By Dr JACOB SIMET
A few weeks ago there were reports in the media about supposed trade in "human remains" in the Oro province.
It was claimed that foreigners were entering the country, buying human remains for substantial amounts of money and then shipping them out for sale.
It was alleged that the remains were those of soldiers who had died during WWII and which had been dug up by the local people for sale.
For many, this may be the first time they have heard of trade in human remains. However, for some this is just another chapter of a story about an activity which has quite a long history. The following is a story which illustrates the way in which body parts get to be redefined or valued in different ways to the point when they no longer are "human remains" but objects such "works or art", cultural objects for display in museums or specimens for experimentation and study purposes.
The matter of dealing in human remains has quite a long history and was practiced for many different reasons.
One of the earliest reasons was the collection of human remains, particularly human skulls by anthropologists for study purposes. This was during that period of social science when questions were being asked about the human species relating to the different races and their origins. Studies in those days concentrated on physical appearances, and a great part of this had to do with the head. For this study anthropologists and other social scientists went around the world collecting human skulls to bring back to their laboratories as study specimens. Many of these specimens ended up in overseas laboratories without the knowledge of the then living relatives and later descendants of the people to whom these skulls belonged.
Another reason for collecting human remains was basically as curios or cultural artifacts. The better known of these cases are the mummies of Middle Eastern countries which have been removed to various destinations in Europe.
There are lesser known cases of movement of bodies which had been preserved in traditional ways, such as those remains found in solid wooden coffins in some parts of China and those found in caves in the Phillipines.
In PNG the better known of our cases are the preserved remains found in the Menyamya district of the Morobe province, the preservation of skulls in the Trans-fly area, some parts of the Sepik and some areas in Milne Bay. .
Apart from the collection of human remains for the purposes of study and as curios, there was also the collection of particularly human skulls as evidence of the killing of a person who might have been wanted killed for a particular reason by authorities. This was a common requirement by colonial authorities in some parts of the world. During the period of colonial regimes there were situations of conflict between the colonial administration and the people, which resulted in the killing of many people.
In some of these situations it was a requirement that those responsible for the conflict be killed and tangible evidence of their death be presented for reporting purposes.
Of course it was nearly always the indigenous people who were to be blamed for these conflicts and it was them who had to be killed. The usual tangible form of evidence in these situations is the actual body itself or at least the head. If the head was needed, this required the decapitation of the head from the body and brought into the colonial administrative headquarters as evidence of the slaying of the victims. After their use as evidence, it is not known what happened to the skulls. In PNG today the descendants of some people who had fallen victim to punitive actions by colonial regimes still do not know where the heads of their ancestors were buried or whether they were buried at all.
One story which has well and truly gone into the folklore of the people of New Britain, was the killing of a number Catholic clergy, at Vunamarita Parish in the North Baining area, of east New Britain in the early 1900s. This resulted in a punitive expedition by the occupying Colonial Administration of the time and quite a large number of people were killed, including those who were believed to have been the main instigators of the murders. The decapitated heads of these supposed main instigators were displayed at the wharf at Kokopo for several days before they were removed. The relatives of these victims did not know what happened to these heads. Some believed that these remains were not disposed of in the proper way but that they continued to be kept as evidence somewhere; somewhere on New Britain or somewhere else outside of New Britain.
However ways and for whatever reasons these remains ended up in other countries, quite a lot of them ended up being the property of institutions, such as research organizations.and mainly museums. In institutes of anatomy they remain subjects of study and in this regard they are far from being regarded as human. In Museums these items are treated as cultural objects rather than human remains. As such they are guided by the rules and regulations of the Museum, many of which restrict the movement of these items or even their disposal as human remains. Under these circumstances any attempts by anyone to claim these remains for proper burial or disposal as human remains usually meet with a lot of difficulty, sometimes almost impossible. This impossible situation is illustrated in a case which is now being played out between a Museum in France and the New Zealand Maori people through their Government, over a Maori head which is being considered as a work of art rather than a human remain.
Recently the Museum of Natural History at Rouen in Normandy, France, decided to repatriate the tattooed mummified head of a Maori warrior to New Zealand. This item had been part of the collection in the Museum since 1875 and after some recent changes to the Museum it was decided that it no longer served any purpose there and so should be returned to its rightful place and people for proper disposal. The mayor of Rouen who was responsible for the return of this item saw their action as "atonement" for colonial-era trafficking in human remains. However, on learning of this, the national Ministry of Culture stepped in to block this action.
The main reason for the national Cultural Ministry's action was that the head was a "work of art" that belonged to France "and that its return could set an unfortunate precedent for a huge swath of the national museum collections - from Egyptian mummies in the Louvre to Asian treasures in the Musee Guimet and African and Oceanic artifacts in the Musee du Quai Branly". The culture Ministry refers to a 2002 law which states that works of art are "inalienable". On the basis of this they argue that, "there are other Maori heads, there are mummies, there are religious relics in France. If we don't respect the law today, tomorrow other museums or elected officials might decide to send them back too".
The authorities in Rouen however insist that the Maori head is a body part, not a work of art, and that according to France's bioethics law it must be returned to its place of origin. They argue that; "this object reflects the barbaric trafficking in body parts, the belief that another race was inferior to ours". They also argue that the remains "belongs to the heritage of humanity, not in storage somewhere in a museum".
In recent weeks the French National Culture Minister won a ruling from a local court to stop the process to return the tattooed head. Having done this she called for a process to "guarantee the integrity of our national heritage". Further she warns of "heavy repercussions" for France's other collections if this item was allowed to leave the country.
So for the moment the tattooed head gets to stay in France, as a "work of art" rather than a body part as defined by French laws and not as human remains.
The Maori traditionally preserved the tattooed heads of warriors killed in battle to keep their memory alive. The tattooed head currently under contention was probably bought in the 19th century when the trade in body parts flourished in New Zealand. During this period some Maori warriors were actually in danger of being killed so that their heads could be sold.
For all human societies of the world, death was and still is a very significant "life-crisis" situation. Birth, initiation and marriage are also important but in many situations they do not have the reverence which is attributed to death. Many societies have very long and drawn out mortuary ritual processes, some taking months to complete, others taking years and others taking even decades. At the same time some societies go to great lengths to preserve human remains, such as the mummies in Middle Eastern countries and some parts of China. In other parts of the world, different processes of preservation of human remains are employed such as smoking and burying then exhuming of skulls; such as those practiced in Papua New Guinea. In these cases the processes and practices relating to death had to do with religious belief systems, or at least concepts of spirituality. In this sense then death and the resultant human remains was a very sacred matter.
Set against the sanctity as described above, the removal of human remains in some of the ways discussed here would then be sacreleage of the highest order. All human-beings have a right to be buried or their remains be disposed in an appropriate and dignified manner. The definitions of body parts as being other things such as "works of art", "cultural artifacts" or "specimens for study" are violations of basic human rights. Apart from this they constitute flagrant violations of cultural processes and procedures, much of which is religious and constitute very important parts of cultural systems.








 

 

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