Don’t Steal Great-Grandma

I learnt a new word today, walking through the university grounds as a new person. My partner was showing me around. Pointing at something obscured behind some big trees, he said that was where people put their children, in something that sounded like a crate.

Me: “in a what?”

Anyway, the word I learnt was crèche. I guess which one you use depends on how much you like your child.

---

On Day 2, the class focused on Ethics, i.e. How to Not Be A Jerk When You Find Dead People. Interestingly, there isn’t a standard code of conduct, like a Hippocratic Oath for Archaeologists in this country. There is one in the USA, so we had a look at that.

Archaeology in Australia, where I’m writing from, has a gnarly history. Around the late 1800s-early 1900s, people just dug up whatever they liked.

Essentially, objects were stolen, graves were looted, and real human remains of people’s great-grandmas were sold to museums in places such as the UK, Germany, Poland, and others.

The finders making off with everything cited “scientific purposes”. This became the touted alibi to completely ignore people’s sensitivities, and disregard those to whom the artefacts rightfully belonged – in this case, the First Nations ie Aboriginal Australian people.

If I found out my family’s remains were being traded like late 19th century Pokémon cards I’d probably be more than a bit disturbed. Australian Aboriginal culture is big on heritage, and connection to the land and earth – which probably made things extra bad in worlds of hurt.

Today there are efforts, led by descendants, to repatriate the remains so the dead can be laid to rest. Below I’ve added the 2min trailer and a link to the 30min documentary.

Returning our Ancestors Trailer

Link for full documentary

---

These days, artefacts are slowly trickling back. Some museums, such as the British Museum, are notoriously reluctant to return things. Probably if they return one thing, they have to return everything that has contested ownership, and then there would be big rooms with only a few things left to show. They might have to resort to displaying retired Beefeater hats or something.

On a similar note, quite recently I discovered an award-winning podcast quite flippantly titled, ‘Stuff The British Stole’.

I didn’t name it it wasn’t me

Each episode tells a story of how a valuable historical artefact went on a big adventure and wound up in the UK.

The first one I stumbled on was like something out of a movie. Ingredients: child kidnap, the wealthy elite, Italian criminals, and precious wood sculptures called the Motonui Panels from New Zealand, which have very special significance to the Māori people.

Basically, the panels were smuggled out of New Zealand and sold overseas to the late, rich art collector George Ortiz (1927–2013).

One day his young daughter was kidnapped and held for the ransom sum of approximately $2million USD.

Having no access to GoFundMe, Ortiz had to sell his private artwork to generate the ransom. When the Motonui panels went to the auction house at Sotheby’s in London, the NZ government sued him for selling stolen artwork.

I’ll let you listen/read for yourself how that all went down.

The link to the podcast is here.

I’ve attached the interactive ABC article here.

---

Anyway, learnings this week: don’t steal people’s grandparents, or children, especially not with crates, and generally it’s a good idea to get consent before you take anything.