A comprehensive New York Times investigation recalls the 18,000 skulls and bones in the possession of the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, while a Belgian auction house withdrew three African skulls from sale on November 30 following the publication of an article in Paris-Match Belgique .
“A museum in Paris houses 18,000 skulls. He hesitates to say who owns them.” Under this title, an in-depth study of the New York Times to the colonial collections of the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. The article in the American newspaper denounces a French omerta on a multitude of African, Australian and American Indian skulls buried in the basement, Place du Trocadéro.
He was greeted by a cathedral silence. What Dorcy Rugamba, a Brussels-based Rwandan playwright, author of a play entitled ” The highest leftovers » presented in Dakar in May, explained by « the persistence of a real taboo: the link between colonialism and Nazism, however emphasized by Hannah Arendt and Aimé Césaire, which undermines the French national novel ».
Three skulls for sale in Brussels
Coincidence: on the very day the New York Times published its research, the Drouot auction house put three skulls, also from the colonial era, on the market via the Vanderkindere auction house in Brussels. Michel Bouffioux, a journalist from Paris-Match Belgium who has been investigating since 2018 on Human Remains from the Colonial Era, published 29 an article which was immediately noticeable.
The next day, the three heads, offered at prices between 750 and 1,000 euros, were withdrawn. As well as the description she presented, in these words: “Lot of three human skulls: a Bangala cannibal skull with pointed incisors, a skull of the Arab chief Muine Mohara, killed and decorated on January 9, 1893 by Sergeant Cassart in Augoï a forehead jewel, a skull fragment, was collected (…) in the province of Mongala by Doctor Louis Laurent on May 5, 1894. (…) Provenance: former collection of Doctor Louis Laurent in Namur. ” Instead of, a word of apology was published on the website of the auction house, which decided to buy back the skulls to return to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – without specifying what would happen to the “Arab leader”.
A “legal” sale according to the auctioneer
Are these repentances sincere? Vanderkindere auctioneer Serge Hutry, interviewed by RFI, is defending his right in the face of Belgian collective Mémoire Coloniale set to file a lawsuit for “hiding bodies”. “There is no legislation in Belgium,” he says. In this aspect we are not wrong. We have been selling 7,500 lots a year for 30 years and have never had this problem. After some time we could no longer sell ivory and remained within legality. My feeling is that in Paris, London or Brussels, skulls have been sold in the form of dressing tables for years. They’re human skulls transformed with glitter, and we didn’t care. Here the DRC’s reaction is legal, right that they are working with the Belgian ministry. We will return these skulls.”
Asked by the RTBF, reminds Yves-Bernard Debie, lawyer for the Antiquarian Chamber, that “all European medieval art consists of relics and is not illegal. However, the human remains must be part of the cultural heritage, which is controversial here.”
In the Belgian press, Michel Bouffioux is one of the few, if not the only one, to deal with the subject. “My first research in 2018 on the history of the Lusinga skull made me interested in the collections of the Museum of Natural Sciences and the Free University of Brussels,” testifies the journalist. It hit the nail on the head a lot before it became an issue. My articles were initially greeted with amazement and disbelief, for the thought of this type of collection being forgotten is very disturbing. Only scientists knew about them, and they saw them only as collectibles, keeping their distance because they knew they were people killed under the circumstances of colonial hyper-violence. My work has contributed to raising the question of ethics regarding the storage of human remains in Belgium and their non-return”.
Bones and skulls in Belgium and the Netherlands
The outcry the sale has sparked in Brussels appears to contradict a New York Times investigation, which suggests the situation is better elsewhere in Europe than in France. In Belgium there are still at least 300 African heads in the hands of public and private institutions. The skull of King Lusinga, beheaded in 1884 by the Belgian General Emile Storms in the Belgian Congo and then brought back as a hunting trophy, still rests in the Rue Vautier in the Museum of Natural Sciences. A group of Congolese academics are asking – in vain – for his return to offer him a funeral. the Human Remains Origins Multidisciplinary Evaluation Project (HOME). Bringing together scientists from seven museums and universities, including the AfrikaMuseum in Tervuren, was launched with federal funds at the end of 2019 to investigate the question. A report with recommendations is expected by mid-December.
For its part, the Netherlands certainly returned in 2009 the severed and formaldehyde-preserved head of a Ghanaian king, Badu Bonsu II, beheaded by colonists in 1838. A writer, Arthur Japin, accidentally discovered the relic in the anatomical collections of the Leiden Medical School and alerted the Ghanaian embassy.
However, other remains remain on the soil of this former colonial power, including 40,000 bones brought back from Indonesia by Dutch anatomist and physician Eugène Dubois in the late 19th century. That Skullcap of a Javanese of prehistoric times, witnessing the “missing link” in the evolution from apes to humans, is also a matter of controversy.
It will be presented as the highlight of the exhibition at the Naturalis Museum in Leiden, in a room dedicated to Eugène Dubois. However, Indonesia has been demanding its return since last July, along with the entire Eugène Dubois collection and seven other art and natural history collections. The authorities in The Hague have not reacted for the time being. A spokeswoman for the Naturalis Museum has drawn the ire of Jakarta, who has accused her of “undue superiority” for questioning Indonesia’s conservation capacity.
Refunds in the UK and Germany
In the UK, an agreement was reached on November 3 after eight years of talks between Zimbabwe and the Natural History Museum in London and the University of Cambridge. The two institutions are ready to work together to return human remains, including three skulls Zimbabwe suspects belong to the leaders of the first Chimurenga, an 1890s revolt against English settlers.
The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford began returning some of the 2,000 human remains, including seven tattooed and mummified Maori heads, that were returned to New Zealand in 2017. The score is far from settled, however, as the British Museum holds 6,000 human remains from the vast British colonial empire, the Duckworth Laboratory 18,000 and the Natural History Museum more than 25,000.
Security gaps seem to have been opened more easily in Germany. were returned 20 skulls to Namibia, in 2011, then more remains in 2018, taken from southern Africa by the settlers after the massacre of the Hereros and Namas. Two peoples whose genocides Berlin recognized in 2004 and for whom apologies were issued in 2021.
A thousand more skulls brought back from the former German colonies have been the subject of an international study since 2017 to determine their exact provenance. The Belgian daily newspaper Free Belgium states that “these human remains had been brought mainly from Rwanda, but also from Tanzania and Burundi, in the former German Empire (1871-1918) by the anthropologist Felix von Luschan for the purpose of ‘scientific study'” . The lines move naturally, but not at the same speed everywhere.