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       #Post#: 13224--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Museum decolonization
       By: rp Date: May 5, 2022, 8:47 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       It's ok to be a "White" archaeologist:
  HTML https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/british-tourist-accused-of-smuggling-artifacts-in-iraq-faces-death-penalty-1234627261/
       [Quote] A British tourist could face the death penalty in Iraq
       after being accused of smuggling artifacts out of the country.
       Jim Fitton, a former geologist, collected stone fragments and
       shards of broken pottery as souvenirs during an archaeological
       tour of Eridu, an ancient Sumerian city in southern Iraq. He was
       arrested at the airport on March 20 after the baggage belonging
       to the tour group was searched. A German tourist who was also
       part of the tour was apprehended at the airport.
       Under Iraqi law, the intentional international export of any
       items determined to be cultural heritage is “punishable with
       execution”.
       [/Quote]
       But wait, it gets worse:
       [Quote]
       Fitton’s family members, who live in Malaysia, told the BBC that
       the fragments were “in the open, unguarded and with no signage
       warning against removal”. The tour leaders also collected shards
       and encouraged the tourists to do the same, the family said.
       [/Quote]
       Translation: it's ok to be to be "White"
       [Quote]
       The Fittons are now petitioning the British government to
       intervene in the trial, which is set to begin May 7.  Fitton’s
       lawyer has drafted a proposal for the case to be dropped, the
       family told the BBC, however the plan needs the endorsement of
       the British Foreign Office to be presented to a high-ranking
       judiciary in Iraq.
       [/Quote]
       **** you.
       #Post#: 14394--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Museum decolonization
       By: 90sRetroFan Date: June 29, 2022, 8:58 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Success:
  HTML https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/germany-ngonnso-statue-cameroon/index.html
       [quote]Germany to return stolen Ngonnso' statue to Cameroon
       Germany will return a goddess statue that was stolen from
       Cameroon 120 years ago, the Prussian Cultural Heritage
       Foundation said on Monday, part of a growing trend to give back
       artifacts taken during the colonial era.
       The female figure, known as Ngonnso', will be returned to the
       kingdom of Nso' in northwestern Cameroon. It was taken by
       colonial officer Kurt von Pavel and donated to Berlin's
       Ethnological Museum in 1903.[/quote]
       Next, all descendants of von Pavel (and all other colonial
       officers) should be prohibited from reproducing.
       [quote]The foundation also announced that it will return 23
       pieces to Namibia and is planning an agreement to repatriate
       objects to Tanzania.
       ...
       But its museums still host many famous artifacts, such as parts
       of Iraq's Babylon gate, which is on display at Berlin's Pergamon
       Museum.[/quote]'
       Related:
  HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/colonial-era/cameroon/
       #Post#: 17048--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Museum decolonization
       By: guest78 Date: December 14, 2022, 12:38 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Who Gets to Tell the Story of Ancient Egypt?
       [quote]On the eve of the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum,
       some of the country’s artifacts, from the Rosetta Stone to the
       bust of Nefertiti, remain overseas[/quote]
       [quote][...]Egypt’s riches have drawn colonizers and foreign
       treasure hunters since as early as 332 B.C.E., when Alexander
       the Great founded his namesake city on the delta. Wars with
       history’s biggest empires—the Romans, the Persians, the Arabs,
       the Ottomans and finally the British—have filled the 22
       centuries since; in 1798, Napoleon also led a comparatively
       short French invasion that led to the discovery of the Rosetta
       Stone, which opened Western Europe’s eyes to Egypt and started
       an undammable flow of ancient heritage leaving the country.
       As the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) prepares to open
       its doors in Giza in 2023, some archaeologists, Egyptologists
       and museumgoers are calling for Egyptian antiquities to be
       returned to their homeland. Arriving amid a growing push to
       decolonize American and European museums, these campaigns ask a
       crucial question: Who gets to claim these artifacts as their
       own?
       “People were asleep for years, and now they’re awake,” says
       Egyptologist Zahi Hawass. “I’m sure [Westerners] have nightmares
       of what happened: taking the history and the heritage of Africa
       to their countries with no right. There is no right for them to
       have this heritage in their country at all.”
