Looting & The British Museum
Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I’m Quinn Rose. I'm someone who did not go to art school, but as we've talked about many times before, I love art museums and I am not afraid to call them out.
Betty: Hi, I'm Betty. I'm also someone who did not go to art school, but as we talked about before as well, I have been working as a gallery guide at an art gallery for the last eight years. And now that I really think of it, I really hope nothing from where I work has been stolen or looted from somewhere. But I wouldn't be surprised if there were.
Quinn: I was about to ask you about that. Like, if you were aware of, is there anything of the AGO that has been like, was improperly gotten or another, like a group has claimed that they need to give it back or something like that.
Betty: I, you know what, I haven't off the top of my head. I can't think of anything. I'm just going to do a quick search actually. So quick search of the AGO and looted art doesn't result in anything, which is kind of good. Like, I guess good thing is, or good or bad, but throughout like our research I kind of like, I saw a lot of the like stolen or looted art or at least documented were of like, kind of like monuments or like cultural objects. Cause I work at an art museum that's more so focused towards like fine arts. So like paintings and sculptures, which can be like cultural objects too. But generally I guess those were acquired through more legal means than usual. Although we, there, there is quite a significant African art collection, but I believe the donor like purchased everything legally. But I haven't, you know, done deep research into that. So if anything changes, if I find out anything after this, I will add it to the show notes.
Quinn: We'll get into a little bit of all the different sort of patterns in the history of art museums looting objects, but just to sort of give a brief overview of what we're all talking about. Most major art museums in the world have stolen artifacts in them. That's just kind of a fact that we all know, it's not a secret. These are very public disputes that are happening for like most major museums that have like pretty prominent items. It's not a secret that they countries that, and the cultures that these objects were stolen from want them back, and the museums say no. So these are, these tend to be museums, of course, in countries that have carried out imperialism, which is how they got all these objects. Britain is a huge perpetuator of this, and they're going to be the focus of today. The British Museum is the most famous example of some of these objects and artifacts that have been stolen from around the world. So that's what we're going to be focusing on today, but tons of museums in other countries in Europe, in the US and Canada have a lot of stolen objects in them from cultures around the world, but also especially Indigenous peoples in the same land where they are. A lot of objects have been and stolen and put into these art museums for the consumption aimed primarily at white people. There's a lot going on here.
Betty: For sure. And I do actually like that you are using the term stolen art because that's probably what they should be called. Cause like, while we were like, while I was looking into, you know, what, what exactly counts as looted art? It's obviously not like an exact definition, but generally, you know, a lot of it is art that was taken from its Native or Indigenous land through like colonialism or through like military campaigns and things like that. And what usually in the art world, when we talk about art theft, like we're talking about stealing of objects from like an art gallery. So some thief goes in and steal a few paintings and then sell, try to sell it on the black market. That's kind of what people generally think about when they think of art theft. People don't really think about like the British Museum having something that they see or somebody in the British empire stole and they put it up and we think it's legit or people presume it's legit, but it's not. So there is a difference in the terms, but really it's, it's stealing art.
Quinn: Yeah. And I don't think we're going to get too much into this side of it, but there are people, there are like vigilantes who steal art from museums to return them to the countries where they were originally stolen from, which I find very interesting. This was actually featured in the movie Black Panther. There’s a scene where one of the characters, Killmonger, breaks into—well I don't think he breaks into the museum, but he, he goes into the museum and breaks down an exhibit and takes the artifacts back, which is a very interesting inclusion in sort of this whole topic. But it's also, because there's all sorts of different ways that this so-called stolen/looted art ends up in these museums. At the worst, as you said, like it's literal military occupation, looting villages, directly stealing from people. There are other examples where it's, in some other way, exploitative, where there were like extremely unfair deals that were done, so they're like technically purchased, but the deal was extremely unfair to the original party. Or like the museum ended up with it through like a legitimate purchase. But the way that that person got it was through these other means. And so it gets, it gets pretty complicated where like, not to pick on the AGO, cause we don't know. But like for example, with your African art exhibit, like there's a distinct chance that that donor like completely properly donated it to the museum, but these were actually improperly stolen artifacts in the first place. And it's just been entered into like a so-called legitimate system, but it got there through illegitimate means.
