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A confession:

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I am an archaeologist[br]and a museum curator,

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but a paradoxical one.

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For my museum, I collect things,

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but I also return things[br]back to where they came from.

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I love museums because[br]they're social and educational,

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but I'm most drawn to them[br]because of the magic of objects:

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a one-million-year-old hand axe,

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a totem pole,

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an impression painting all take us[br]beyond our own imaginations.

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In museums, we pause to muse,[br]to gaze upon our human empire of things

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in meditation and wonder.

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I understand why US museums alone

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host more than 850 million[br]visits each year.

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Yet, in recent years, museums[br]have become a battleground.

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Communities around the world[br]don't want to see their culture

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in distant institutions[br]which they have no control over.

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They want to see their cultural treasures

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repatriated, returned[br]to their places of origin.

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Greece seeks the return[br]of the Parthenon Marbles,

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a collection of classical structures[br]held by the British Museum.

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Egypt demands antiquities from Germany.

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New Zealand's Maori want to see returned

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ancestral tattooed heads[br]from museums everywhere.

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Yet these claims pale in comparison

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to those made by Native Americans.

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Already, US museums have returned[br]more than one million artifacts

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and 50,000 sets[br]of Native American skeletons.

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To illustrate what's at stake,[br]let's start with the war gods.

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This is a wood carving

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made by members of[br]the Zuni Tribe in New Mexico.

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In the 1880s, anthropologists[br]began to collect them

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as evidence of American Indian religion.

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They came to be seen as beautiful,

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the precursor to the stark sculptures[br]of Picasso and Paul Klee,

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helping to usher in[br]the modern art movement.

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From one viewpoint, the museum[br]did exactly as it's supposed to

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with the war god.

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It helped introduce[br]a little-known art form

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for the world to appreciate.

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But from another point of view,[br]the museum had committed

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a terrible crime of cultural violence.

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For Zunis, the war god[br]is not a piece of art,

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it is not even a thing,

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it is a being.

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For Zunis, every year,

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priests ritually carve new war gods,

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the Ahayuda,

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breathing life into them[br]in a long ceremony.

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They are placed on sacred shrines

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where they live to protect the Zuni people

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and keep the universe in balance.

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No one can own or sell a war god.

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They belong only to the earth.

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And so Zunis want them back from museums

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so they can go to their shrine homes

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to fulfill their spiritual purpose.

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What is a curator to do?

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I believe that the War Gods[br]should be returned.

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This might be a startling answer.

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After all, my conclusion[br]contradicts the refrain

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of the world's most famous archaeologist.

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"That belongs in a museum!"

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(Laughter)

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is what Indiana Jones said,[br]not just to drive movie plots,

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but to drive home the unquestionable good[br]of museums for society.

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I did not come to my view easily.

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I grew up in Tucson, Arizona,

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and fell in love[br]with the Sonoran Desert's past.

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I was amazed that beneath[br]the city's bland strip malls

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was 12,000 years of history[br]just waiting to be discovered.

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When I was 16 years old,[br]I started taking archaeology classes

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and going out on digs.

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A high school teacher of mine[br]even helped me set up my own laboratory

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to study animal bones.

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But in college, I came to learn[br]that my future career

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had a dark history.

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Starting in the 1860s,

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Native American skeletons

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became a tool for science,

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collected in the thousands

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to prove new theories[br]of social and racial hierarchies.

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Native American human remains[br]were plundered from graves,

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even taken fresh from battlefields.

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When archaeologists[br]came across white graves,

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the skeleton was often quickly reburied,

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while Native bones were deposited[br]as specimens on museum shelves.

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In the wake of war, stolen land,[br]the boarding schools,

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laws banning religion,

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anthropologists collected sacred objects

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in the belief that Native peoples[br]were on the cusp of extinction.

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You can call it racism or colonialism,

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but the labels don't matter[br]as much as the fact

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that over the last century,

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Native American rights and culture[br]were taken from them.

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In 1990, after years of Native protests,

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the US Government,[br]through the US Congress,

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finally passed a law that allowed[br]Native Americans to reclaim

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cultural items, sacred objects,[br]and human remains from museums.

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Many archaeologists were panicked.

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For scientists, it can be hard[br]to fully grasp how a piece of wood

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can be a living god,

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or how spirits surround bones,

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and they knew that modern science,[br]especially with DNA,

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can provide luminous insights[br]into the past.

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As the anthropologist[br]Frank Norwick declared,

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"We are doing important work[br]that benefits of all of mankind.

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We are not returning anything to anyone."

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As a college student,[br]all of this was an enigma

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that was hard to decipher.

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Why did Native Americans[br]want their heritage back

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from the very places preserving it?

