A museum in Germany is returning items that were stolen from Native graves in Alaska to their rightful place.
The nine items were taken sometime in the late 1880s, The Associated Press reported. They ended up in the collection of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, where the
Chugach Alaska Corporation, which has been tracking the patrimony for years, was finally able to reclaim them on Wednesday.
"They're a connection between the dead and the living, the future and the past," John Johnson, the Vice President of Cultural Resources for the corporation, told the AP. "If you look, one eye open, one eye shut, it's like traveling between two worlds."
The items include masks, a cradle and a wooden figurine. They were removed from Chugach territory in southwest Alaska.
“The objects were taken from graves without permission of the native people, and thus unlawfully,” said Hermann Parzinger, the president of the German government-sponsored
Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, The New York Times reported. “Therefore, they don’t belong in our museums.”
Chugach Alaska hopes to display the items once they are back in Alaska.
Read More on the Story:
German museum returns looted art to indigenous Alaskans
(The Associated Press May 16, 2018)
Berlin Museum Returns Artifacts to Indigenous People of Alaska
(The New York Times May 16, 2018)
Berlin museum returns looted artifacts to Alaska
(Deutsche Welle May 16, 2018)
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