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CURRENT AFFAIRS
ANALYSIS
WHO OWNS CULTURE?
TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED
DOCUMENTARY
Presenter: Kenan Malik
Producer: Ingrid Hassler
Editor: Nicola Meyrick
BBC
White City
201 Wood Lane
London
W12 7TS
020 8752 7279
Broadcast Date:
Repeat Date:
Tape Number:
Duration:
29.07.04
01.08.04
PLM430/04VT1030
27.20
MACGREGOR:
In the British Museum, you can
see how that Greek art emerges from a whole tradition of the Eastern
Mediterranean and then how it invigorates a different tradition in Rome,
India and the rest of Europe. In the British Museum, they are clearly
one of the great achievements of the whole of mankind. All great
works of art are the result of borrowing from other traditions.
MALIK: Would you say the same for the
display of the Benin Bronzes, for instance?
MACGREGOR:
I would say very much the same of
the Benin Bronzes. They completely transformed the way people in
Europe thought about Africa. It was the presence of the Benin Bronzes
and that extraordinary sophistication of making, that made it completely
impossible for Europeans to go on thinking of Africa as not having its
own culture, and a very great culture. The circumstances of the taking
of the Benin Bronzes were violent, but if we look at what happened
when they arrived, it seems to me that from then on it was totally
beneficial.
MALIK: But isn t it unethical for museums to
cling on to items that were originally stolen? Not necessarily, Neil
MacGregor argues. The importance of the British Museum to the world
today, he suggests, outweighs the dubious provenance of some of its
artefacts.
MACGREGOR:
The purpose of the British
Museum is to allow people to see that all the societies of the world and
all the cultures of the world are interconnected. That s the one big
thing that the British Museum, better than any other museum in the
world probably, can allow you to do
to see the oneness of humanity.
MALIK: Is that what you mean when you
describe the British Museum as a world museum?
MACGREGOR:
Yes, the British Museum is in a
sense the memory of mankind, as Ben Okri said. The extraordinary
thing about it is that it was set up in 1753 to gather together things from
all over the world, but always to be held open free to people from
anywhere in the world. So from the beginning, this very idealistic
notion, if you like, of trustees holding for the entire world the means of
understanding the entire world.
MALIK: A cynic might suggest that world
museum is just a fancy phrase to allow the British Museum to cling on to
its treasures. After all, the museum may be free to anyone in the world but
most people in the world can t take advantage of its largesse. Yet it s not
just rich tourists or white middle class Britons who benefit. Nearly a third
of Londoners are non-white and the fastest growing population is African.
In an age in which many museums are seeking to be socially inclusive ,
some curators believe that cultural objects from around the world should be
used to attract groups such as African-Caribbeans or Asians - that might
otherwise walk right past their doors. Lola Young was until recently head
of cultural policy for the Greater London Authority. Does she agree with
this approach?
YOUNG: It s important for diaspora peoples
from wherever can see those objects in their newly adopted homelands. I
don t have a problem with that. Where I have a problem is when the
objects and artefacts themselves aren t treated with appropriate respect. If
too should have the right to say what should happen to their family. We
are not so insular as to believe that our way is the only way.
MALIK: Most people would understand if
museums had to release human remains to close relatives. But does it make
sense to insist that bones thousands of years old are off-limits for study or
display because a particular culture views even remote ancestors as close
kin? In any case who exactly are indigenous groups? And how do we
know what they want? Michael Brown, Professor of Anthropology at
Williams College, Massachusetts, and author of Who Owns Native
Culture?.
BROWN: Where indigenous peoples have
formally recognized political organizations that are recognized by the state
and are authorized to develop policies, then that s the group that one deals
with, those are the organizations that one deals with. Now internal to the
community, of course, there may be great debates about whether elected
political leaders or even traditional authorities of one sort or another have
the power and the authority to make those decisions in particular contexts.
Even the question of who is indigenous gets extremely vexed as indigenous
peoples inter-marry with non-native communities. I mean right now
American Indians have the highest rate of out marriage of any ethnic group
in the United States, so over time it becomes increasingly difficult to define
who is an American Indian. And that s a problem that people are wrestling
with in North America, they re starting to wrestle with it in Australia, and
that s going to be the next battleground: trying to determine who qualifies
as indigenous in the first place.
the sample is male. The majority have come from local monasteries,
generations of monks, etcetera. So obviously monks do play around, but
the majority won t have had ancestors as such and, therefore, to try and
track down ancestors would be you know a very difficult task and probably
a very expensive task and would involve DNA testing, etcetera, of the
whole of London probably.
We ve got you know huge amounts of material, but there s not enough
information about them. I ve got nine curators of human remains in the
museum - more curators than possibly any other national museum in
Europe working on human remains and possibly any other university
department. We re examining those. When we ve finished, we plan to put
them ideally in a catacomb where they can be sealed up.
MALIK: Is that not just for your benefit and
nobody else s? After all, no one s claiming those bones, so is it not a way
of assuaging your moral guilt, if you like, about those bones?