Betty: Yeah, for sure. Exactly. Because trading art, it goes, it passes through multiple hands. Like not everything is bought directly from the artist. And in the example of a lot of art that come from cultures around the world from far like quote unquote faraway lands, they're generally not bought directly from the artists themselves and the provenance, which is like the historic backstory of who owned the works very often are obscured or even sometimes changed or purposely obscured to the purchaser by auction houses so that they don't realize that it's stolen art. And there was an example of one, I think one of the pieces in the British Museum, or one of the pieces in, in our research was an example of that. But for now I can't find the example of which one it is, but when I do, we will, we will mention it.
Quinn: Well, one example of kind of related to that. And it's still an ongoing situation is that there was a massive amount of art that was stolen by the Nazis. A lot of art that was stolen from like private Jewish collectors and artists and this art, a lot of it has been reclaimed, but a lot of it still is like popping up places where it ends up at art auctions. And then it's able to be identified as stolen pieces of art, and sometimes—hopefully all the time, but you never know—attempts are made to get these pieces of art back to the families of the people that were killed, or the original museums or people that they wanted the art to end up in the case of their eventual deaths if they were like already had some kind of like will set up or something like that, and all of that kind of thing. And so like that is an ongoing situation that's happening as well, where it's like, and I'm sure there's lots of art that's out there and like hanging in museums or in private collections that was like stolen by the Nazis and has not been able to be reclaimed by the original families, which is horrible. And that's just one example of like this continually ongoing throughout the world.
Betty: Yeah. This actually reminds me of when I was in New York a few years ago, I was doing tours of museums, like the Met and stuff like that. And at the same time, actually, this movie came out, it's called the Monuments Men. It's not a very good movie. It came out in 2014 and it was directed by George Clooney. And I think he was in it as well. It basically, it's a movie that follows an Allies group. They're from the Monuments Fine Arts and Archives program in the US and they actually had an interesting task of going over to Europe to find and save pieces of art and other cultural artifacts that would have been either destroyed or stolen by the Nazis. And they actually managed to recover I think like hundreds of pieces from the Nazis and some of them are, some of them I think have been returned to their owners, but some of it are in collections in America, I believe. And one thing that is interesting in the movie, even though it wasn't very good and I think maybe not entirely historically accurate, but some of the people who were trying to preserve the art actually died while saving some of the works. And I think this did happen historically, whether exactly, you know, it happened exactly as it did in the movie or not. I'm not sure, but, and then at the end of the movie, I think like President Truman asks George Clooney's character, you know, was it worth it? Your men died, in 30 years as anyone you've run going to remember that this guy died for a work of art? And his answer was obviously yes. And I think the end of the movie, like his grandkid or something, they were touring one of art galleries and there was a, like a painting by Rafael or someone that they had saved. And so I mean, you know, it really did get me to think like, is it like how, how important these cultural artifacts are to us. And of course all these cultures around the world and that it's important enough to die for them. And so you can just kind of think about how like, or even just begin to think about how deeply important it is for a lot of these countries to get their art back.
Quinn: That's really interesting. I have not seen that movie, but now I'm curious, even though you just said it wasn't very good.
Betty: Yeah. I mean, I would watch it if you're really bored and, or just really want something in the background, but it's, it's okay. It's worth a watch, I guess.
Quinn: Well all that kind of brings us to the main topic of discussion and looking at the history of some objects, which is everything the British Museum has stolen. So we've talked about the British Museum before a few times, we've been there, we've gone to see the things, but it's a very concerning place because of the amount and just the total arrogance of what they hold within their walls. It is a huge art history museum that has plenty of stuff that is like British art of, through various ages, and some more contemporary exhibits and all that good stuff. As well as just everything the British have ever stolen throughout the course of imperialism, which as you can imagine is quite a lot.
