practiced by both the Blackfoot Nation of Canada and the Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana.”

The museum agreed to repatriate the Beaver Medicine Bundle to the Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana.

Please note: This column does not offer legal or financial advice. Anyone requiring such advice should consult a professional in the relevant field. The author welcomes readers’ comments and suggestions, which may be sent to him at legalbriefs@atada.org

NOTES

[1] Lynda V. Mapes, “Lummi Tribal Members Could Sue Under Repatriation Act to Free Captive Orca in Miami,” The Seattle Times (July 27, 2019), https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/lummi-nation-could-sue-under-repatriation-act-to-free-captive-orca-in-miami/; Kie Relyea, “Saying They’re Family, Lummi Nation Gives These Endangered Orcas a New, Ancestral Name,” The Bellingham Herald (Sep. 10, 2019), https://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article234443642.html.

[2] “Any institution or State or local government agency (including any institution of higher learning) that receives Federal funds and has possession of, or control over, Native American cultural items [is a museum, for purposes of NAGPRA]. Such term does not include the Smithsonian Institution or any other Federal agency. [25 USC 3001 (8)].”  “NAGPRA Glossary,” National NAGPRA (National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, n.d.), https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nagpra/glossary.htm

[3] Under NAGPRA, “cultural Items” means: “Human remains, associated funerary objects, unassociated funerary objects, sacred objects, cultural patrimony.” Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] For Allen see Clarissa W. Atkinson, “In Memoriam: Hope Emily Allen (1883-1969 [sic]),” 14th Century English Mystics Newsletter, 9 (4) (Dec. 1983): 210-217.

[7] Culin’s writings are noted in “Guide to the Culin Archival Collection” (Brooklyn Museum, n.d.), https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/research/culin/; also “Online Books by Stewart Culin” (The Online Books Page, n.d.), http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Culin%2C%20Stewart%2C%201858-1929.

[8] According to the notice: “Representatives from Tesuque said that this robe was used in the Comanche Dance and was likely purchased from Comanche traders for the purpose.”

[9] Stevenson was married to pioneering American female anthropologist Matilda Coxe Stevenson (1850-1915).  Like her husband, she formed part of J.W. Powell’s elite crew of ethnographers when the Bureau of American Ethnology opened for business in 1879.  Joy Harvey, “Matilda Coxe Stevenson (1850-1915),” in Marilyn Ogilvie and Joy Harvey, The Biographical Dictionary of Women of Science: Pioneering Lives from Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century (Abingdon, Oxon, Great Britain: Routledge, 2003), 1232-1233.  See, also, Darlis A. Miller, Matilda Coxe Stevenson: Pioneering Anthropologist (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007).

[10] Stevenson’s pitcher joined the collections of the U.S. National Museum; it was purchased by the Brooklyn Museum in 1901.

[11] The rank appears to be an honorific term, as Chauncey Wales Riggs’ name does not appear in Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army from Its Organization, September 29, 189, to March 2, 1903, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1903).  Riggs earned a reputation as a digger of burial mounds in the eastern Arkansas, during which his predilection “unscientific excavation” was on display.  “Captain CW Riggs (Biographical details),” (The British Museum, n.d.), https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/term_details.aspx?bioId=199902.  For a photograph of the colorful Riggs, see Robert C. Manifort, Jr., Sam Dellinger: Raiders of the Lost Arkansas (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2008), 21.

[12] Consultants from Tesuque “identified this jar as one that would have been owned and used by Tesuque’s Warrior Society.”

[13] Kevin Neary, “Newcombe, Charles Frederic,) in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Vol. 15 (Toronto: University Tronto/Unversité Laval, 2005), http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/newcombe_charles_frederic_15E.html.

[14] “The early tourist trade emerging in that city [Victoria] in the 1870s displayed a keen appetite for carvings, baskets, and totems, an appetite that grew over time.  Between 1880 and 1912, five different curio businesses operated in Victoria.  While they serviced the special needs and requests of collectors and curators, these curio dealers also supplied the hungry and less discerning tourist market.  Aaronson’s Indian Curio Bazaar on Government Street claimed to be ‘the cheapest place on the Pacific Coast to buy all kinds of Indian Baskets, Pow-Wow Bags, Wood and Stone Totems, Pipes, Carved Horn and Silver Spoons, Rattles, Souvenirs, Novelties, Etc.”  Over on Johnson Street, Hart’s Indian Bazaar respectfully invited the public, ‘especially tourists,’ to visit this shop with the ‘largest and finest assortment of curios on the Pacific coast.’  At Stadthagen’s Indian Trader, 79 Johnson Street, collectors could buy not only trinkets and baskets, but also large totem poles.”  To this list should be added Frederick Landsberg’s “curio shop,” the largest of the lot.  See Margaret Horsfield and Ian Kennedy, Tofino and Clayoquot Sound: A History (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2014), n.p. accessed online Oct. 20, 2019.  For the emergence of markets for selling, buying, and reselling Northwest Coast indigenous art see Dennis Cole, Captured Heritage: The Scramble for Northwest Coast Artifacts (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995).

