Dilbert_X wrote:
Museums should probably return their artefacts - to be smashed to dust or sold to the highest bidder - because thats what will happen to most of them.
Most of the world is in a much better situation than it would have been without colonialism, people should remember that while they're dismantling it.
I do support returnism, but not necessarily mindless returnism. Obviously, not every country an artifact gets returned to is going to bash it into powder. That they would is an argument used to justify ongoing historical injustice of war and peacetime looting.
But while we're hashing over countries stable enough to return priceless human heritage to so that they can be the producers of their own history, a lot could be done to bring museums up with the times. They could, for instance, stop depicting non-western people as primitive and unchanging. Maybe remove all the African skulls on display. A little #*&@ respect, maybe?
I can't imagine that many Americans, for instance, would be pleased about the Chinese raiding the ruins of an old west ghost town, digging everyone up, stealing everything they can, and then creating a macabre display in Beijing with a heavily propaganda'd bent. Eastern thought echo chamber!