Betty: Yeah, exactly. I think when I first started looking into this, I had, I had always known or heard about the British Museum having a lot of art that they stole from various places around the world. But, I never really deeply looked into, you know, exactly how much, and it kind of shocked me how much there was. And it, I mean, one thing you mentioned earlier about the complexities of some of these issues, like one thing, I actually ended up just getting into a rabbit hole and reading for like an hour about was the Rosetta Stone, which was discovered by Napoleon's campaigns in 1799 in Egypt. And the Rosetta Stone was obviously really important in—for archeologists to learn how to read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, because it was written in three languages, including ancient Greek, which we can still read. So anyway, so obviously a hugely culturally important artifact. And it was discovered, you know, of course by the French, by Napoleon's men. But later during the Wars with the Ottomans and the British troops in 1801, it was then seized by the British military. And eventually it ended up in the British Museum. From what I've read, Egypt has been requesting repatriation of it for a long time, but it was mostly vocal in 2003. And so obviously it hasn't been returned. And I think they, the British Museum have made multiple replicas of it. And I actually did get to touch one of the replicas, not the real thing, obviously.
Quinn: Wow.
Betty: I know. But they, I think said either they said they would, or they already did send one of the replicas to Egypt and it's just kind of like, yeah, okay.
Quinn: That's just insulting.
Betty: I know. It's like, why don't you make a copy and give them back their original?
Quinn: Perhaps the example that has gotten the most media attention over the years is the so called Elgin Marbles, which were called, which are called that because they were brought to the British Museum by Lord Elgin, who was ambassador to what was then the Ottoman Empire, back in the early 1800s. And I think like ostensibly legitimately—I’m using so many air quotes, but it's one of those where it was pretty tricky situation. The Greeks definitely do not believe this was legitimate. So these are the, basically the sculptures from the Parthenon. And so the Greeks really, really want them back. They want them back so bad and Britain will not give them back. This is a huge point of contention. And while they are not the most brutally gotten object in the museum by a long shot, they have become I think the most iconic thing was stolen just because Greece has been so vocal about wanting repatriation of the Marbles. And also because I think probably because they're stolen from a different European country. And so people are like, pay more attention to that and less attention to places like Egypt and Benin wanting their objects back, which we'll get to in a moment. So just a little extra sprinkle of racism there.
Betty: Yeah. I think I had read that Elgin claimed that he had like an official decree from the govern—the Ottoman Empire, which obviously is, you know, is not Greece. It was at the time, the ruler of Greece. So even if that, even if that was legit, I guess Greece could say, well, you know, that wasn’t us, that was the Ottoman Empire, but apparently through extensive research of the Ottoman archives, they can't find this decree. So of course that's disputed and apparently this type of thing would have been well-documented. So it's weird that there wouldn't be documented archives in the Ottoman Empire. So, but in any case, yeah, it is, I think one of the other reasons it's a pretty big deal is probably also because of how famous the Parthenon and the Acropolis buildings in Athens is. Like a lot of people view it as like the cradle of Western civilization and the, the cultural objects there are culturally significant to a lot of people in the West. And that's probably why, you know, there's a lot more attention on that. And of course, you know, Greece are like, yeah, that's ours. Please give it back. And, and yeah, Greece has been, they've been trying to get it back ever since they achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire back in 1832. And again, I think this is something where yeah, like you said, the British Museum is just like, nope. And like, they have a dedicated wing that they built for it and they, you know, like every interview with spokespersons, there are, they're saying, oh no, we got it through legitimate means. And yeah, like we're keeping it. And I think in the Guardian article that you had sent the human rights lawyer in the article, he quotes in saying that the, he accuses the museum of telling quote, "a string of carefully constructed lies, and half truths about how the Marbles were saved or salvaged or rescued by Lord Elgin.” So I guess this goes into, and we can talk about this a little bit more of the British Museum trying to justify, you know, why they should get to keep all this stuff. Like they think, oh, you know, we saved it because I don't know, the Greeks would have not properly dealt with it, even though they have their own museum with their portion of things from the Parthenon weren't stolen. So, yeah. I don't know, like if you've read more reasons, I so far haven't found a single even okay justification from the British museum on like, why they won't give it back. Like everything just seemed like a ridiculous excuse.
