Respecting Non-Western Sacred Objects: An A:shiwi Ahayu:da (Zuni war god), the Museum of the American Indian–Heye Foundation, and the Museum of Modern Art

By Cécile R. Ganteaume, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian

For the last few weeks, American Indians, the international art world, U.S. State Department officials, indigenous rights activists, and intellectual and cultural property rights lawyers on both sides of the Atlantic have been discussing the proposed sale of Hopi Katsina “friends” (often mistakenly called masks) at a Paris auction house. The Hopi, who live in northern Arizona, and their supporters tried to delay, if not halt, the sale. Hopi Katsina friends are among the most sacred Hopi ritual objects. Katsinam (the plural of Katsina) are spiritual beings that live in the peaks of the San Francisco Mountains and bring blessings to the Hopi. When worn during Kastina ceremonies, the friend—the spirit of Katsina—is united with the spirit of man. On April 12, 2013, a French judge ruled that “the claim that Hopi cultural patrimony is exclusively their property has no legal basis according to French law” and that the auction house could proceed with the sale..

The Hopi effort is the latest prominently reported instance of an American Indian tribe trying to regain its sacred objects from the international art world and market. American Indians have been seeking the return of their sacred objects since well before the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990), the federal law that helps enable the return to tribes of certain categories of objects including sacred objects, held by U.S. museums.

Almost thirty years ago, on September 27, 1984, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City opened a highly anticipated and soon to be celebrated exhibition. “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern was curated by William Rubin (1927–2006), then MoMA’s esteemed director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture, in collaboration with Kirk Varnadoe (1946–2003), a professor within the New York University Institute of Fine Arts. On display in the exhibition was to be an A:shiwi (Zuni) Ahayu:da (war god) borrowed from the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin, (now the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin). The MoMA exhibition, and its multi-authored, two-volume catalogue, explored the influence of tribal art and culture in modern art’s development “from Gauguin at the turn of the century to the Abstract Expressionists around 1950.” When the exhibition opened, the New York Times heralded it as “an immensely important show.” 

 

“People are talking about: The man from MoMA” by Barbara Rose in Vogue (August, 1984. Vol. 174(8), pages 357–361 & 416) with illustrations of the A:shiwi (Zuni) Ahayu:da (war god) in the collections of the Museum für Völkerkunde and the Paul Klee painting, Mask of Fear. Page 357 @ Condé Nast. Used with permission.

In one of their exhibition galleries, the curators planned to juxtapose the painted wood Ahayu:da “sculpture” with a Paul Klee oil painting, Mask of Fear (1932), to discuss what they found to be the striking affinity between the “primitive” and “modern” “works of art.” The Museum für Völkerkunde acquired the Ahayu:da in 1880, and Klee, the Swiss-born artist closely associated with the Bauhaus movement, was known to have visited the museum several times while the Ahayu:da was on display. Like many avant-garde artists of his time, Klee was keenly interested in the formal vocabulary of the visual arts of non-Western peoples; he wrote on the subject more than once. William Rubin was convinced that Klee was familiar with the Museum für Völkerkunde Ahayu:da and that it “consciously or unconsciously” influenced his Mask of Fear. In the catalogue essay, “Modernist Primitivism: An Introduction,” Rubin wrote of the works’ “striking similarities,” comparing the oval-shaped heads; the single arrow projecting from the top of each head; the long, narrow noses and absence of mouths; and the horizontal line crossing each forehead. He suggested that “the curious multiple legs” protruding from Klee’s head were a transformation of the feathers projecting from the Ahayu:da’s chin. Klee’s painting was “a modernist transformation,” Rubin wrote, of the A:shiwi Ahayu:da “sculpture.” And this was how the curators intended to display the A:shiwi Ahayu:da from the Museum für Völkerkunde in “Primitivism” in the 20th Century: as a “primitive sculpture” with “conceptual complexity and aesthetic subtlety” whose exhibition and publication in the West, along with the appearance of other “primitive” works of art, had a great impact on Modernist aesthetic sensibilities. (See William Rubin, “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, vol. 1. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1984, pages 29–32.)

But as it happened, by 1984 the A:shiwi were already actively pursuing the return of their Ahayu:da—all wrongfully removed from shrines on their reservation. Cared for by A:shiwi religious leaders, Ahayu:da are powerful guardian beings who protect the A:shiwi and their land from harm. Their acquisition by European and European–America individuals and institutions broke all A:shiwi religious and cultural protocols. Their dispersion was the result of large-scale historical events that brought non-Western peoples, ideas, and practices to the Americas and led, in a myriad of ways and places, to the wrongful alienation of Native peoples’ religious patrimony.

