The Return of Cultural Treasures:
Should They Be Restored to Their Places of Origin?
There is finally a new sense of cultural sensitivity to the violated rights of cultures which were pillaged in the past in the supposed pursuit of knowledge. As Jenette Greenfield notes in her book The Return of Cultural Treasures, this debate has been especially contentious regarding the Australian aborigines. Here, the controversy does not merely revolve around ancient structures and artifacts, but actual ancestral bones that were taken away from their original context.
The conflict has its roots in history, a history in which European civilizations often attempted to appropriate and judge non-European civilizations as inferior societies which existed solely to educate European ones about a more primitive past. Today, museum curators and academics often fame such a conflict in terms of science versus faith, as the dominant players are research-based universities versus aboriginal cultural centers. A recent example of this is that of Tasmanian...
Such claims for physical relics seem poignant considering the plight of Tasmanian aboriginals, as theirs was an indigenous society rendered extinct because of its conflict and oppression by colonial powers.Within Australia itself, aboriginals have characterized such remains as religious relics. English institutions have used legal language and claims in opposition to tribal moral claims (Greenfield 302). This is perhaps unsurprising given the considerable number of relics from societies all over the world housed in the British Museum and elsewhere within the UK as a legacy of the widespread nature of the British Empire. The fact aboriginal skulls were once used to contrast primitive versus modern societies highlights how the extraction of such artifacts was not done intending to benefit the community from which they came.
Although some museums and societies gradually have returned their collections of ancient aboriginal human remains, others have not, citing concerns that the scientific discoveries derived from the bones, as well as the value of the completeness of…
Works Cited
Greenfield, Jenette. The Return of Cultural Treasures (3rd ed.) New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Artifact: "Fieldwork Observation Report" INTASC Standard: COMMUNICATION SKILLS: The teacher uses knowledge of effective verbal, non-verbal and media communication techniques to foster active inquiry, collaboration, and supportive interaction in the classroom. In this artifact, the writer considered and analyzed what he observed during about 20 hours in a high school classroom. He noted both strengths and weaknesses in the teaching he saw. He noted that many students were actively engaged in the
I would say that while the world seems like a smaller place, there are still problems and people still act the way they always have. There are still diseases we cannot cure and people still die. I would say that the one disease that began some 30 years ago in the 1980s has finally taken hold of the majority of the population. I would talk about how AIDS was once
Artifacts From the 19th and 20th Century 19th Century: Its funny how paper is never really given importance because of the fact that it is so inexpensive and everywhere, that most of us take it for granted. In this paper, we will look at the making of the paper and how it became one of the most disposable products in the world. Till the mid-1800's paper was considered an expensive commodity and was
Among the ironies evident in the film, the hardest-working people in the community seemed to be the black women employed by white families. That obviously conflicts with some of the most common racist themes about African-Americans: that they are "lazy" or, in the vernacular of the era, "shiftless" (Healey, 2008). Racial bias was the societal norm in Mississippi in the 1960s; in fact, both stereotyping and prejudice were actually codified
Archaeological artifacts repatriation: should the artifacts go back to their homeland? The word repatriation came from a Latin transformation of patria which means fatherland. (William, 2008). Repatriation of cultural objects involves mainly returning historical artifacts to their original culture that obtained and owned by museums and institutions that collect culture materials. This term repatriation was originally created for the Native Americans who wished to restore their cultural object from modern museums.
Artifacts and Worksheets To what extent did the artifacts contribute to your completion of the related worksheet? The artifacts were a tremendous help in making progress toward completion of the related worksheets. The opportunity to focus on one or two artifacts at a time facilitated in-depth consideration of each of the components of a grant application. Not only did this relieve some anxiety about the overall size of the project, but
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now