LOHMAN: If you have collections of
who gave their life to the church,
them in sacred ground and not keep
I think culture is a sort of human
to whom those objects or artefacts
human rights.
male monks
I think there s a moral obligation to place
them in the museum.
right and, therefore, giving those cultures
belong to, I think is part of restoring
and how that actually pans out on a day-to-day basis for them is another
question altogether. So I think that that s absolutely legitimate that that
group of people should then say well we want to have some sort of
control over how we re portrayed and how our symbols and our
symbolism are used.
MALIK: In one current court case in
Australia, Aborigines are demanding that the national airline Quantas
stop using the kangaroo logo as it s an Aboriginal symbol. In another
case, they are seeking copyright over all photographs and paintings of
the Australian landscape, which they say is central to their spiritual life.
Where will this end? Must the British government approve every
production of King Lear and Othello? Should only Jamaicans be
allowed to play reggae? Professor Adam Kuper of Brunel University.
KUPER: The notion of ownership is certainly
meaningful and one could own objects which you might describe as
cultural objects because you had made them or you d designed them or
you d bought them. But to claim some sort of ownership on the grounds of
descent from a group of people who might in the distant past once have
invented those objects, seems to me to be bizarre, seems to me absolutely
impossible. Are we going to, as English people, ask others to pay a
copyright fee when they play cricket? It s ridiculous.
MALIK: Ridiculous it may be, but cultural
bureaucrats seem hooked on the idea. UNESCO has suggested that each
indigenous people must retain permanent control over all elements of its
own heritage , including songs, stories, scientific knowledge and
artworks. It has even suggested the setting up of folklore protection
boards . UNESCO s push to protect every culture, Michael Brown argues,
is counterproductive.
BROWN: Every culture or every nation is
supposed to have members of its culture provide inventories of all elements
that are subject to protection, but of course that is protecting by making
something public. That runs foul of the sense of many Aboriginal
Australian and Native American groups that certain kinds of information
simply should not be made public, should only be held and used by
whatever sub group of the population, typically religious leaders, is
empowered to use it safely and effectively. And so one of the ironies is at
the local level indigenous peoples themselves are moving towards greater
and greater secrecy.
MALIK: Isn t there also a case of a Native
American group trying to dissuade outsiders from learning its language so
as to be able to better protect its culture?
BROWN: Well I was told that contract workers
who work in Zuni, New Mexico, are specifically prohibited from learning
the language of the Zuni people
the assumption being, as you mentioned
earlier, that learning the language gives them access to ritual secrets and
other forms of understanding that they simply should not have access to.
MALIK: In a different context though, would
we not call this xenophobia or racism?
BROWN: Well it s true
if the shoe were on the
other foot, if Anglo Americans were forbidding Native Americans from
speaking English, it would be considered a completely unacceptable racist
policy. It really sets up a slippery slope at the end of which people are
trying to create cultural divisions that never existed in the first place.
MALIK: The campaign for the repatriation of
artefacts and remains, and for the protection of minority cultures, is
motivated by the best of intentions. Its consequences, though, can be
deeply troubling. It presents an idea of culture as fixed and immutable, and
as something that people own by virtue of their biological ancestry
an
almost racial view of the world. Many museums, especially in America
and Australia, now accede to demands from indigenous groups that in any
other context would be seen as unacceptable. Some, for instance, ban
women or non-tribal people from viewing certain parts of their collections.
Others prefer to hide objects away in basements rather than risk causing
offence. This confusion and insecurity on the part of museums needs to be
sorted out, says Norman Palmer - particularly where human remains are
concerned.
PALMER: The existence of all these questions
argues incontrovertibly for an independent resolution process. These
questions must be examined. We do not say that one side is
incontrovertibly right or wrong. What we say to each side is if you ve got
a good arguable case, submit that case to independent evaluation.
MALIK: Do you think there should be binding
guidelines on museums as to how they should approach the question of
human remains that they possess in their collections?
PALMER: Our position is that the position of
human remains in museums is sufficiently important that it should be
subject to regulation by a code of practice. The code of practice would be
enforced, if you like, through a licensing system, and museums granted the
license would depend upon its adherence to the code of practice.
MALIK: Many museums are not keen on rigid
guidelines, preferring a case-by-case approach to every dispute. But, says
the British Museum s Neil MacGregor, there is one area where binding
international agreements are not only welcome but may defuse many of the
current disputes over cultural ownership.
MACGREGOR:
We have in the last thirty, forty years,
with the growth of international exhibitions, seen an unparalleled sharing
of world culture. That has of course been focused overwhelmingly on the
rich countries of the world. The next challenge must surely be to find ways
of sharing the culture of the world with the less rich countries. The
challenge is to allow as many of our objects as possible to be seen in
different contexts, especially in the countries of origin, so what we need is
a legal framework that will enable that to happen, that will ensure that
objects can be lent to the country of origin and return so that they can be
displayed again in the context here and indeed lent to other countries.
MALIK: What you re saying is that you d like
to build a series of universal museums across the world?
MACGREGOR:
Absolutely. I think what we need
across the world are a series of the experiences of universal museums
through temporary exhibitions and revolving loans. But we need a legal
framework that would allow that to happen.
MALIK: The idea of a universal museum may
not be fashionable these days. But Neil MacGregor s vision is surely
highly commendable. We shouldn t be ashamed of the treasures possessed
by places such as the British Museum. Nor of the Enlightenment ideal of a