Ancient mummified Maori head returned

This fellow is finally headed home. (Sorry.) French museum officials are returning this mummified Maori warrior head to New Zealand after more than a century at the Museum of Rouen in northern France. From the BBC:

At the town hall in Rouen, a traditional ceremony took place, where Maori elders performed chants, prayers and other rituals to honour the dead man.

The Maori elders then rubbed noses with Mayor Valerie Fourneyron, a traditional Maori greeting, before signing the restitution agreement.

New Zealand first began requesting the return of the relics in the 1980s, but France's laws on cultural artefacts meant it could not give up the Maori heads in its possession.

In 2007, Rouen's council voted to send theirs back, but were overruled by the Ministry of Culture, which feared it could set a precedent for countries to reclaim their historical artefacts.

New Zealand's Dominion Post newspaper reported that the delegation would be bringing home nine heads in total.

"The French government have provided Te Papa, on behalf of Maori, the ability to bring these ancestors home," Maori leader Michelle Hippolite told the paper.

"France hands back Maori mummified head to New Zealand"

• [dargaud]

  I don’t see what all the fuss is about, I’d love to be displayed in a museum after I’m dead. Unless the label is: “Rather common exemplary of zoophiliac decadent fetishist shoe licker”

• [Dave H]

  These Moko’ed heads were quite popular with European visitors to New Zealand. So much so that the Maori developed quite an industry in smoked, dried, & tattooed heads.

  There are even accounts of shipwrecked and kidnapped European sailors being turned into souvenirs. It will be interesting to see how many of these native New Zealanders will turn out to be from England.

• [Taniwha]

  This is tagged “CULTURAL” but probably needs a “CULTURALLY INSENSITIVE” tag instead – displaying a head, especially with full moko is just wrong (in this cultural context) – even if it’s a computer generated simulation like this one

  • [teapot]

    displaying a head, especially with full moko is just wrong (in this cultural context) – even if it’s a computer generated simulation like this one

    Computer-generated?? That’s a real photo if I’m not mistaken.

    According to this page the issue is with copying a moko, not displaying it:
    http://tattoo.about.com/cs/articles/a/maori_tamoko.htm
    How are we supposed to learn without looking?

    Obviously it is culturally insensitive to steal a head from somewhere, take it half the way across the world and put it in a museum, but that’s why the situation is being remedied. At some point in the philosophical curve we all belong to the world, not ourselves – so I don’t accept the man-made assertion that seeing some things is forbidden. It is wrong to offend the living, but the dead don’t care.

    • [Cassandra]

      Hey teapot, you might have your own opinions about if the dead care, but I am guessing Maori do too. “Copying,” in the context Taniwha used it in, may mean something different/more complex to Maori people and culture than what can be gotten across in an article you found in the internet when you searched Google.

      I am very pleased these people are getting their ancestors back.

• [Neon Tooth]

  This artefact speaks very loudly about life in the South Pacific before the arrival of the Europeans – how sad that it will be lost to humanity forever.

  How so?

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    I read that half a dozen times before I realized that it’s referring to lost culture, not the head.

• [Lyle Hopwood]

  “The Maori elders then rubbed noses with Mayor Valerie Fourneyron, a traditional Maori greeting, before signing the restitution agreement.”

  Cultural differences are so difficult. I did not know that the traditional Maori greeting was to rub noses with Valerie Fourneyron. Now I know, I will be sure to bring her along with me whenever I’m likely to meet a Maori.

  • [Anonymous]

    Maori don’t rub noses. The greeting (a Hongi) involves putting your heads close together, usually close enough for noses to touch and sharing breath together.

• [Nemo1]

  “New Zealand’s Dominion Post newspaper reported that the delegation would be bringing home nine heads in total.”

  In a duffel bag?

• [pinehead]

  I love the tattoos on the warrior’s head pictured above. Glad to hear he’s going home.

• [rhamantus]

  When I first read about this case, I was genuinely angry with France. Human remains are not artifacts, and the fact that these are treated as such just speaks to the continuing racism and colonial attitudes that exist in Europe and the US. (After all, I highly doubt remains from a European would be treated this cavalierly.) I’m glad to see that this skull, at least, was returned to the Maori, and hope it sets a more positive precedent.

