How 4 countries are preparing to bring stolen treasures home

NEW YORK - The discussion about returning wrongfully acquired heritage to countries in the global south has, until now, largely focused on the steps taken by Western museums and governments. But away from the spotlight, in countries like Cameroon and Indonesia, heritage workers, government officials and activists are laying the groundwork to reclaim long lost treasures, a process most expect will take decades.

Identifying the objects and securing their recovery is just one part of the task. Challenges include establishing who will own and take care of the artefacts, upgrading museum infrastructure, involving communities and awakening public interest.

“We have an enormous mission,” said Professor Placide Mumbembele Sanger from the University of Kinshasa who is advising Congo’s government.

“This is not something we can complete in five years,” he added. “It will be a long process.”

The trigger for the global movement towards restituting plundered heritage was a 2017 pledge by President Emmanuel Macron of France, in a speech in Burkina Faso, to permanently give back African patrimony in French museums. Since then, Germany, the Netherlands, France and Belgium have set up national guidelines to process claims and return artefacts. A milestone in this process came in 2022, when Germany

transferred ownership of 1,100 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria.

There have been some hiccups. A decision by Nigeria’s outgoing president to hand the returning artefacts to a direct descendant of the ruler they had been stolen from created confusion. Some German curators voiced concerns that the objects may not be cared for or displayed, but Berlin argued that the return of the Bronzes was unconditional, and it was not for Germany to dictate what Nigeria does with its reclaimed heritage.

That position is shared by heritage workers in Cameroon, Congo, Indonesia and Nepal, who said they are watching developments in Nigeria closely. The questions around returning heritage to the communities of origin is occupying them too: In Nepal, statues representing gods are heading back to the places of worship from which they were stolen; in Indonesia, the government is talking with regional museum curators to make museums more accessible so that ritual objects can be used in religious ceremonies.

Heritage workers in the global south also stressed the need to cooperate in researching the historical context of the losses and the stories behind individual objects.

Here is a closer look at developments in four countries.

1. Indonesia

The spectacular Lombok Diamond, set in an intricately wrought hexagon of gold flowers and leaves, is one of nearly 500 Indonesian cultural treasures wrongfully acquired during Dutch colonial rule that are returning home in September. The restitutions, announced on July 6 by the Dutch government, are likely to be the first of many: Tens of thousands of Indonesian objects remain in museums in Europe, primarily in the Netherlands.

Indonesia’s preparations to receive its heritage have developed in tandem with the structures the Netherlands has set up. In February 2021, Indonesia’s minister of culture established a restitution team as a counterpart to the Dutch government’s panel, led by a former ambassador to the Netherlands. In 2022, the Indonesian government sent a formal request to the Netherlands for the return of eight groups of objects: the July restitution comprised four of these groups. The Dutch panel has not yet issued its decision on the remaining four.

Mr Hilmar Farid, the director-general of Indonesia’s Ministry of Education and Culture, said the Dutch panel wants his government to make claims for specific groups of objects in Dutch museums. “The problem is we don’t really know what exists,” he said. “The next step is for the Dutch to open access for Indonesian researchers to their museum collections.”

Because the objects left Indonesia more than a century ago, local narratives attached to them have, in many cases, been lost, Mr Farid said. Each of the rings in the returning Lombok treasure, for instance, “has its own story”, he said. “The speed and volume of restitutions is not the priority: the priority is knowledge production. We will focus on items that tell stories.”

The Indonesian state will be the owner of all returning heritage, and the National Museum in Jakarta will serve as its custodian. But Mr Farid is also starting to engage local Indonesian communities, and recently held talks with museum staff on the island of Lombok on how objects of local relevance can be displayed there in the future. Many of the returning items have ritual significance: Bowls in the Lombok treasure were traditionally used for offerings in religious ceremonies, for instance.

“Museums will need to be more open and accessible to different practices,” Mr Farid said. “We will need a more participatory approach to allow people who are not traditional museumgoers to interact with the objects and their stories.”

2. Congo

When Mr Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde, Congo’s Prime Minister, received an inventory of 84,000 Congolese heritage objects and natural specimens from his counterpart in Belgium in 2022, it was the symbolic beginning of what Mr Lukonde described as a “reappropriation of our national memory”.

