Embassy
calls for delay to see whether masks and headdresses can be reclaimed by Hopi
and San Carlos Apache tribes
theguardian.com, Kim Willsher in Paris, Sunday 8 December 2013
A Kachina Angwushahai-i mask, circa 1860-1870, which is one of 25 Native American artefacts due to be auctioned in Paris. Photograph: Arnaud Guillaume/AFP/Getty Images |
International
campaigners are making last-minute efforts to halt the sale in Paris of sacred
ceremonial masks and headdresses from Native American tribes.
The US
embassy appealed to the auction house to delay the sale, due to be held on
Monday and Tuesday, so the 25 items from the Hopi and San Carlos Apache tribes
can be identified to see whether they can reclaim them.
The battle
follows attempts to halt an auction of 70 Hopi masks in Paris in April. Even
the intervention of the Hollywood actor Robert Redford, who described the
earlier sale as a "criminal act … that could have serious moral
consequences", was not enough to halt the €930,000 (£780,000) sale.
On Friday,
Survival International, which campaigns for the rights of indigenous peoples,
lost a legal challenge over the latest auction. The French judge, Claire David,
said neither moral nor philosophical considerations could justify preventing a
legal sale.
On
Saturday, Mark Taplin, the US charge d'affaires in Paris, delivered a letter to
the EVE auction house asking for the sale to be delayed.
"The
embassy made this request on behalf of the two tribes so that they might have
the opportunity to identify the objects, investigate their provenance and
determine whether they have a claim to recover the items under the 1970 Unesco
convention on the export and transfer of ownership of cultural property, to
which France is a signatory, or under other laws," the embassy said in a
statement.
US
diplomats emphasised the "great importance" of the objects to the
Native Americans and said they should not be sold "precipitously and in
the absence of consultation" with the two tribes.
The sale of
sacred Native American artefacts was banned in the US in 1990 but there is no
similar legislation in France.
The EVE
auction will sell more than 100 Amerindian artefacts, but the rare masks,
described as "exceptional" are the most contested. Among them, is a
version of the Tumas Crow Mother mask dating from the 1860s and given a
catalogue price of between €60,000 and €80,000.
EVE
auctioneer Alain Leroy said: "Never has a sale of Amerindian art gathered
together as many ancient and rare objects."
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