This paper examines some of the complex issues that relate to the management of “heritage,” primarily as such issues relate to Indigenous populations and communities. Numerous authors such as Aplin,Aplin, Heritage Identification, Conservation, and Management. Barkan and Bush,Barkan and Bush, Claiming the Stones. Brown,Brown, Who Owns Native Culture? and GreenfieldGreenfield, Return of Cultural Treasures. recognize the social, political, and symbolic aspects of heritage and discuss such issues in detail. This paper, therefore, does not approach the broader issues of heritage, but instead focuses on the intricacies of relationships between the various populations that attempt to exert control over particular aspects of heritage. While many authors recognize the role of cultural nationalists and cultural internationalists in the debate over heritage issues, I argue that Indigenous populations and other enclaves within nations— cultural “intranationalists”—comprise a new and growing voice in the debate.

The May 2004 decision of the London High Court in the matter of Thomson v. Christie's captured the interest of the salacious British press for its glamorous players: the Canadian heiress, the English aristocrat, and the international auction house. Taylor Thomson, the daughter of billionaire newspaper baron, Lord Thomson of Fleet, sued both the Marquess of Cholmondeley, a bachelor filmmaker with a fortune valued at over £100 million, and Christie's Auction House, for misrepresenting a pair of gilt and porphyry urns she purchased from Cholmondeley at a Christie's sale in London in 1994 for just under £2 million.

March 26–27, 2004, in St. Louis, Missouri, the Washington University School of Law's Whitney R. Harris Institute for Global Legal Studies and the School of Art hosted the Imperialism, Art and Restitution Conference. The conference brought together many of the world's leading experts on art and antiquities law, museum policy, and the larger cultural context surrounding these fields. The conference organizers chose several particularly controversial case studies to generate debate and discussion around the issues of whether Western states and their museums should return major works of art and antiquities, acquired during the Age of Imperialism, to the countries of origin. The case studies included the Elgin/Parthenon Marbles, the Bust of Nefertiti, and objects protected by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The format produced a lively, interdisciplinary, and sometimes passionate debate that helped crystallize issues and expose complexities but certainly produced no consensus around a simple solution of return or retain.

The most recent opinion in the so-called Kennewick Man or Ancient One (as many American Indians choose to call the skeleton) case by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unfortunately resurrects some very old and contentious issues in America. Indians mostly view the opinion as one more echo of the same old story of Native American property issues raised in the courts, but they also understand that some implications may be broader. The most direct impact of the opinion is that the Umatilla people will not be allowed to return the Ancient One to the earth, but others could be portents of a larger resurgence of anti-Indian sentiment and scientific colonialism in America. Specifically, though not directly stated as such, the court's opinion supports a notion that archaeological materials are a public heritage, no matter their culture of origin. In addition, by affirming the plaintiffs' position, the court essentially declared archaeologists and associated scientists to be the primary stewards of that heritage, much to the chagrin of many American Indian people. Along the way, the court reinforced the idea that scientifically generated evidence has greater validity than oral tradition in court, outright denying oral tradition's validity and undercutting a major intention of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Worse still, the court reflects—and by its decision supports—an idea that there may be a “white” or European history for the Americas that predates the arrival of Indians. The most damaging and long-term impact is that the decision reinforces fundamentally erroneous definitions and stereotypes about Indians as tribes, which has plagued Indian-white relations for generations.

The abundance of literature dealing with the Parthenon Marbles, the Benin Bronzes, and NAGPRA has made it seem that conflict over the fate of patrimonial property is always a story about contemporary society's encounter with its colonial past. Professor Bailkin's recent book reveals a considerably more varied, complex, and multi-layered history of cultural property controversies.

The Bonnichsen decision has been heralded as a victory for anthropology, because it appears to vindicate the position of the plaintiffs who brought their suit in order to be allowed to conduct scientific research on a 9,000-year-old skeleton from North America. It appears to be a defeat for Native Americans, who view this skeleton as an ancestor and who would prefer to see the remains of this individual returned to the ground to continue the long journey back to the earth. In fact, this polarized view of the case returns the discourse surrounding repatriation to a previous level in which arguments were made over the question, “who owns the past?” While this may be a rhetorically satisfying problem to wrestle with, it does not capture the true nature of how archaeology can engage with Native people in the process of understanding ancient lives. It presumes that the past exists as a form of property. Under this simplistic construction, human remains can exist as property and can be owned by one group or another.

The Istanbul Initiative was established in 2003 in response to concerns raised by the continuing episodes of cultural destruction that have accompanied armed conflicts in Cambodia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, and Iraq. The Initiative is comprised of Turkish academics, lawyers, and media professionals who aim to raise international awareness of the destruction of cultural heritage during wartime. Their first action was to organize the symposium A Future for Our Past in Istanbul from June 24 to 26 2004. The immediate impetus for the symposium was provided by the large-scale looting of museums, libraries, and archaeological sites that followed the Coalition invasion of Iraq in April 2003.