After that, the Congolese government adopted a decree to create a system for handling restituted cultural heritage from museums in Europe and invited experts in art history, law, philosophy and foreign relations to advise it.

Until 1960, Belgium controlled a vast territory in Central Africa – around 80 times the size of the European country itself – including what is now Congo. Belgian explorers, soldiers, government representatives, merchants and missionaries took home items they had stolen, bought or otherwise acquired.

In 2022, Belgium’s Parliament approved a law paving the way for restitution of cultural property to Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. It has also created a commission to work with its Congolese counterpart.

The law is sweeping in scope. Any object acquired during colonial rule is eligible for restitution – it does not have to have been looted.

3. Cameroon

In 2022, Ms Sylvie Njobati, a heritage activist from the West African nation of Cameroon, scored a major victory in her campaign to bring home looted objects from Germany.

Using the Twitter name BringBackNgonnso, Ms Njobati has lobbied German museums and joined forces on social media with other groups calling for the restitution of colonial-era plunder.

A wooden figure decorated with cowrie shells called Ngonnso is on display in the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. For the Nso people of Cameroon, to whom Ms Njobati belongs, Ngonnso is much more than a lost artefact: The carved figure is the embodiment of the mother of their community, and its loss more than a century ago is keenly felt to this day, she said.

The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the organisation that oversees Berlin’s major museums, agreed in June 2022 to give Ngonnso back. To facilitate such returns, Cameroon’s government has set up a restitution commission, according to Mrs Maryse Nsangou Njikam, a culture adviser to the country’s embassy in Germany. Ms Njobati said its members plan to visit Germany later this year to discuss how to proceed.

Other German holders of Cameroonian artefacts are gradually following Berlin’s lead: The University of Mainz, for instance, in July offered to return a beaded bracelet and a small bag containing personal items, brought back by a German military officer after he raided the kingdom of Nso in 1902.

But there are still an estimated 40,000 Cameroonian objects in German museums – more than in the state collections in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, according to a report produced by Cameroonian and German scholars.

The artefacts in Germany include textiles, musical instruments, ritual masks, manuscripts, weapons and tools, many of which were plundered in violent raids. The report lists at least 180 “punitive expeditions” involving looting and destruction during more than 30 years of German colonial rule.

“We have immense potential to reclaim our heritage and our dignity,” Ms Njobati said.

And while she had a special connection to Ngonnso, it was also “just the starting point”, she said. There is no inventory of Cameroonian heritage around the world, Ms Njobati said, but added that she had seen artefacts in France, and that she believes there are objects in Portugal, as well.

4. Nepal

Nepal’s situation is different from that of the three countries above. Its heritage was not plundered in a colonial context: After a 1951 revolution overturned the totalitarian Rana Dynasty that had ruled the country for more than a century, Nepal opened its borders to the world. Western academics and tourists bought statues and carvings looted by locals, often from temples in the Kathmandu Valley, then took their purchases out of the country. The trafficking reached a peak in the 1970s and 1980s.

Many of the looted objects have since entered Western museum collections via bequests and donations.

“We are a poor country, and people saw how lucrative it was to sell their gods,” said Ms Alisha Sijapati, the campaign director of the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign.

“Kathmandu was treated as an exotic playground. Communities lost something,” she said. “We rely on these statues – they have superpowers that help us with our lives.”

The Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign, an activist organisation, was established in 2021 and has already secured the return of more than 25 stolen religious statues, according to Ms Sijapati. Those include a 1,000-year-old sculpture portraying two Hindu deities, from the Dallas Museum of Art. The campaign researchers have traced many more and are working towards their return, Ms Sijapati added.

The group traces plundered statues around the world and uses social media to get tips, circulate photos of missing sculptures and carvings, and to publicise its campaigns. It passes its findings to Nepal’s Department of Archaeology, which in turn works with the foreign ministry to issue claims to museums or institutions.

Ms Sijapati said the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign helps to streamline this process: “We try to do the homework very well so that their work is easier.” NYTIMES