       Egypt and Europe
       Even before Alexander the Great, Egypt was known to the Greeks,
       receiving mentions in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. The threads of
       European colonialism in Egypt have long been intertwined with
       the region’s cultural heritage: The Romans adopted and absorbed
       many aspects of ancient Egyptian customs following Octavian’s
       defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra in 30 B.C.E., but after the
       Arab conquest in the mid-seventh century C.E., European contact
       with Egypt became more sporadic...[/quote]
       [quote][...]Some of Europe’s best-known museums also got their
       start around this time, prompting a race among rivals to fill
       their galleries with the most impressive pieces. The British
       Museum, founded in London in the 1750s, had artifacts from
       ancient Egypt in its collection from the start and today houses
       the largest collection of Egyptian objects outside of Egypt. In
       the 1820s, Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia bought thousands of
       historic Egyptian objects now housed in the Neues Museum in
       Berlin. That same decade, following the translation of the
       Rosetta Stone, France’s Charles X ordered the creation of an
       Egyptian museum in the Louvre Palace in Paris, with Champollion
       as its first director.[/quote]
       [quote]Colonial acquisitions
       In the 1850s, the Ottoman-Egyptian government invited Frenchman
       Auguste Mariette, fresh from an impressive find at the Saqqara
       necropolis, to become Egypt’s first director of antiquities. The
       French handed the role down for decades, even maintaining
       control of the Department of Antiquities following the British
       occupation of Egypt in 1882. Egyptian Egyptologists were
       categorically excluded from the organization, though pioneers
       like Ahmed Kamal Pasha battled for a seat at the
       colonialist-dominated table...
       [...]“[The] legal outflow of antiquities from colonized Egypt
       contrasted with Italy, where few foreigners were allowed even to
       dig, and Greece, where foreign excavators had to renounce any
       claim to their finds,” writes Donald Malcolm Reid in Contesting
       Antiquity in Egypt...[/quote]
       Entire article:
  HTML https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-gets-to-tell-the-story-of-ancient-egypt-180981263/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
       If westerners were having nightmares about it I'm sure they
       would have returned everything a long time ago?
       #Post#: 19594--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Museum decolonization
       By: 90sRetroFan Date: May 16, 2023, 6:13 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
  HTML https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-65614490
       [quote]The ruler of Ghana's Asante people has asked the British
       Museum to return gold items in its collection to his country.
       The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, recently met the museum's
       director Dr Hartwig Fischer for discussions.
       The museum's collection includes works taken from the Asante
       palace in Kumasi during the war with the British of 1874.
       The British Museum told the BBC it is "exploring the possibility
       of lending items" to Ghana.[/quote]
       It's OK for lending to be "white"?
       [quote]Ethiopia wants the British Museum to return ceremonial
       crosses, weapons, jewellery, sacred altar tablets and other
       items taken from Maqdala in the north of the country during
       British military action in 1868.
       The Nigerian government has also formally asked the museum to
       return 900 Benin Bronzes.
       These beautiful bronze and brass sculptures were created by
       specialist guilds working for the royal court of the Oba, or
       King, in Benin City from the 16th Century onwards.
       Many were forcibly removed when the British captured the city in
       1897.
       Ghana's government has set up a Restitution Committee to look at
       the return of items taken from the Asante Palace which are now
       in collections around the world.
       Nana Oforiatta Ayim, who sits on that committee, told the BBC:
       "These objects are largely sacred ones and their return is about
       more than just restitution. It is also about reparation and
       repair, for the places they were taken from, but also those who
       did the taking."
       ...
       "At the end of the day, objects like the ones taken in 1874 were
       taken under horrifically violent circumstances… There needs to
       be honesty, accountability and action".[/quote]
       #Post#: 20015--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Museum decolonization
       By: 90sRetroFan Date: May 31, 2023, 4:18 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
  HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElCx5y8j8f0
       Woke comments:
       [quote]People from India, Nepal, Africa should unite damand back
       their artifacts facts from colonisers.[/quote]
       [quote]european has no shame[/quote]
       [quote]West - The thief factory...[/quote]
       [quote]Western countries should be punished for stealing the
       artifacts.[/quote]
       [quote]Britain killed 4 million Indians in Bengal in 1943 by
       imposing a famine[/quote]
       [quote]Britain took $45 Trillion from India over 200 years of
       rule[/quote]
       #Post#: 20616--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Museum decolonization
       By: 90sRetroFan Date: June 24, 2023, 2:34 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       It's OK for translations to be "white":
  HTML https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/british-museum-apologizes-using-translator-085459451.html
       [quote]British Museum apologizes after using translator’s work
       in China exhibition without pay or acknowledgment
       ...
       The show, which featured 19th century Chinese works including
       poems by feminist and revolutionary Qiu Jin, didn’t seem to
       include credits for translators, a friend told Wang. And yet,
       the Qiu Jin translations seemed to lift directly from Wang’s own
       work — was she involved in the exhibit?
       No, Wang replied: She’d never been contacted by the museum,
       which used her work without permission, pay or acknowledgment.
       It was an “unintentional human error for which the Museum has
       apologized to Yilin Wang,” it said, adding that it had removed
       her translations from the exhibition, and offered payment for
       the duration they were up, as well as for the translations that
       remain in a printed catalog.