Quinn: Oh, I totally want to get into all of the non-explanations that the British Museum has for why they won't give objects back. But before we get into that, I do want to talk about what I think is one of the worst examples of this in the whole museum, which is the collection of the Benin Bronzes. This is a pretty brutal story because it involves a lot more violence, and explicit violence that we know about then the previous examples that we've named, which all happened in like the late 1800s. But basically the King or Oba of Benin, who was at the, in 1897 was Oba Ovonramwen, and this wasn't, it was an independent country at the time. And he was dealing with the British, they had been trading, this country had been trading with the British for centuries, or like Europeans in general they had been trading successfully for centuries. The British were really mad that he wanted to basically to put taxes on the trading, and then a very small group of British officers approached the city, and they were ambushed and killed. Now in response to this, the British basically came and destroyed these people. Oba Ovonramwen was put on trial and exiled. It was, it's widely described as the British Punitive Expedition of 1897, because it was like very clearly motivated by a desire to like eradicate these people who dared defy the British empire at the time. Keep in mind, this is barely over a hundred years ago. And at the same time that they did this, they looted Benin. They stole a ton of arts from this African country. It was sort of the first time that art from the continent of Africa was like widely visible to the British public. And this was sort of also the beginning of what they discovered a little side benefit of their pillaging and looting of other cultures was this ability to really effectively other the Benin people. And to like put these objects in the museum and go ooh, look how different and like, quote, unquote “savage,” that these people are, or like whatever kind of angle they were playing at the time and it was this way to sort of wave a flag and say like, look, imperialism is good. We're exposing you to these different cultures and they're weird and not like us. And so it's okay that we're taking them over.
Betty: Yeah, and this, I think it reminds me, I'm not sure if we've talked about this before, or I think I mentioned it briefly when we were talking about kind of the differences between fine arts museum and history museums, is that a lot of these art or slash cultural objects—I mean, I'm not exactly sure about all the objects from Benin obviously, but a lot of them ended up in like history museums. Obviously the British Museum is kind of like a more so of a history museum than a lot of others. But, one thing, one thing that is the result of that is instead of viewing these works as art, you know, or as objects of fine arts, they were viewed as, oh, this is like a historic documentation of these people, which obviously isn't necessarily bad, but it's more so it's looking, yeah, it’s looking at them like from the outside, from the angle of, like of othering, like you mentioned, but of also like, not necessarily like appreciating the fine arts object, fine arts aspects of the artworks and just trying to like see what these people are like, that’s so different from us and things like that. And the other thing that I found interesting about, well, I mean, interesting is an interesting word, but I don't know. I don't even really even know what other word to describe this, but so Nigeria, where the former Empire of Benin, like it's now a part of Nigeria. So they've been asking the UK for decades to return the Benin Bronzes. In late 2018 Nigeria, they struck a deal with the British Museum to send some of the bronzes to Nigeria's Royal Museum when they, when they have plans to open in 2021, but very crucially, the British Museum said, this is only a loan and they expect Nigeria to give it back, give back the stuff that Britain stole.
Quinn: I think they should just keep it.
Betty: Yeah. Should just be like, oh, I'm sorry, you know, I don't know what I did with it. It's like, no it's gone. But yeah, so, and this is like one of numerous examples of just like a slap in the face that the British Museum does. Cause the other thing I read was the Gweagal Shield. This was something I tried to also find pronunciation for, but it was, the British stole this from Aboriginal Australians in the late century. So similarly they refuse to repatriate it back to Australia. And so in 2016, there was an exhibition and they loaned that shield to Australia, but they had to give it back because, you know, just because. So yeah, it’s what the British Museum does.
