Return the Moai to Rapa Nui and Decolonize Museums
By Andres Kogan Valderrama
HAVANA TIMES – The recent social media campaign called “Return the Moai” (1) has once again brought into discussion the need for England to return this stone statue to Rapa Nui due to its high historical and symbolic value for the island and for all those who believe in a fairer world.
Even President Gabriel Boric has joined a demand that at first glance might seem like a mere request for the restitution of a sculpture stolen in the 19th century by the British Empire, but it also sparks a debate about the colonial nature of museums as institutions and the need for their decolonization.
In other words, this demand for the return of the Moai to Rapa Nui (which the British Empire dubbed Easter Island) can be seen as the result of the discussion we had as a country during the constituent process in 2022, which may have had a bad ending and a true war against it by the most conservative sectors, but it could have instilled to some extent the value of interculturality, plurinationality, and decolonization.
Therefore, thinking about decolonization goes far beyond the end of territorial occupation or the return of certain objects forcibly taken, such as the Moai in question. It is also about the role that museums have played since the 18th century in promoting discriminatory, exclusionary, and domination narratives, which have sustained historical asymmetries and injustices.
Walter Mignolo (2) proposes that the historical function of the museum for the West and modernity/coloniality has sought to strengthen its identity at the expense of robbing the memory of the peoples of the global south. Doing so based on an idea of universality that pretends to make us believe in a linearity of history, where Europe and the United States would be at the peak of civilizational progress, while other cultures would only be part of the past.
Likewise, throughout history the museum, like the modern school and university, has mainly been a civilizing educational device, by promoting certain knowledge and denying others, presenting itself as a neutral space, which only seeks to carry out conservation, research, and dissemination of heritage in the artistic, archaeological, and anthropological fields, thus concealing that it is an institution that seeks to perpetuate Western dominance.
That’s why if one reviews the reasons why the British Museum doesn’t want to return the Moai to Rapa Nui, it’s not just a legal issue, but also because according to them, if they were to hand it over, there would be a risk that it wouldn’t be as well preserved as in London, which only reinforces a racist narrative and full of cultural superiority over our countries.
In other words, England claims the monopoly on the preservation of the Moai, as if it didn’t matter that it was taken to the British Museum because of a robbery by the British Empire. Once again this shows that what lies behind this denial is the prevailing coloniality, which continues to impose itself as if it were unquestionable.
Fortunately, the museum as a colonial institution has been challenged by various sectors, both from social movements and from academia itself, who are not only denouncing prevailing Eurocentric narratives but also proposing more egalitarian, horizontal, dialogical forms that also rescue elements of the present, where the heritage of life and good living are at the center.
This is the case of the Committee of Education and Cultural Action for Latin America and the Caribbean (CECA LAC), which has been promoting a critical and participatory museology, seeking to transform the museum into a space for encounter, nourished by what happens in the streets, in the squares, and in the everyday life of the people.
In light of all this, returning the stolen Moai, should be seen as part of a process of decolonization worldwide, which connects with other experiences denied to this day, by a power dominance that refuses to leave an order that believes it has the right to erase the richness of the world and sell us a single history for everyone.