And now:[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Native treasures are going, going ... Our museums can't manage to buy world's finest collection Marina Jimenez National Post http://www.nationalpost.com/home.asp?f=991113/126916 For many years, the strange curiosities that the Rev. Robert Dundas brought back with him from his travels in Canada in the mid-1800s sat in an old red and black wooden blanket chest in the billiard room of his family estate outside Edinburgh. His children, and later grandchildren, were, by turns, frightened and fascinated by this musty collection of masks and rattles and clubs. For most of his descendants, these old souvenirs from a long-ago trip were merely the familiar ancestral detritus that collects in all families. Not so for Simon Carey, the clergyman's great-grandson. He found the painted Indian artifacts compelling, so compelling in fact that he rescued them when, in 1948, his family nearly threw them away. "Nobody knew where they came from," recalls the retired psychology professor. For him, they have always been "powerful bits of carving." And so began a 50-year saga involving Professor Carey, and his quest to find a suitable home for what is now recognized as the world's most important and valuable collection of Northwest Coast artifacts still in private hands. The objects -- worth an estimated $5-million -- are to be auctioned off by Sotheby's, the prestigious auction house, which will publish a catalogue and mount an exhibit that will travel to London, New York and Paris, to give native scholars and ethnographers an opportunity to study the treasures. The exhibit will be a momentous event in the art world -- and is also expected to reopen old wounds about the ethics of selling off prized artworks collected in the 1800s by missionaries and anthropologists. The tour, ironically, will give Canada -- the native home of the objects -- a wide berth. The auction house fears Ottawa may seize the collection. "Many of the objects are masterpieces," says David Roche, director of Sotheby's American Indian art department. "We wouldn't want to put the collection at risk." This is not quite the Canadian equivalent of the Elgin Marbles, the ancient sculptures that were taken from Athens to England in 1806 by Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin. It is, rather, the story of how one man spent two decades trying to find a Canadian home that would honour his important collection. He negotiated with a number of cultural institutions -- notably the Royal Ontario Museum and Heritage Canada -- in an effort to keep the collection intact and place it in Canada. So what went wrong? Why is Sotheby's now going to auction this priceless collection to the highest bidder? In a conversation with the National Post, the first time he has spoken extensively about his long and convoluted quest, Prof. Carey said his efforts to find a Canadian buyer were ultimately thwarted by what he refers to as the "meanness and stupidity of the Canadian museums." This is how the artifacts came to rest in Scotland. In 1859, a young Anglican clergyman named Robert Dundas left Great Yarmouth, on the eastern coast of England, and journeyed across the ocean to Victoria to join the diocese as chaplain to the first bishop of British Columbia. Then 27, Rev. Dundas was appointed to St. John's Church in Victoria. In October, 1863, his friend, Edmund Verney, a British naval officer, invited him to come aboard the HMS Grappler, a gunboat commissioned by Mr. Verney, to sail up the West Coast to see Bella Bella, Bella Coola and Metlakatla, communities in Northern British Columbia. Rev. Dundas kept an active record of his memorable voyage in his journals (now considered as historically significant as his art collection), including his intention to acquire some artifacts. "I was anxious to obtain some of the medicine men's implements and tools, and succeeded in getting some small 'ictas' [things]," wrote Rev. Dundas, making mention of the exorcisms and incantations of the medicine men and the "soul holders." At that time, when West Coast natives converted to Christianity, it was the custom for them to renounce their native religion by giving their sacred objects to missionaries -- who in turn destroyed, sold or kept them. On Oct. 23, the Grappler arrived in Metlakatla, the Christian settlement of Tsimshian converts north of Prince Rupert, founded by William Duncan, a British missionary. "The whole resident population was waiting to receive us," wrote Rev. Dundas. "We were greeted on all sides with 'Good morning to you, Sir.' " They stayed three weeks, during which Rev. Dundas baptized several converts, including a man who took his name and whose descendants live today in Alaska. Mr. Verney and Rev. Dundas also had occasion to divvy up a collection of Tsimshian objects given to them by Mr. Duncan, including a wolf headdress; a wooden clan hat carved in the image of a frog, with a human face on the lower jaw; clappers, similar to castanets, carved in the form of a small killer whale; Northwest Coast shaman figures; as well as everyday objects such as a comb, bowls, dishes and wooden spoons. The collection is believed to have come from Chief Paul Legaic, as well as some of the lesser chiefs and possibly shamans. "Legaic was the wealthiest of the Tsimshian at Fort Simpson," noted Rev. Dundas in his diaries. "He has ... had to give up everything by his conversion to Christianity ... a forsaking of all things to follow Christ." As well, it may be that some of the objects Rev. Dundas received had no religious significance whatsoever. Mr. Duncan often sold native artifacts to finance his new settlement. Indeed, he was sufficiently entrepreneurial to send items, some made for the tourist trade, to Victoria and San Francisco to raise money for sawmills and canneries. Rev. Dundas wrote in a May, 1865, letter to his parents: "I hope [the Rev. John Sheepshanks] has returned you my Indian things safely. I set great store by them after paying dearly for them." ("Native people today see these emblematic objects and