[15] For information about the Haudenosaunee Standing Committee on Burial Rules and Regulations see “Haudenosaunee Repatriation Committee” (Haudenosaunee Confederacy, 2018), https://www.haudenosauneeconfederacy.com/departments/haudenosaunee-repatriation-committee/.

[16] A note of purposes of disclosure: I served on the board of Dyck’s research foundation after the purchase date referenced here and prior to its transaction with the museum.  Dan Bull Plume’s deep involvement in Blackfeet spiritual life is attested to in Adolf Hungry Wolf, The Blackfoot Papers [Vol. 2]: Pikuni Ceremonial Life (Skookumchuck, BC, Can.: The Good Medicine Cultural Foundation, 2006), 454-455; Donald Duane Pepion, “Blackfoot Ceremony: A Qualitative Study of Learning,” Ed.D. thesis, Montana State University-Bozeman (Dec. 1999),111.  For a photograph of an image of Dan Bull Plume by artist Winold Reiss (1886-1953), see “Dan Bull Plume,” Winold Reiss: Life, Works, Studio Circle” (The Reiss Partnership, 2014), https://www.winoldreiss.org/works/artwork/portraits/A474.htm.

[17] Clark Wissler, “Ceremonial Bundles of the Blackfoot Indians,” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, 8, pt. 2 (1912), 169.

You can help support ATADA!

Cowan’s Auctions is currently hosting an online sale in which the proceeds from several lots will benefit ATADA. The Auction closes Nov 4th, so be sure to post your bid today!

Proceeds from the following lots will support ATADA:
102, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 285

Lot 102

Lot 277

Lot 278

Lot 279

Lot 280

Lot 281

Lot 282

Lot 283

Lot 285

Auction Details:

Cowan’s Auctions - Cincinnati, OH

Timed Bidsquare Auction
Oct 24 - Nov 4, 2019

Note: Bidding for this auction will occur exclusively on Bidsquare

Auction Begins Closing Monday, November 4, 2019 at 12:00 pm ET (extended bidding available) For more information about the auction or to inquire about condition, contact Erin Rust at erin@cowans.com

View Full Catalog ➤

In Memoriam - James Willis and Jimmy Economos

This year has seen the passing of two greats in the tribal art world. James Willis and Jimmy Economos each spent many years working to promote tribal art through countless exhibitions, presentations and collections. They will be missed.

---

James Willis

1934 - 2019

James Willis was a preeminent dealer of African, Oceanic and Indonesian tribal art in the United States for greater than 45 years. He was the first in the United States to feature important themed exhibits on specialized subjects in his Geary Street gallery in San Francisco that could never be assembled again today. The 1979 “Art of the Batak” being an example of a historic show that revealed the masterful art of this previously obscure Sumatran headhunting tribe and changed the way the world viewed the subject; this exhibit has never been equaled. So too with countless other special presentations, offered over a career that spanned a time when the art was both available and relatively affordable, as he said, the “Golden Age” to be a tribal art dealer.

James Willis, known and respected for his expertise, integrity and fair-trading, builder of fine private and public collections, was also an advisor to three Presidents on the Cultural Property Advisory Committee at the Department of State. James Willis, husband, father, friend and mentor once told me, “If it can be said at an art dealer’s funeral that he never sold fakes and paid his bills on time, he was a success…” James Willis was so much more.

-Thomas Murray

In 2015, James Willis was awarded the ATADA Lifetime Achievement Award. Click here to read a tribute to James in celebration of this award, written by Thomas Murray; as well as an interview with James by Michael Auliso from Tribalmania Gallery.

---

A memorial for James, written by Lin Chen-Willis, can be found on the San Francisco Tribal website. https://www.sftribal.com/dealers/james-willis/

---

Jimmy Economos

1939-2019

“James Economos, the legendary art dealer, passed away peacefully on July 29 at the age of 80. His husband of 50 years, Gilbert Hampton, was at his side. Born in New York City, James studied at Columbia University. His eye for African, Oceanic, and American Indian art established him as a leader in the field and had a major impact on the development of many significant public and private collections, including the renowned collection at the St. Louis Art Museum. After living in New York and Denver, he settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he had an eponymous gallery.”

The full memorial for Jimmy can be found at: http://artdaily.cc/news/116029/James-Economos--A-life-remembered#.Xai8PpNKhTY

American Indian and Western Art: Premier Auction

On October 11th, Cowan’s Auctions will hold the American Indian & Western Art: Premier Auction featuring an outstanding assortment of material from multiple collections, as well as donated material to benefit ATADA.

Cowan’s Auctions - Cincinnati, OH

Auction
American Indian and Western Art: Premier Auction (Lots 201 - 574)
Friday, October 11, 2019 - 10:00 am ET

Preview
Friday, October 11, 2019 | 8:00 - 10:00 am
All times ET

Proceeds from the following lots will benefit ATADA:

213, 222, 350, 386, 389, 394, 422, 426, 435, 444, 445, 458, 459, 464, 467, 475, 497, 498, 499, 501, 502, 508, 520, 559

View Catalog ➤

www.cowanauctions.com

Check out the ATADA Marketplace!

Find amazing beadwork, jewelry, textiles and more - Buy direct from trusted ATADA Dealers!