Easter Island’s statues better off in the British Museum, says its mayor
The mayor of Easter Island has said that famous stone statues displayed at the British Museum are “ambassadors” for his culture as he rejected calls for them to be returned.
Pedro Edmunds Paoa condemned a new campaign backed by Chile’s president to pressure the British Museum into handing back two of the remote Pacific outpost’s stone monoliths.
In an interview with The Telegraph he also thanked the British crown and the museum for taking care of two of the island’s “ancestors” over the last century and exposing thousands of visitors to the native culture of Rapa Nui, the island’s indigenous name.
The British Museum’s social media accounts have been inundated in recent days with posts calling for the two moai, as the imposing statues are known, to be returned to Rapa Nui, which is part of Chile but is situated 2,000 miles west of South America.
At one point, the museum had to switch off comments on its Instagram account after Mike Milfort, a Haitian rapper living in Santiago, the Chilean capital, helped the campaign go viral by posting a frenetic video on the subject to his one million Instagram followers.
In a subsequent video, Mr Milfort suggested that the British Museum is full of objects stolen from “Latinos”, even though most of its exhibits come from Africa, the Middle East and Asia, while Rapa Nui culture, which is Polynesian in origin, predates the arrival of Europeans, including the Spanish, by centuries.
The campaign was supported by Gabriel Boric, the Chilean president, who recently declared “let the English give us back the moai”.
Mr Edmunds Paoa dismissed the viral campaign, saying: “This is nothing to do with us. We don’t want our culture to be politicised or turned into show business. We want respectful dialogue.”
He said that Rapa Nui’s council of elders did have differences with the British Museum about the two moai, which were taken from the island in 1868, but wanted to resolve them through amicable negotiations.
But those differences centred around the museum acknowledging Rapa Nui’s ownership of the monuments, rather than demanding their return.
“If you ask people here what they want, you won’t get 100 per cent agreement, but that is what the council has decided,” the mayor said. “We thank the British Museum and the British crown for taking such good care of our ancestors, at such a long distance from us.”
“We would like our ancestors to stay at the museum and also tour other museums, so that people can learn about Rapa Nui and our culture. Especially the Hoa Hakananai’a.”
English sailor Richard Powell took the statues and gave them to Queen Victoria. They were put on display at the museum, before being removed to a warehouse during the Blitz.
The Hoa Hakananai’a, the larger of the two statues now displayed again at the British Museum, played a central role in a Rapa Nui ritual called the Tangata manu or “bird man,” aimed at preventing warfare among rival clans. As part of the ritual, young men race to swim to a neighbouring islet and return carrying an intact seabird egg. The winner’s clan then rules the island for the following year.
Mr Edmunds Paoa said the ritual continues without the Hoa Hakananai’a. The islands are still home to some 1,000 moai, the largest of which are 30ft tall and weigh about 80 tons.
Representatives of the museum visited Rapa Nui in 2018, at the invitation of the council of elders but, according to Mr Edmunds Paoa, the museum subsequently broke off communications. Last August, the council of elders wrote to King Charles but have yet to receive a response.
“We do want to reopen the conversation. We don’t know why the British Museum closed it down,” added Mr Edmunds Paoa. “But this online campaign is not the way we want to go about it.”