Quinn: Yeah. And we've alluded to a bunch of sort of the half-hearted reasons that the British Museum and like the British government as a whole has given to why they can't give this stuff back. And it basically comes down to really just continued imperialism, because the whole argument that they're making is that basically—there’s two parts of it. One is that supposedly the British Museum can care for these objects better than the countries where they originally came from can, which is it just on its face racist. Like, come on. I mean, that might've been true at one point, but like it's the 21st century. They can build a good museum. What’s the problem—like the Greek, like the Greeks have, they like built a museum and they were like, here's where we would put our Parthenon Marbles, if we had them.
Betty: This is not like they’re returning it to some un-contacted tribe that does, that only can build huts and make fire. Like that's just not the case.
Quinn: Yeah. And that's what they're trying to pretend it is. They're like, well, they can't, they don't have these developments. Yes, they do. It's 2020. Like what are you even saying? And then the other part is that, well, they were like, well, it's, we've brought together the world here and it's magical that like, people can just visit this one place and they can see all these objects. This is like, kind of true. But I think is like morally wrong on its face. And like I'm someone who has benefited from being able to go to the British Museum and see these objects. Like I fully own that. But you know what? If they were other places, I would go see them when I went to those other places. Like, it's not—you can’t—they say that like, oh, millions of people come to the British Museum and so we need to keep the objects here so that they can be seen, but like that's the wrong direction of causality. Fewer people a year might be able to see these things if they were all like back in their original, like cultural homes, but that would open up opportunities for lots of other people to see them who aren't able to travel to Britain. And it would open up like, If you really, really want to see the Parthenon Marbles, like you'll go to Greece to see them. Like, it's not that hard, if you’re already someone who's already going to be traveling and like cares to visit them, then you'll travel to visit them in Greece. And this way actual Greek people can see them. And the same is true for like the Rosetta Stone and the Benin Bronzes and like all of these things.
Betty: Yeah. I think, exactly. It's kind of like the British Museum, one of the biggest reasons that it is popular is because they have so many things. Like it wouldn't yeah, like you said, it's like, it's the other way around. They're trying to say, oh, we're such a popular place. That's why we have to hold all this stuff. It's like, you wouldn't be popular if you didn't have stuff. And, and really ultimately, I think the biggest reason is if they gave back everything, like if they start giving back one thing, they'll have to probably start giving back everything. And then the British Museum will be like mostly empty except for the couple of British things that they have. And even then who knows who the, you know, like they stole it from. And kind of like, I think I mentioned too, during a previous podcast, was that a lot of these objects, like when you remove it from their Indigenous context, you, a lot of it kind of, it kind of loses their spirit and their soul because they're not being either displayed or performed the way they were supposed to in their, their original context. And so giving it back to their people who probably would know better of how to deal with it. Like not always, but like better in terms of like better ways of displaying or interpreting the pieces in their cultural context, I feel like it would be, it would be better as of an experience for people to see it. Like I, like you, I've also been able to go to the British Museum. Cause it's, you know, one of the easier places for an English speaking person to travel to. And I have seen the Rosetta Stone, a lot of these works, but—you know, I don't think, I feel like I would like it more if I saw it in like Egypt or if I saw something Greek in Greece. And then the other thing was, yeah, like you said, the comments from, from people like, not just the British Museum, like, I guess maybe like a lot of British people in generals’ sentiment, not, not to paint Britain with a brush stroke, obviously. I'm sure some don't agree. But there was, comments from the then prime minister David Cameron a number of years ago about the Kohinoor Diamond. So that's from that, that was stolen from India. And so he said, “I don't believe in returnism,” which is, I think a word he made up. I'm not sure. And he says, “it's the same question with the Elgin Marbles and all those other things. I don't think it's sensible to return them.” I don't, he doesn't explain why.
Quinn: Because I said so.
Betty: [laughing] Yeah. So it's like, and I think that's, so that diamond that was stolen from India would be worn by, eventually be worn by Kate Middleton probably when Prince William becomes king. And so, anyway, so it would, you know, if she goes to India wearing it, people might get upset. And so again, like a lot of the biggest reason that I can really gleam from all these comments is that we don't want to. We want to keep it, because we would have to return everything and there would be nothing left in Britain.