The A:shiwi began their efforts to recover their Ahayu:da in 1978, twelve years before Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) to provide a process for museums and federal agencies to return to Native Americans and Native Hawaiian organizations certain cultural items—human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, or objects of cultural patrimony. The A:shiwi were in the vanguard of Native peoples seeking the return of sacred objects from museums, galleries, auction houses, and private collections. Buttressed by the newly legislated American Indian Freedom of Religion Act (1978), intended to protect American Indian religious liberties that had long been infringed upon and even prohibited, the A:shiwi campaign helped make it possible for other tribes to recover their own sacred objects. As T. J. Ferguson, an anthropologist who aided the A:shiwi in their efforts, has written, A:shiwi religious leaders were not only resolute in their pursuit, but most importantly were “morally persuasive” in their conversations with museum curators, administrators, and others in the art world elucidating the importance of returning Ahayu:da to A:shiwi shrines. (See T. J. Ferguson, “Repatriation of Ahayu:da: 20 Years Later.” Museum Anthropology, vol. 33, 2012, pages 194–95.)

During the summer of 1984, I was a curatorial assistant at the Museum of the American Indian–Heye Foundation, the forerunner institution to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. As such, I was very much aware of the increasingly vocal opposition of Native peoples, including the A:shiwi, to having their sacred objects displayed as “art” in museum exhibitions—in fact, to having them housed in museum collections at all.

It is important to bear in mind that in Western art history, the term “sacred art” is used to refer to (what might be called in this specific context) ancillary objects used in religious ceremonies and buildings, such as Byzantine chalices and other Christian liturgical vessels; or medieval or renaissance paintings bearing religious iconography, such as Hieronymus Bosch’s extraordinary altarpiece of the Adoration of the Magi; or, much more recently, certain abstract works with fields of luminous color, such as Henri Matisse’s stained glass windows in the Dominican Chapelle du Rosaire in France. In other words, in Western art history the term is used to refer to artistic creations depicting, expressing, or evoking religious subjects and a realm of reality beyond that ordinarily encountered in daily life. It is used to refer to artistic works intended to speak to the hearts, minds, and spirits of those contemplating the divine.

Importantly, it is not used to refer to, for example, a host consecrated by an ordained priest during the Eucharistic service of a Catholic Mass. A consecrated host has never been considered “art” by museums. Yet objects held by American Indians to be spiritually sentient were. And they were displayed in museums throughout the U.S. and Europe for reasons that had nothing to do with (read: without any understanding of) their deeply held spiritual reality, and without any awareness of, and consequently regard for, the religious practices and tenets of contemporary Native peoples.  

Museum of Modern Art members’ newsletter (no. 32, Jul–Aug, 1984) announcing the upcoming exhibition “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern.
 

I learned that the Museum of Modern Art planned to include an A:shiwi Ahayu:da in “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art through a preview in MoMA’s members’ newsletter. I shared this newsletter with the MAI–HF curators, and in particular with Brenda Shears (then Holland), who in turn shared it with our assistant director, George Eager. (Roland Force, director of the MAI–HF, was out of town.) After staff worked their networks to gather salient information, Eager wrote a letter to Richard Oldenburg, director of the Museum of Modern Art and a long-time colleague, advising him that A:shiwi Ahayu:da were “the most sensitive of Native American religious objects” and should not be put on display. He informed Oldenburg that museums throughout the country were in fact removing Ahayu:da from exhibition for this very reason. Eager went on to explain that any Ahayu:da out of A:shiwi  possession were considered stolen objects, illegally removed from shrines on the A:shiwi reservation. In no small measure because of this letter, MoMA removed the Ahayu:da borrowed from the Museum für Völkerkunde from “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art. (See James Clifford, “Histories of the Tribal and the Modern.” In Primitivism and Twentieth Century Art: A Documentary History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, pages 351–68.) 

I have never forgotten the pivotal role that the MAI–HF played in this incident, nor the experience of being a direct witness to a sea change in museum practice. MoMA’s decision represents one of the first times that an eminent institution at the center of one of the cultural capitals of the world removed a sacred American Indian object from display, let alone from such an important (and highly publicized) exhibition. It was, in fact, an historic act that helped focus worldwide attention on the inappropriate display of sacred American Indian objects and on the responsibility of museums to respect Native religious traditions. 

Cécile R. Ganteaume is the curator most recently of Circle of Dance, an exhibition on view at NMAI–New York. She is also the curator of the exhibition An Infinity of Nations: Art and History in the Collections of the National Museum of the American Indian also on view at NMAI–New York, and the editor of the accompanying book. She is a recipient of a 2011 Smithsonian Secretary’s Excellence in Research Award. She joined the staff of the museum when it was established as part of the Smithsonian. Photo by R.A.Whiteside, NMAI. 

