“We had never heard of the Paris auctions,” said Leigh Kuwanwisiwma, of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office.
This simple declaration opened “Consumption and the Market: The Paris Auctions,” the third panel in this Spring’s NAGPRA series at Indian Arts Research Center at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe. “In April 2013,” he continued, “we were notified that 65 of our Katsina friends were going to be sold; and the auction was only three and a half weeks away!”
What followed was a mortifying tale of dispossession and helplessness as moderator Brian Vallo and the three other panelists—Richard Begay, tribal liaison to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Resource Conservation Service; Jim Enote, director of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center; and Anthony Moquino, Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo—listened and digested the enormity of all that was lost in that one auction. (There have since been eight more.)
RELATED: ‘Heartbreaking’ Auction of Hopi Katsinam Proceeds in Paris
It’s not that they didn’t try everything in their power to regain their objects of cultural patrimony. The Hopis swung into action to intervene, filing a series of lawsuits in French court, but to no avail. Again and again the courts decided against them, claiming the Hopi Nation had no standing to bring a suit. In France, all that’s required to establish lawful ownership is a “Certificate of Rightful Possession”—easy enough for French families to produce. But in a particularly self-serving and grossly insensitive French twist, France argued against the sacredness of the objects themselves, saying in effect that they were already tainted by virtue of being in the marketplace.
“When we heard about the auctions we were filled with disgust, confusion,” Enote said. “We wondered what can we do, what kind of legal instruments can we bring forward? But we were coming up against a wall as First Nations people. It’s very difficult to tell another country how to conduct their commerce.”
Read the article on Indian Country Today archives