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And how could scientists[br]spend their entire lives

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studying dead Indians

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but seem to care so little[br]about living ones?

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I graduated, but wasn't sure[br]what to do next,

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so I traveled.

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One day in South Africa,

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I visited Nelson Mandela's[br]former prison cell on Robben Island.

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I had an epiphany.

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Here was a man who helped[br]a country bridge vast divides

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to seek, however imperfectly,[br]reconciliation.

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I'm no Mandela, but I ask myself,

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could I too plant seeds of hope[br]in the ruins of the past?

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In 2007, I was hired as a curator at[br]the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

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Our team agreed that unlike[br]many other institutions,

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we needed to proactively confront[br]the legacy of museum collecting.

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We started with[br]the skeletons in our closet,

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100 of them.

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After months and then years,[br]we met with dozens of tribes

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to figure out how[br]to get these remains home.

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And this is hard work.

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It involves negotiating[br]who will receive the remains,

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how to respectfully transfer them,

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where will they go.

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Native American leaders[br]become undertakers,

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planning funerals for dead relatives[br]they had never wanted unearthed.

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A decade later, the Denver Museum[br]and our Native partners

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have reburied nearly all[br]of the human remains

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in the collection.

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We have returned[br]hundreds of sacred objects.

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But I've come to see[br]that these battles are endless.

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Repatriation is now a permanent feature[br]of the museum world.

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Hundreds of tribes are waiting their turn.

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There are always[br]more museums with more stuff.

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Every catalogued war god[br]in an American public museum

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has now been returned, 106 so far,

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but there are more[br]beyond the reach of US law,

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in private collections[br]and outside our borders.

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In 2014, I had the chance to travel[br]with a respected religious leader

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from the Zuni Tribe[br]named Octavius Seowtewa

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to visit five museums[br]in Europe with war gods.

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At the Ethnological Museum of Berlin,

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we saw a war god[br]with a history of dubious care.

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An overly enthusiastic curator[br]had added chicken feathers to it.

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Its necklace had once been stolen.

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At the Musée du quai Branly in Paris,[br]an official told us that the war god there

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is now state property[br]with no provisions for repatriation.

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He insisted that the war god[br]no longer served Zunis

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but museum visitors.

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He said, "We give all[br]of the objects to the world."

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At the British Museum,

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we were warned that the Zuni case[br]would establish a dangerous precedent

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for bigger disputes,

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such as the Parthenon Marbles

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claimed by Greece.

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After visiting the five museums,

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Octavius returned home[br]to his people empty-handed.

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He later told me,

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"It hurts my heart to see[br]the Ahayuda so far away.

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They all belong together.

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It's like a family member[br]that's missing from a family dinner.

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When one is gone,

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their strength is broken."

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I wish that my colleagues[br]in Europe and beyond

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could see that the war gods[br]do not represent the end of museums

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but the chance for a new beginning.

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When you walk the halls of a museum,

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you're likely just seeing[br]about one percent

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of the total collections.

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The rest is in storage.

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Even after returning[br]500 cultural items and skeletons,

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my museum still retains 99.999 percent[br]of its total collections.

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Though we no longer have war gods,

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we have Zuni traditional pottery,

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jewelry, tools, clothing and arts.

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And even more precious than these objects

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are the relationships that we formed[br]with Native Americans

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through the process of repatriation.

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Now, we can ask Zunis[br]to share their culture with us.

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Not long ago, I had the chance[br]to visit the returned war gods.

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The shrine sits up high atop a mesa

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overlooking beautiful Zuni homeland.

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The shrine is enclosed[br]by a roofless stone building

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threaded at the top with barbed wire

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to ensure that they're not stolen again.

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And there they are, inside,

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the Ahayuda,

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106 war gods amid offerings[br]of turquoise, cornmeal, shell,

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even t-shirts,

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a modern gift to ancient beings.

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And standing there,

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I got a glimpse at the war gods'[br]true purpose in the world.

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And it occurred to me then

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that we do not get to choose[br]the histories that we inherit.

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Museum curators today[br]did not pillage ancient graves

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or steal spiritual objects,

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but we can accept responsibility[br]for correcting past mistakes.

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We can help restore dignity,

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hope and humanity to Native Americans,

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the very people who were once[br]the voiceless objects of our curiosity.

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And this doesn't even require us[br]to fully understand others' beliefs,

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only that we respect them.

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Museums are temples to things past.

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Now they must also become[br]places for living cultures.

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As I turned to walk away from the shrine,

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I drank in the warm summer air,

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and I watched an eagle[br]turn lazy circles high above.

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I thought of the Zunis,[br]whose offerings ensure

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that their culture is not dead and gone

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but alive and well,

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and I could think of no better place[br]for the war gods to be.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)