Rouen, 10 May 2011
The Natural History Museum in Rouen has returned a mummified Maori head to New Zealand. A ceremony to celebrate the restitution was held on Monday 9 May in Rouen, Normandy, in the presence of the ambassador of New Zealand and a Maori spiritual leader. The object had been in France for 136 years.
The Maoris, indigenous to two islands of New-Zealand, want these heads to find peace in the country of their ancestors. For years, New Zealand has been trying to retrieve Maori heads held in the collections of foreign museums. The majority of these pieces were obtained by Westerners in exchange for arms and other goods. About a dozen museums have agreed to return their Maori heads.
Michelle Hippolite, the Maori spiritual leader and co-director of the Te Papa Museum where the head will now repose, said that the Rouen museum may have lost a part of its collection, but that it had “gained the friendship of a modern people, tenacious and courageous”.
The tatooed and mummified head was acquired by the museum in 1876 in rather mysterious conditions, as the full name of the donor was unknown. Since 1996, the museum no longer exhibited the head and in 2007 tried to restore the head, but the Ministry of Culture intervened and put an end to the initiative. The ministry said that the head was part of France’s cultural and scientific heritage, but last year a law was passed authorizing the restitution of the object.
The Te Papa Museum has organised the repatriation from twelve different countries of the remains of more than 180 Maori ancestors. The New-Zealand officials estimate that there are a further five hundred similar objects scattered throughout the world in foreign museum collections.