Quinn: Yeah. They want to keep the spoils of their crimes against the world because it's financially beneficial to them. Like this is not difficult to understand. It's just not morally right. And they can't say that, because then they'd be in even more trouble than they are, because I think they're basically getting away with this by like ignoring it as much as possible. And like having these kinds of like half-hearted reasons why they can't do anything about it and just hoping that no one like really pushes. Except for Greece is out here, they were trying to like, well now with the UK leaving the EU, they they're like trying to make this like a new push to get the Marbles back since they're not, the UK’s not in the EU anymore. It's like this whole thing. I cannot stress enough how much we have not even scratched the surface to everything Britain has stolen and placed in this museum.
Betty: I did just want to mention kind of one of the, one of the things that I had originally looked into when we started to talk about this topic was, I had mentioned a while ago when we did the Ai Weiwei episode that some of the works that Ai Weiwei did were in protest as to these lootings that have historically occurred. And one significant work he did was in 2010, there are 12 bronzes Zodiac heads that were the 12 Zodiac animals of the Chinese Zodiac. And so he did that partially to allude to the same set of bronze heads that were stolen from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing by British and French soldiers. It was stolen as a part of the, you know, military campaign that was a part of the Boxer Rebellion. And they historically burned down the Summer Palace as well as numerous other monuments in Beijing and the heads are, I think, are now scattered around the world. Some of them have been returned to Beijing. Again, kind of like you mentioned, there have been art vigilantes. There's a group called the Poly Group and I don’t think they're one of the people that steal things back. They’re like really, really uber wealthy Chinese people who actually buy the art back and return it to China. But unfortunately only a few have been returned and the rest are still out there in the, in other places in the world. And what's interesting is the person who led the campaign to steal the Zodiac heads and the rest of the stuff in the summer palace was the son of Lord Elgin, the Lord Elgin the 8th. So, you know, it runs in the family.
Quinn: Oh man. There's also a group called the India Pride Project, which is a collection of volunteers who are working to return looted artifacts back to India from places all over the world, not just the, just from Britain. But obviously since Britain colonized India, that’s like probably a big target of theirs, but yeah, they've actually, they're like organized online, and have been using social media to pressure for return of artifacts and have helped reclaim some artifacts back to India. So that's pretty cool too.
Betty: Yeah, there definitely have been some repatriation efforts. And I did read that France, out of most European countries that have a history of looting, they've actually been probably one of the better responses to calls for repatriation. The French president Macron, he announced awhile ago that Paris will return 26 stolen object to Benin. And this is now the, the current modern day Benin, not the kingdom of Benin where Benin City it was. But so France had looted objects from there historically as well. So they're returning some of them and he also wants to change French law so that France must return stolen objects whenever a country asks for them to do so. So I think totally different from, the UK government's response because they seem to be either, they're saying, no, we're not doing it. Or some of the government officials in Britain, just try to like defer the responsibility. They'll just say, oh, you know, this has nothing to do with the government. You have to ask like the museum, the museum specialists, it’s the British Museum's own business. Like we have nothing to do with it. Whereas some governments, you know, like the French government are saying, no, we could actually enact laws that make this mandatory or make us have to, or make cultural institutions have to return these to countries. So there are like legislative means of making this happen. It's just obviously difficult, because I think obviously in a democratic country President Macron can't just force an institution to return everything to a country. He has to somehow write it into law, but it is possible.
Quinn: Yeah. And like there’s all these little things and little movements that can gain steam and can get some of these objects returned back to their homes, which is pretty great. And hopefully we will be able to see more and more of that. I did, a real quick note on this as well is like another aspect that we don't really have time to do super get into is that, like the art world and like curators and people who run museums are so overwhelmingly white. That I think that's also part of this. It's like, it's not just… we touched a little bit on like cultural context of presenting these objects. And it's like, it's not just that it's a different nationality who’s stolen these things. It's that it's very often people from like a completely like separate ethnicity and cultural background. And they're not even like working with people who even like maybe have family somehow related to these objects, like it's just so disparate and such a difference of power dynamic in the way that these objects were not only stolen, but like continue to be held and displayed. And it's not that it would like make it all better if they were like working with, if they had a partnership with Benin, but it would certainly help.