Indian Country in the News: July 27 - August 3, 2012

This week's news highlights include a story about indigenous resistance against illegal logging in Mexico, a plea to pass tougher anti-violence laws protecting American Indian woman, mandatory evictions for non-Indians living on Seneca land in upstate New York, and the celebration and sorrow over sacred white buffaloes in Connecticut and Texas:

• NYTimes: In Mexico, Reclaiming the Forests and the Right to Feel Safe - "On the morning of April 15, 2011, using rocks and fireworks, a group of women attacked a busload of AK-47-armed illegal loggers as they drove through Cherán, residents said. The loggers, who local residents say are protected by one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organizations and given a virtual free pass by the country’s authorities, had terrorized the community at will for years. Cherán’s residents said they had been subjected to multiple episodes of rape, kidnapping, extortion and murder by the paramilitary loggers, who have devastated an estimated 70 percent of the surrounding oak forests that sustained the town’s economy and indigenous culture for centuries."

• CSMonitor: Pass a Violence Against Women Act that protects American Indian women - "Violence against women is a distressingly common problem in all segments of US society, but American Indian women and girls are particularly vulnerable to sexual and domestic violence. Data show that a shocking 1 in 3 American Indian women have been raped in their lifetime – twice the national average. The rate of domestic violence victimization is even higher, with more than 2 out of 5 American Indian women experiencing violence at the hands of a husband or boyfriend."

• AP: NY tribe moves to evict non-Indians - "The Seneca Nation, a native American tribe in western New York known for its defiant stances on sovereignty, said Friday that it would evict around 80 families living in a lakeshore community on its territory because the residents aren't members of the tribe. The action covers an area on the shores of Lake Erie called Snyder Beach, now dotted with summer cottages, many of which are occupied by people who have been there for decades. Tribal leaders said in a written statement that they want the families out by Nov. 8."

• NPR: One White Buffalo To Get Sacred Name; Death Of Another Still Stirs Anger - "Hundreds of Native Americans are expected to gather Saturday at a former dairy farm in Goshen, Conn., to hold a sacred naming ceremony for what they hope is a rare white buffalo. Mark Herz from NPR member station WSHU catches up with the story for All Things Considered in a report due to air later today. As he says, the calf's DNA still needs to be tested to confirm that he truly is a white buffalo — "or bison, as they are more properly known." But, "test results or no," many Native Americans are planning to be there tomorrow."

Indian Country in the News: June 1 - June 8, 2012

This week's news highlights include funding troubles for a controversial dam in Chile that indigenous environmentalists argue will destroy the Patagonia region; an investigation into tribal payday lending practices; reparations for Native American victims of 20th-century eugenics policies in North Carolina; and the continuing controversy over Massachusetts politician Elizabeth Warren's heritage claims: 

• BBC: Chilean power firm Colbun puts project on ice - "One of the two firms planning to build the giant HidroAysen dam in Chilean Patagonia has frozen the project, citing lack of government backing. Colbun said there was no point continuing with the planning stage for the project's transmission line unless Chile's government came up with an energy strategy that had wide support. Protestors argue that the scheme will destroy a valuable natural environment. The dams are intended to provide a third of Chile's electricity."

• Bloomberg: Payday Lenders and Indian Tribes Evading Laws Draw Scrutiny - "U.S. regulators and Congress are scrutinizing partnerships between Native Americans and outside investors in online payday lending businesses accused of exploiting tribal sovereignty to evade state consumer-protection laws. The push has divided Native American groups, with critics of payday lending opposing tribal involvement in the businesses, which charge interest rates as high as 521 percent for short- term loans. Other Indian groups, formed to represent the nascent industry in Washington, are pushing back against the regulators."

• ICT: Preemptive Genocide: Only Now Are Reparations Being Made to Eugenics Victims - "When North Carolina announced earlier this year that it intends to be the first state to compensate victims of decades-ago sterilization programs, it renewed a nationwide debate over the need to acknowledge and amend the travesties of similar programs in other states. Tens of thousands of women, men and even children were sterilized from the early 1900s through the middle part of the century. Often, the victims were misled about the treatments they were undergoing; sometimes they were pressured or even forced to cooperate. Most had been deemed unfit to reproduce, often because they weren’t white and sometimes because they were ruled mentally inferior. The programs all were justified by eugenics policies meant to improve the gene pool."

• CS Monitor: Cherokees hammer Elizabeth Warren on ancestry claim ahead of Mass. party convention - "Indian reporters and activists want answers from Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, who has given muddled replies about whether she used unsupported claims of Cherokee ancestry to further her academic career at Harvard."