say they have a claim," observes Kenneth Cavalier, an art historian and law student from B.C. "But they're often projecting their notion of the motives of the people who sold the material in the first place.") When he returned to England, Rev. Dundas gave lectures on native culture and donated some of the pieces to the Yarmouth Maritime Museum. There is also some evidence that from 1860-1900, they were loaned for public exhibits. Mostly, though, the rattles, dolls and soul catchers remained on display in his spacious home near Edinburgh. After he died in 1904, his descendants stored the treasures in the blanket box. And when Rev. Dundas' daughter died in 1948, they were almost discarded. Which is when Simon Carey, then in his 20s, rescued them. Years later, married and living in London, Prof. Carey displayed his great-grandfather's objects in his flat. As a child, his son would play dress-up with the mask. His daughter loved to play the dog-eater's whistles, beautifully carved woodwind instruments. As the years passed, these quaint family memorabilia grew in value. In the early 1970s, an international market for indigenous art grew up after both Sotheby's and Christie's held important auctions of American-Indian art, including Northwest Coast pieces that fetched considerable prices. Prof. Carey, who has a scholar's meticulous nature and a keen interest in the arts, began researching the history of the collection, travelling to the places his great-grandfather had visited. He spent a summer combing through the provincial archives in Victoria. Back in London, he read and reread his great-grandfather's accounts of his time in Canada, of the orderly life at Metlakatla, and the Tsimshian's spirituality and tribal customs. About 20 years ago, realizing the collection would be broken up when he died, Prof. Carey set out to find a buyer. Over time, he had discussions with the British Museum, as well as American, European and Canadian institutions. He turned down offers from private collectors, worried they would not keep the collection intact or properly document it. It was important to him, he says, to find a museum that would give the prized pieces the recognition they deserved. Curators at the Museum of Civilization travelled to Prof. Carey's London home to inspect the collection in 1978, but did not make a serious offer. In 1990, Wendy Rebanks, the sister of biscuit billionaire Galen Weston and a then-member of the Royal Ontario Museum's board of directors, came to London with a ROM curator to examine the collection. Again, the two sides failed to come to an agreement. "So many [ROM] people were involved in the negotiations that even the simplest decisions about talks seemed impossible to achieve, and it all came to nothing," notes Prof. Carey. For her part, Ms. Rebanks recalls, "We were very interested but the price was beyond anything the ROM could afford." A year later, there was an offer from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was later withdrawn. Prof. Carey next spoke with officials at Canada Heritage, but the effort to repatriate the collection petered out. "Someone has to be bushy-tailed and get working on it," says Ian Christie Clark of Heritage Canada, speaking about how problematic it is for organizations to finalize deals. "It's difficult for Canadian museums to be bushy-tailed because they feel the price is unreasonable ... but at some point you have to decide, do you want it to come to Canada or not?" Prof. Carey felt his motives were ultimately misunderstood by at least one Canadian museum official. George MacDonald, then executive director of the Museum of Civilization, suggested in several newspaper articles in 1995 that Prof. Carey's prime interest was how much money he could get for his great-grandfather's collection. He admonished the professor in a letter, saying that museums had changed their attitude toward the recognition of "unextinguished rights" of cultural material. "In a few weeks your great-grandfather was able to collect the treasures of many lineages who were bent on salvation," wrote Mr. MacDonald. "Clearly [he] never imagined the pieces he collected would be worth millions some day." Prof. Carey was incensed. "I do believe that the whole question of restitution is more complicated than you seem to think," he wrote back to Mr. MacDonald. "The facts show that I have done everything possible to act responsibly ... in relation to Canada's interests in them." The professor hired a Toronto lawyer, who sent the executive director a letter demanding an apology. One was eventually offered. Mr. MacDonald, now with the Victoria Museum in Melbourne, Australia, declined to comment on the matter. The Tsimshian believe there is a moral imperative to return the masks and headdresses. They belong to the clan as a whole, not to any individual, says Art Sterrit, a treaty negotiator and the former president of the Tsimshian tribal council. "The missionaries demanded the Chiefs give up their regalia. The significance of those artifacts is that they will confirm our oral tradition." Prof. Carey says he would be happy to provide native carvers and scholars with access to the collection so they can copy the objects for posterity. He says he has traced Chief Legaic's descendants to Annette Island, Alaska, where they moved in 1887. He has been in touch with them and believes, if he is morally indebted to anyone, it is to the American Tsimshian, and not the Canadian. "I would have loved to see the collection go into a museum, where they could be properly cared for," Prof. Carey says. "But I failed to do this and now I'm getting old and the material will be split up anyway when I die. Ideally, a rich Canadian benefactor could bequeath it to a museum." The fate of the collection will soon be in the hands of the international art market. Canada may have lost its last best hope for reclaiming these rare and precious fragments of the past. Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. <><<<<<>>>>><><<<<> Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ <><<<<<>>>>><><<<<>