Betty: Yeah. I think there were like, I read an article in one of the, one of the articles that we were looking into, like Germany or some institutions in Germany. I mean their justification, which is also not great, but it's better than Britain’s, is that they do work with local cultures of the objects that they were taken from to, you know, like either to try to display the works better or, you know, like have some sort of relationship. So I mean, they're still not giving it back, but at least it's a little bit better than what the British generally do. But yeah, I think probably the most heartbreaking article I read was a Guardian article about the Easter Island statue that's currently in the British Museum that, since I think Easter Island had not gained independence, but like relative level of autonomy from the Chilean government, in the last few years, they have been asking the British museum to give back one of their statues, which was stolen over 150 years ago from Easter Island. And like I read one of the, I think one of the representatives who came to discussions at the British Museum in 2018 said, my grandma who passed away at 90, she never got a chance to see her ancestor. And she, like her other quote was, “we're just a body. You, the British people, have our soul.” And I'm just like, oh my God. It kind of goes back to the beginning where I was talking about like, you know, we would send people over to Germany or to Europe during Nazi occupation. And we like, we would die for our cultural monuments and so would everyone else. Probably not everyone, but same with a lot of other people in a lot of other cultures. And I think it's, it's not difficult to relate to, you know, what this person was saying, and it's not difficult to—like maybe not all of us attach a spiritual meaning to our objects. But they’re definitely in many cases they do. And so obviously, you know, it's pretty clear where Quinn and I stand on this issue. But nevertheless, it obviously is not something we can resolve.
Quinn: Yeah, I didn't come out here to like entertain other opinions about this. I came out here to like, talk about some history and be mad. And I will say also in the field we'll definitely be doing an episode that covers more of a US centric on this topic because like the United States and like, I don't know much about Canada, on this topic, but like I assume probably also Canada has done just absolutely horrible things that we all know to like the Indigenous peoples who live here and there's like, this is a huge problem. And specifically in sort of the art and museum world, there's a, there's a huge movement. There's something called the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, which is a big deal in terms of like actually treating Native American artifacts with respect and like literally graves and human remains with respect, which was like not happening for a long time and it's still not happening in some cases. There’s a lot about this. And it's something that is just not talked about enough and not acknowledged enough. And I feel like when we learn about things like colonialism and like the oppression of Native Americans, like all of these things and Native Canadians, it’s always painted as like something that happened a long time ago when often it's things that are actively happening and/or have active effects right now in the moment. And is important to acknowledge and discuss in this way.
Betty: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I feel like I could even just do a whole podcast series on issues with Indigenous art and artists and how Indigenous people are treated in Canada. But you know, we got time and we got lots of other episodes we can dedicate this topic to.
Quinn: Yeah, we will definitely be returning to this I'm sure many a time, because unfortunately there is so much to talk about. And as my final note on this, we didn't get into it at all, but there's going to be a link in the show notes to the whole Hobby Lobby smuggling Iraqi artifacts situation, which I cannot even begin to describe. But if you've never heard those words before in a sentence, click the link in the description. You're about to get your mind blown.
Betty: Oh yeah. It is so fascinating.
Quinn: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Pictorial. If you want to find us on social media, you can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @PictorialPod. You can also read our show notes at relay.fm/pictorial. And if you want to follow me on Twitter or Instagram, I'm @aspiringrobotfm.
Betty: And if you want to follow me on Twitter or Instagram, I'm @articulationsv and you can also find me on YouTube at ARTiculations. And speaking of YouTube, you can also find Pictorial Podcasts on YouTube, where we generally will have images of what we speak about throughout the podcast.
Quinn: Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!