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“Who Owns Culture?” : Australia and New Zealand Festival Literature and Arts: Panel Author 6th

May 2015 Yasmin Hales ©

“Who Owns Culture?”

A review of the “Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation” exhibition

British Museum April-August 2015

Australia and New Zealand Festival Literature and Arts

Summary: The compelling panel discussion provocatively titled “Who Owns Culture?

highlighted the complex cultural, artistic and historical contexts relating to the politics of the

British museum’s ethnographic displays; and the significance of repatriating indigenous art to

Australian aboriginal communities today.

As emphasized by the Chair Tim Radford, the seminal question “Who Owns Culture?” is a

highly complex and loaded enquiry and was dissected with critical scrutiny from three

different perspectives: Gaye Sculthorpe, museum curator of the current exhibition

“Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation’ exhibition at the British Museum”, the

Australian-Murri Aboriginal writer and political activist Melissa Lukashenko, and an

anthropological perspective from Professor Haidy Geismar at University College London.

With reference to the British Museum ‘Indigenous Australia’ exhibition, one of the initial

challenging questions Melissa Lukashenko raised was “What’s all this stuff doing here?”

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Melissa argued it is the indigenous, aboriginal community that created the cultural artefacts

that has undisputable ownership. Ethnographic artefacts should be rightfully and

immediately returned. “So much has been taken from aboriginal people…that where there is

any doubt about provenance… because of the colonial relationships that have existed and

still exist in some ways in Australia today, it’s important to err on the side of aboriginal

ownership.”

Speaking from an outsider, non-curatorial perspective, the aboriginal activist felt the British

Museum policy was incredibly backward. This was arguably in contrast to smaller Australian

national and local museums which she felt had a stronger policy of object repatriation.

Melissa contended the British Museums attitude is “we’ve got this stuff, we like this stuff and

we’ll keep it until we are forced to do something else with it”.

Australian and New Zealand Literature Festival 2015 Panel : From Left: Melissa, Gaye, Tim, Haidy.

In defence the curator Gaye Sculthorpe expressed how the Australian exhibition show

cased a shared cultural heritage, where previously silenced material artefacts can now

respond. However, by law, she stated the British museum’s acquisition of these 6,000

indigenous objects resulted in the museum’s ownership and legal protection. Gaye further

highlighted the attention relating to the issues of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders.

“What the British Museum is doing is more than just an exhibition...The museum is

burdened by an image from the past, but now a dialogue has begun in partnership with the

Australian National University (ANU) and National Museum University of Australia and this

exhibition contributes towards that”.

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Referring to the ethnographic display of the aboriginal Turtle Shell Shield obtained from one

of Captain Cook’s famous 18thC voyages to Australasia, Melissa stressed the museum

retention of cultural objects was a complete denial of indigenous rights.

“Why is this treasure of Australian history, not only aboriginal history…why is it on the other

side of the world? To me it’s ridiculous. That’s like the crown jewels being in Bangladesh or

the Magna Carta being lodged in Siberia”.

As an anthropologist, the academic understanding of the

discipline is based on the cross cultural study of human

behavior, and the strength of cultural diversity. Culture should

not solely be experienced as 19thC armchair representation of

indigenous tribal groups on television, or a #social media

culture hashtag that is fixed and static in time. Postcolonial

cultures and museum objects will always have a conflicting,

overlapping identity Turtle mask. Torres Straits

between the colonisers and the colonised that are forever fought over and disputed. Like the

creative knowledge belonging to these artists, centuries of aboriginal history has a

multilayered palimpsest lacking an indigenous voice or mutual understanding, only the flux

and flutter of ageing museum policies.

As Heidi Geismar confirmed, the question of “Who Owns Culture?” is highly polemic and

varies globally depending on the social and historical context. As long as the British Museum

retains these objects, there will be an underlying debate that moves away from artefact

repatriation and more towards conflicting colonial-indigenous politics of power, and historical

issues of sovereignty, which though closer 200 years later, still remains unsolved.

The festival audience also learnt how the British Museum’s Act of Repatriation is guided under

current UK legislation which dictates how, when and in which way objects can be returned, but

regrettably provides limited opportunities to do so. Gaye raised an example of a lengthy two

decade procedure in a special case of the British Museum repatriation of human remains in

the form of two ash bundles; requested by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Central government

(TAC) in 1985/6. Under former legislation the museum could not return them. Finally after

conversations at government level during the 1980’s and 90’s, and under the Human Tissue

Act 2004 (who knew?) 20 years after the initial request in 2006, the British Museum repatriated

the human remains for mortuary disposal in accordance with Tasmanian traditions (1).

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As Melissa argued. “The thing that concerns me is an attitude that says that the world has a

right to aboriginal objects, or in the past the right to own, aboriginal human remains, that

exceeds the right of aboriginal people to own their own artefacts; our own languages, our

own laws and stories, and essentially the right to represent ourselves”.

The Chair, Tim Radford stated “the British Museum exists because we went round the world

collecting and in some cases we are “extraordinarily grateful as the value to the world has

been considerable… However, it’s very different when artefacts speak to a specific identity”.

Globally all material objects have an identity and meaning, whether sacred or profane. Often

they are created to accompany an individual or community rite

of passage ranging from birth to death and marriage. Material

objects are also made for ordinary functional use from

ordinary materials like a fishing net or basket. Sacred,

religious objects ranging from jewellery to textiles, should

remain within their indigenous community. However, as many

periods of global colonisation illustrate, art objects were either

stolen, unknowingly exchanged or donated by hand to a

museum. In the process of this act they formed a new identity,

to a new audience in a re-contextualised time and space.