       But these measures fall short and the apology rings hollow, Wang
       told CNN in a phone interview Friday.
       She criticized the statement for sounding passive instead of
       taking proper accountability. And, she said, it neglects to
       address the larger questions this incident has raised about
       ethics in academia and what she describes as the frequent
       erasure of translators — especially women and people of color.
       ...
       when translations are used without credit, it’s this time,
       effort and knowledge being poached.
       “I would urge the British Museum to come negotiate with me in
       good faith, that they’d be more apologetic,” Wang said, adding:
       “It’s really important to have discussions about copyright,
       about crediting translators’ labor, about making sure that this
       does not happen again and taking steps to correct it
       properly.”[/quote]
       Radically, the best way to stop it from happening again is for
       the victims of colonial-era theft to take back their stolen
       property altogether, and eliminate the bloodlines which stole
       them. Every day the stolen items continue to be displayed, it's
       not only the time, effort and knowledge of translations being
       poached, but also the time, effort and knowledge that went into
       making the exhibited items themselves!
       Why is Wang only complaining about the stolen translations but
       not about the stolen items themselves?
       Woke comments:
       [quote]The British have been stealing all over the world for
       centuries.
       What do you expect?[/quote]
       [quote]The british like to steal. [/quote]
       [quote]The british love to steal. [/quote]
       [quote]CNN uses the word "using" when reporting West
       stealing[/quote]
       #Post#: 20905--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Statue decolonization
       By: antihellenistic Date: July 12, 2023, 9:18 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       The Netherlands to return cultural treasures to Indonesia and
       Sri Lanka
  HTML https://qonversations.wor
       ld/the-netherlands-to-return-cultural-treasures-to-indonesia-and
       -sri-lanka/?twclid=24eut13sldgukfk4lgj0dsrr0t
       [img width=1280
       height=1060]
  HTML https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2G3H8KH/flag-burning-netherlands-2G3H8KH.jpg[/img]
       #Post#: 21167--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Museum decolonization
       By: 90sRetroFan Date: July 27, 2023, 6:25 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
  HTML https://www.yahoo.com/news/crown-jewel-carries-weight-uks-082245574.html
       [quote]The star of Britain's crown jewels, the Koh-i-Noor
       diamond, is back on view after a notable absence from Charles
       III's coronation that highlighted the nation's awkward ties with
       its colonial past.
       ...
       The British state-chartered East India Company formally annexed
       the Kingdom of Punjab in 1849 after winning the Second
       Anglo-Sikh War, gaining the diamond as part of the resulting
       peace treaty and giving it to Queen Victoria.
       Yet, New Delhi has repeatedly sought its return and foreign
       ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi said last year: "We have been
       raising this matter from time to time with the UK government and
       we will continue to explore ways and means for obtaining a
       satisfactory resolution of the matter."
       ...
       "I don't know what the legal argument would be to say that it
       should be returned to India, considering that it was gifted to
       Queen Victoria by the East India Company and was not taken from
       India by the British," LeVian told AFP at the Tower of London,
       which his company had taken over for an event.[/quote]
       The East India Company stole it from India! Stolen property
       should be returned to the victim of theft, not kept by the
       recipient of the thief's gifting! Why are Westerners so bad at
       understanding this simple principle?
  HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/questions-debates/t1853/msg19144/?topicseen#msg19144
       [quote][quote]If X steals from Y, then Z inherits the stolen
       item from X, and Z refuses to return it to Y on the grounds that
       Z was not the one who personally stole it, what does that tell
       us about Z?[/quote]
       This isn't even what we were talking about, you are strawmanning
       me with the backdrop of the random context you inserted.[/quote]
       Back to first link:
       [quote]"This diamond wasn't discovered by the Indian
       government," he added, saying that India didn't exist as a
       sovereign entity at the time of its discovery.[/quote]
       It doesn't have to be! All we need to prove is that it was
       stolen from India! Britain admits this in public:
       [quote]The diamond's display at the Tower of London now contains
       a label reading "a symbol of conquest", saying the peace treaty
       "compelled" the 10-year-old maharaja to "surrender" it.[/quote]
       Woke comments:
       [quote]It was mined near Hyderabad's Golconda mines. That's
       present day India.. no whitewashing around it.[/quote]
       [quote]India should dig up the 1000s of acres of British era
       graves that are now in prime locations all over the country -
       Bangalore, Delhi, Lucknow - and auction the land for use for
       hospitals, parking garages. That alone will be worth 10X more
       than Kohinoor.[/quote]
       #Post#: 21421--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Colonial Crimes
       By: guest98 Date: August 9, 2023, 2:57 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
  HTML https://www.cnn.com/style/article/yilin-wang-translator-british-museum-settlement-intl-hnk/index.html
       British Museum agrees to pay translator whose work it used
       without permission
       [quote]
       A translator whose work was used by the British Museum without
       her permission won a victory this week after reaching a
       settlement with the institution, following two months of
       negotiations and online campaigning
       The museum came under fire in June after reports emerged that
       it had used writer Yilin Wang’s translations of 19th century
       poems by the feminist and revolutionary Qiu Jin for its
       exhibition “China’s hidden century.”