Indian Country in the News: May 25 - June 1, 2012

This week's news highlights include a series from Indian Country Today debunking common myths about Native Americans; the one-year anniversary of the White House's new program to combat obesity and poor health among Native American youth; the prospect of the first ever tribally-run national park in the U.S. and tribal protests in Brazil over better healthcare:

• ICT: American Myths Debunked: Europeans Brought Culture to North America - "And so we come to our second-to-last look at Cracked.com’s “6 Ridiculous Lies You Believe About the Founding of America,” specifically myth #5, “Native Culture Wasn’t Primitive.” The “myth” Cracked.com is trying to debunk is two-fold: One, that American Indians lived in total harmony with nature and that Europeans alone used the natural resources of North American for their own purposes and two, that Natives didn’t create complex cities, and were in general less “civilized” and their societies less developed than Europeans."

• White House: Celebrating the One Year Anniversary of Let’s Move! in Indian Country - "Over the past year Let’s Move! in Indian Country has worked with stakeholders across the country to help connect communities, schools and tribal leader to resources, funding, trainings and programs that will help improve the health of the next generation.  As a key component of the First Lady’s comprehensive initiative Let’s Move!, the Let’s Move! in Indian Country program focuses on the unique hurdles that American Indian and Alaska Native youth must overcome to maintain a healthy lifestyle.  In the first year, we have seen considerable progress and the First Lady and the Administration remain committed to building towards the ultimate goal of ending the epidemic of childhood obesity in Indian Country within a generation."

• NPR: S.D. Tribe Poised To Take Back Part Of Badlands - "Federal officials are about to join hands with a tribe in South Dakota in a proposal to make part of the Badlands National Park the first ever tribally-run national park in the country. The agreement comes after years of sometimes bitter land disputes over the south unit of the Badlands. The largely undeveloped swath of steep bluffs and mud buttes is sacred place to some Native Americans who don't believe the land belongs under federal control or ownership. The move towards tribal management could set a precedent for other tribes in the United States to take over control of national parks elsewhere."

• Brazilian indigenous groups demand better healthcare - "Groups of indigenous people in Brazil blocked roads and occupied government buildings to demand better healthcare for their communities. Several ethnic groups staged a protest at the Health Ministry building in the capital, Brasilia, asking for a meeting with a senior official. In a statement, the movement's leaders called for better facilities and access to more doctors. They say mortality rates are on the rise among the indigenous peoples."

Indian Country in the News: May 18 - May 25, 2012

This week's news highlights include a unique school in Venezuela that seeks preserve indigenous knowledge and culture; the Navajo interpretation of the upcoming solar eclipse; a ruling in Oregon to ban Native American school mascots; and a chilling account from the New York Times about rape and justice in Indian Country:

• Al Jazeera: Venezuela's indigenous university - "Pemon is enrolled at Venezuela's indigenous university - established to develop community leaders to safeguard lands, rights and ancient cultures. The native peoples of Venezuela comprise just two per cent of the country's 29 million people, and many communities have been established in the jungles, swamps and waterways along the Atlantic and Caribbean coasts for centuries. There, they worship the land, employ shamans, and use traditional healing."

• ABC: Arizona Tribes Talk Significance of Solar Eclipse - "Seven years old and lounging in a tree listening to the radio, Baje Whitethorne Sr. wasn't aware of the lesson he was about to learn. His grandfather called him down from the tree, saying it was time to go inside their home on the Navajo reservation and wait while the sun died and was reborn. There was going to be a solar eclipse. Whitethorne wanted nothing more than to eat, but he did what he was told. That day, he learned patience and a cultural teaching that he has passed on through a children's book he wrote about why Navajos shouldn't gawk at an eclipse like the one that will be visible Sunday in parts of the western United States."

• MSNBC: Oregon bans Native American school mascots, images - "Public schools in Oregon must discontinue the use of Native American names, symbols or images as mascots following a State Board of Education vote. Prohibited names include, "Redskins," "Savages," "Indians," "Indianettes," "Chiefs" and "Braves," the board said in a statement Thursday. The board by a 5-1 vote adopted the rule and gave schools until July 2017 to comply."

• NYTimes: For Native American Women, Scourge of Rape, Rare Justice - "One in three American Indian women have been raped or have experienced an attempted rape, according to the Justice Department. Their rate of sexual assault is more than twice the national average. And no place, women’s advocates say, is more dangerous than Alaska’s isolated villages, where there are no roads in or out, and where people are further cut off by undependable telephone, electrical and Internet service. The issue of sexual assaults on American Indian women has become one of the major sources of discord in the current debate between the White House and the House of Representatives over the latest reauthorization of the landmark Violence Against Women Act of 1994."