The conviction of Frederick Schultz is the most recent turn in a storm of controversy that began 25 years ago and does not appear to be dying down. Schultz is currently serving a prison term and owes a fine of $50,000 to the United States government. He was convicted under the National Stolen Property Act (NSPA) for conspiring to purchase Egyptian antiquities that, according to Egyptian law, were owned by the Egyptian government. The Schultz case is the latest in an emerging trend whereby the NSPA, enacted to permit criminal federal prosecution for stolen cars taken across state borders, has been applied to help foreign governments with national ownership laws to keep antiquities within their borders.

Michael F. Brown, Who Owns Native Culture?. Pp. xiii+315. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, London, 2003. ISBN 0-674-01171-6.

Michael Brown has written a book that must be read by all who have a serious concern with heritage, particularly that where the interests of “native” peoples are involved. Throughout the book, there is evidence of extensive research and careful analysis of the often complex issues that he raises. But it is not a dry tome. A sense of humor appears. Describing the ethnobotanist Richard Schultes, of Harvard University, Brown says: “He may have been the only Republican in America who freely admitted to having sampled just about every mind-altering plant yet discovered in the New World” (p. 96). The book is written in a clear style with no use of jargon.

In the last decade of the twentieth century three UNESCO/ICOM regional workshops were held in Africa (Arusha, Tanzania in 1993, Bamako, Mali in 1994 and Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo in 1996) on the fight against illicit trafficking of cultural property. In the first decade of this century already two UNESCO regional workshops have been held in Africa on the same theme. The first was held in Abuja, Nigeria in 2003, and the second, which is the focus of this report, in Cape Town, South Africa in September 2004.

When I was asked by Dr. O'Keefe, Book Editor of the International Journal of Cultural Property, to review “War and Cultural Heritage” by Kevin Chamberlain I immediately agreed because I wished to see the first scholarly article-by-article commentary on the 1999 Second Protocol (“the Second Protocol”) to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (“the Convention”) as well as another commentary on the Convention and the 1954 First Protocol.

Even now in 2006, sixty years after the end of World War II, the subject of cultural assets seized under Nazi persecution (“looted art”) and displaced during the war (“trophy art”), continues to be of interest to politicians, historians, legal experts, and many others. Thus, at a meeting in January 2005, Germany's Advisory Commission for the return of cultural assets seized as a result of Nazi persecution, particularly those cultural assets removed from Jewish ownership, recommended the return of four paintings presently in the possession of the Federal Republic of Germany to the community of heirs of Julius Freund. Also in January 2005, Germany's government, all federal states and central organizations of municipalities called on German public bodies not to slow down in their search for cultural assets seized as a result of Nazi persecution and to report any items found to the Koordinierungsstelle für Kulturgutverluste (Coordination Office for Lost Cultural Assets) for display as part of its Internet database www.lostart.de. Furthermore, in February 2005, Franz von Lenbach's painting “Prinzessin zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn” which had been seized by the Nazis was identified through www.lostart.de and returned to the heirs of Bernhard Altmann. The painting was part of the Remaining Stock CCP (“Linzer Liste”) within www.lostart.de enlisting cultural objects with provenance gaps in the administration of Germany's Bundesamt zur Regelung offener Vermögensfragen (Federal Office for the settlement of ownership issues). The object was on loan from the Bundesamt and in possession of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Köln (Germany).

Michael Brown has written a book that must be read by all who have a serious concern with heritage, particularly that where the interests of “native” peoples are involved. Throughout the book, there is evidence of extensive research and careful analysis of the often complex issues that he raises. But it is not a dry tome. A sense of humor appears. Describing the ethnobotanist Richard Schultes, of Harvard University, Brown says: “He may have been the only Republican in America who freely admitted to having sampled just about every mind-altering plant yet discovered in the New World” (p. 96). The book is written in a clear style with no use of jargon.

Book notes.

Brazil's legislation no. 230/2002 goes into effect, mandating that all new public works projects must incorporate and pay for archaeological salvage and necessitated by the project. Enterprises must pay also for storage and public outreach, including heritage education. Diário Oficial da União de 17 de dezembro de 2002.

The International Journal of Cultural Property is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes papers and other materials representing a broad set of perspectives on problems relating to cultural property, cultural heritage, and related issues. Contributions are welcome from the wide variety of fields implicated in the debates—law, anthropology, public policy, archaeology, art history, preservation, museum-, tourism-, and heritage studies—and from a variety of perspectives and interests—indigenous, Western, and non-Western; academic, professional and amateur; consumers and producers—to promote meaningful discussion of the complexities, competing values, and other concerns that form the environment within which these disputes exist.

Chronicles: January 1, 2004––December 31, 2004.

Index to Volume Twelve.