Unfinished twined grass basket 1905

Current inter-disciplinary ethnographic debates argue that many of these sacred indigenous

objects are now reborn and experienced with a new philosophical agenda, stripped of original

meaning, in a new exotic glass museum box (2). Melissa further stressed this point and shared

a reflective experience during her UK visit to the ethnographic collections at PittRivers

museum, Oxford (3). Having arrived with interest but trepidation, she was unaware of how

much aboriginal material she would be confronted with.

“Would I view what was stolen aboriginal material being collected, when pre 1900 people were

still being shot in the head, and white people wanted our land and water? The idea of a fair

trade exchange of our objects was ludicrous. I didn’t know whether I was going to come across

my great-grandmother in one of these cases…I don’t know what I am going to see when I go

to a museum… Often the provenance is not clear. How did that shield get there, was it taken

from one of my ancestors in a colonial situation? So for me it is not a simple thing to walk into

a museum space”.

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Hedi and Gaye both raised an important point in relation to guardianship of material culture

and the way museums need to be responsible for the histories of colonialism. Today

ethnographic museum attitudes are changing globally, and all aim to work in partnership,

through collaborative workshops and respect for local indigenous communities. In relation to

“Who benefits?” during her observation of museum audiences at British Museum aboriginal

exhibition Melissa felt it was too little, too late.

“Is it really worth the sacrifice of a 6 second baffled observation of aboriginal art when people

don’t even understand it?”

In absence of these objects amongst aboriginal communities, the debate equally highlighted

the importance of intangible cultural heritage, and the transmission of inter-generational

knowledge from one generation to the next. In our rapid 21stc digitised world, facebook,

instagram and twitter, are all a highly consumed form of communication by indigenous

communities. This social media platform is often the only way an empowered voice can be

heard directly and has become extremely important for todays’ youth. The issue of the

‘indigenous voice’ raises further questions discussed in an alternative panel in this festival.

Kungkarangkalpa : Seven Sisters (2013)

Aboriginal Artists Hogan, Tjaruwa Woods, Yarangka Thomas, Estelle Hogan, Ngalpingka Simms and Myrtle

Pennington, Acrylic on canvas, 2013. © the artists, courtesy Spinifex Arts Project.

One of the key exhibition aboriginal Dreamtime images is Kungkarangkalpa 2013. It is a

large acrylic painting by six senior Spinifex women of the Great Victoria Desert. The visual

composition has large black dots and red lines and circles of luscious green and a pure white

background. Each shape corresponds to a symbolic element in the indigenous landscape

which maybe an aboriginal ancestral shrine, a camp or watering hole. The painting refers to

the story of the Seven Sisters from the Dreaming: A group of women were pursued by Nyiru,

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a lustful man disguised as a python. They escaped into the sky and transformed into stars,

which enables aboriginals to navigate across their own ancestral country in time and space.

Overall this highly informative panel discussion provided fascinating new insights into the

Museum debate of “Who Owns Culture?, from a curatorial, indigenous and anthropological

perspective. What became apparent was to what degree can any cultural or museum object be

understood absent of the context in which it has been produced? In this discussion it was clear

many of these material objects rightly need to be with the indigenous people that produced

them. The direct debates will certainly alter the way material culture is perceived and

represented in global ethnographic museum displays by this audience. I know I will never view

indigenous art in the same way again. A note to the political activist Melissa Lukashenko,

thank-you. You had a direct message and you delivered it. This panel event would definitely

not have been the same without the power and representation of your critical indigenous voice.

For further details on the Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation Exhibition,

please see http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/indigenous_australia.aspx

References

1) Museums Repatriation of cultural property and museum objects is a complex political, historical, ethical and emotional issue. For further reference see the museum website for details on Tasmanian (TAC) repatriation of human bodily remains. www.britishmuseum.org/aboutus/management/human_remains/repatriation_to_tasmania.aspx. See the Museum Association website for general repatriation policy. https://www.museumsassociation.org/policy/01092006-policy-statement-on-repatriation-of-cultural-property

2) The Meaning of Museum objects relates to the academic debates associated with various theorists.

These publications explore how people create objects but equally how objects create people, as art

has a biography too.

Gell, A (1982) Art and Agency: Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon

(1992) ‘The Technology of Enchantment and The Enchantment of Technology’, in The Art of

Anthropology: Essays and Diagrams (1992) (eds.) Alfred Gell and Eric Hirsch. Continuum

International Publishing Group, Athlone.

Koyptoff, I (1986) ‘The cultural biography of things: commoditization as a process’ in The Social Life

of things (ed.) Appadurai, A. Cambridge CUP.

3) In additional to the British Museum, the other 3 major ethnographic museums in the United Kingdom are:

The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University : https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/

Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, Cambridge University: https: maa.cam.ac.uk/

Horniman Gallery, South London https://www.horniman.ac.uk/

Article written by Yasmin Hales Mphil: Festival social media blogger and author for the “Who’s Culture?” panel

at the Australia and New Zealand Literature festival, Kings College, London, 6th May 2015. Copyright Notice:

Yasmin Hales © 2015-2022. No unauthorized use of written material without written permission from the

author and panellists.