Intangible values versus the Museum Selfie - Hoa Hakananai’a in Bloomsbury

Stolen and Lost Friend in Bloomsbury

A delegation travelled to London on November 20th  from Rapa Nui ('Easter Island') in the southeastern Pacific Ocean to persuade the British Museum about the need to return to the island the 2.5m tall moai basalt statue that entered the BM's collection 150 years ago when there was no possibility for Londoners to get on a plane and visit monuments like ths in their countries of origin (Naomi Rea, 'Delegates From Easter Island Meet With the Top Brass at the British Museum to Demand the Return of a Monumental Head Sculpture Museum authorities will travel to Rapa Nui to continue the discussion in the coming months' Artnet news November 20, 2018). They have named the statue Hoa Hakananai’a, which translates to “lost or stolen friend”. The statue is currently on view in the BM's Wellcome Trust Gallery, and is said to be 'one of the most popular and most photographed exhibits among its six million annual visitors'. It is only one of about a dozen   examples of the approximately 900 extant Moai created by the island’s early Polynesian inhabitants between 1100 and 1600 A.D. in museums around the world, including in France, Belgium, New Zealand, and the United States. The British Museum example is one of only ten made of the harder basalt.

The Rapa Nui people have noted that the basalt statue [...] is sacred in their culture. The objects are considered living incarnations of indigenous ancestors, the spirits of which watch over their family members. The figure of Hoa Hakananai’a was taken in 1868 by the crew of the HMS Topaze and gifted to Queen Victoria by the naval captain Commodore Richard Powell the following year, along with a smaller head known as Moai Hava. In turn, the Queen donated the statues to the British Museum. [...]  During the meeting, the group spent time with Hoa Hakanana’ia and held a ceremony with offerings, dances, and songs before engaging in a “warm, friendly and open conversation,” according to the British Museum spokesperson. “It was a pretty positive meeting,” the Chilean minister, Ward, said in a statement. “The fact that the authorities of the British Museum have been able to witness the meeting of the representatives of Rapa Nui with the Moai, opens an important door.” 

The visit of the islanders to the statue was an emotional one (Carla Herreria, 'Easter Island Natives Plead For British Museum To Return Ancient Rapa Nui Sculpture' Huffington Post 21st Nov 2018).

“I believe that my children and their children also deserve the opportunity to touch, see and learn from him,” Tarita Alarcón Rapu, governor of the Chilean island, said of the sculpture, according to the Agence France-Presse. “We are just a body. You, the British people, have our soul,” she added.  [...]  “You have kept him for 150 years, just give us some months, and we can have him,” Rapu said in tears outside of the British Museum this week.  “We want the museum to understand that the moai are our family, not just rocks. For us [the statue] is a brother; but for them it is a souvenir or an attraction.”

Anakena Manutomatoma, a member of Easter Island’s development commission, told John Bartlett ('Moai are family': Easter Island people to head to London to request statue back' The Guardian Nov. 16 2018).

 “Once eyes are added to the statues, an energy is breathed into the moai and they become the living embodiment of ancestors whose role is to protect us,” she added.

There is a broader context to this visit.

In recent years, the Rapanui people have ramped up efforts to preserve the island’s indigenous culture and gain independence from the Chilean government, which in 1888 annexed the island. Easter Island is located some 2,200 miles from the South American continent. The campaign to return moai to the island is a part of those efforts. “Perhaps in the past we did not attach so much importance to Hoa Hakananai’a and his brothers, but nowadays people on the island are starting to realize just how much of our heritage there is around the world and starting to ask why our ancestors are in foreign museums,” Rapanui sculptor Benedicto Tuki told BBC. 

The islanders hope that the British Museum will exchange the Hoa Hakananai’a  for an identical  modern replica made by Tuki

 “Perhaps it won’t possess the same ancestral spirit, but it will look identical,” he said. “My only wish is for him to return home; for me this is worth far more than any amount of money. As long as I live, I will fight to see our ancestors returned to the island.”

And the exotic look of the items is what counts to most of the selfie-posing tourists that currently visit the attraction in London, who probably are totally unawaere of the intangible bvalues attacted to it by the islanders from whose home it has been taken.