       It had not contacted Wang, who is based in Vancouver, or offered
       to pay her for the translations, and the exhibition included no
       credits for her work.
       The museum later admitted it had “inadvertently omitted” these
       steps and apologized, removing Wang’s translations and the
       original poetry from the exhibition. Those actions irked many
       observers who argued it should have offered to pay for the
       translations instead, rather than render the poetry inaccessible
       to museum-goers.
       The settlement, signed by Wang and the museum last Friday, will
       reinstate the poetry and translations, this time with proper
       credit and compensation, Wang told CNN in a phone interview. She
       said this was an important step in recognizing the often
       invisible, complex work of translators.
       One of Wang’s peers had worked to translate the official BTS
       book, making her well known among the community, which has a
       long history of banding together to support causes like planting
       trees in BTS’ honor and donating to movements like Black Lives
       Matter.
       “It really showed me the collective power, as communities coming
       together to demand accountability from institutions,” she added.
       [/quote]
       #Post#: 21780--------------------------------------------------
       Re: Museum decolonization
       By: 90sRetroFan Date: August 28, 2023, 5:53 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
  HTML https://www.yahoo.com/news/calls-british-museum-return-treasures-131643870.html
       [quote]Calls for British Museum to return treasures to China
       after hundreds of artefacts stolen
       ...
       “We formally request the British Museum to return all Chinese
       cultural relics acquired through improper channels to China free
       of charge,” said the nationalist Global Times on Monday, urging
       the museum to “refrain from adopting a resistant, protracted and
       perfunctory attitude.”
       The renewed calls for the return of the relics come ahead of an
       expected trip to China by James Cleverly, which would make him
       the first foreign secretary in five years to visit Beijing.
       Earlier this month, the Telegraph disclosed that close to 2,000
       objects, worth millions of pounds, were believed to have been
       stolen or destroyed by a single thief who went undetected by the
       museum for years, leaving staff shocked at the scale of the
       losses.
       ...
       However, the full scale of the loss may never be known because
       of gaps in the museum’s inventory. When a storeroom of 942
       uncatalogued items from the 18th century was checked, all but
       seven were found to be missing.
       ...
       “The huge loopholes in the management and security of cultural
       objects in the British Museum exposed by this scandal have led
       to the collapse of a long-standing and widely circulated claim
       that ‘foreign cultural objects are better protected in the
       British Museum’,” said the Global Times.
       Accusing the UK of a “bloody, ugly and shameful colonial
       history”, it added that the UK should “pay back its own
       historical debts and take the initiative to contact and discuss
       with the countries that have suffered from its colonial
       infringement on how to return the historical loot as soon as
       possible”.
       ...
       The British Museum has about 23,000 Chinese objects – including
       items from the Tang, Shang and Zhou dynasties – making it the
       biggest collection of Chinese antiquities in the West.
       ...
       According to its website, Chinese objects “have been a part of
       the British Museum since its establishment based on the
       collection of Sir Hans Sloane”. Sloane was an 18th century Irish
       physician.
       ...
       According to the BBC, the hashtag “The British Museum please
       return Chinese antiquities” topped Weibo’s search chart until
       noon local time on Monday, and has been viewed more than half a
       billion times.
       One comment saying: “Return the objects to their original
       owner,” was liked by more than 32,000 times.
       [/quote]
       Woke comments:
       [quote]Not only from China. British looted treasure from all
       around the world. They are the biggest thief of the
       world.[/quote]
       [quote]Britain was the biggest bandit in world history. The most
       obvious robbery was the big emerald gem on top of the crown. Its
       India's property. But Englandmen have very thick skin to refuse
       to return it. They don't need to give reason.[/quote]
       [quote]This is what British did all over. British is nothing but
       thief's through their
       History. They take things that don't belong to them and don't
       want to return to the rightful owners.[/quote]
       [quote]Britain also stole several hundred pieces of artifacts
       from India and Africa.  They should also return them.[/quote]
       [quote]British Museum should be renamed as World Stolen
       Artifacts Museum :)[/quote]
       [quote]Never ask a woman her age, a man his income, or a British
       museum where they got their treasures and artifacts.[/quote]
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