  • [peterbruells]

    Err.. Museums are full of European remains. Lot’s of bog bodies, for example.

• [Anonymous]

  Meanwhile, Austria still refuses to return Moctezuma’s headdress to Mexico.

  • [Ceronomus]

    Looks like that piece is coming home, regardless of what it really is…

    http://www.archnews.co.uk/featured/5018-montezuma%E2%80%99s-headdress-to-return-home.html

  • [Anonymous]

    They are interessants facts about the “penache”, it seems that it never belong to the last Aztec emperor but in fact was some nationalistic creation from part of the Mexican gouvernement after the revolution….

• [DamnitDani]

  He looks happy about it.

• [redstarr]

  I’m thinking the best compromise would be for France to rewrite their policy on returning artifacts to differentiate between human remains and other artifacts. That would allow for easy return procedures for bodies and heads and such, but not make it a super easy stampede to claim back anything that didn’t originate from France. That would let people honor their dead ancestors and treat/bury their remains respectfully without emptying France’s museums and research collections.

  • [zapan]

    A law differenciating human remains from other artefacts is very unlikely to pass in France. Because it would mean the immediate restitution of all the Louvre’s egyptian mummies.

    • [redstarr]

      Ah Ha! That makes good sense why all the extra worry. In my area, the big to-do about returning remains is always related to Native American remains and that sort of compromise is working very very well here. But a lot of that is because the Native American tribes are still in existence and still practicing their traditions and such and want to rebury the remains. They aren’t wanting them to fill their own display cases and bring in more tourists to their land. They genuinely identify as the dead bodies’ descendents and want to do right by their ancestors.

      It makes sense France would want to keep the Louvre’s mummies. Maybe a better compromise would be that human remains would be “loaned” back to their native nations under the conditions that they be buried in keeping with the traditional burial rites either of the dead’s era or of the current norm for what would likely be their descendants and if the conditions weren’t met (the bodies weren’t reburied promptly or properly or maintained inadequately) then France would be able to claim them back. That would make it so that people that felt like their ancestors were being denied a proper burial or their culture was being disrespected by the remains being displayed would be able to be pleased, but the nations that just wanted money makers for their own museums and specimens for their own researchers wouldn’t be encouraged to take back remains. I doubt there’s many folks in Egypt who would want to bury the mummies. I’m guessing they would probably want to display them, study them, etc, like the French would. Paying to come collect the bodies and to entomb or re-inter them, and maintain the burial sites, etc. for bodies no one would be able to view,wouldn’t seem attractive or profitable.

• [jerwin]

  From the BBC article:

  The Maori traditionally kept tribal heads as war trophies, but they later became much sought after by Western explorers.
  Once back in New Zealand, DNA tests will be carried out on the remains where necessary to determine the correct ancestral lands for a proper burial.

  Does this mean that the Maori tradition of keeping tribal heads as war trophies will be extinguished?

  • [Anonymous]

    I’m not sure what you mean – the Maori haven’t been to war in over a century, so it’s hardly an ongoing tradition. I don’t think any tribes have a collection of heads in this day and age – the purpose of this return after all, isn’t to return the heads to the tribe whose trophies they were (they weren’t always trophies, either), but to return them to their ancestors for burial.

    Also to Anon, the artifacts speak more loudly about life in the South Pacific after the arrival of the Europeans, when European fascination with the practice (and moko) actually drove production of the heads to satisfy the non-traditional market for them. Poetically enough, so that tribes could then use the money to purchase firearms so that they could resist Europeans (and other tribes raiding them to get heads to sell for firearms).

• [Culturedropout]

  Okay! Who’s been skull-fucking the Maori…?

• [Anonymous]

  This artefact speaks very loudly about life in the South Pacific before the arrival of the Europeans – how sad that it will be lost to humanity forever.

• [BB]

  Snaggle tooth.

• [Bionicrat2]

  Interesting that they were trophies. These weren’t dug out of tombs.

• [Laina Lain]

  Uh OH! The Mummy 4: The Return of Maori.

• [Brainspore]

  Alternate headline:

  “France Yields to Longtime Request, Gives Head to Maori.”