Tattooed Maori Head - Body Part or Art?

The New York Times last month had an intriguing article, about the French government's attempts to decide whether a 130 year-old Tattooed Maori head currently held in the Museum of Natural History is a body part, and should be returned to New Zealand for burial, or whether it is a work of art, and should be kept in the museum.

No pictures of the Maori head are shown in the article - just a drawing, which looks remarkedly like a Benzart carving.

some excerpts from the article ......

" The Maoris traditionally preserved the tattooed heads of warriors killed in battle to keep their memory alive. Trade in body parts flourished in the 19th century, as contact with outsiders increased. Europeans collected Maori remains. Tattooed Maori fighters sometimes were in danger of being killed so their heads could be sold. Some Maori slaves were forcibly tattooed, then decapitated."

"The American Museum of Natural History in New York has more than 30 Maori heads."

Read the full article here .....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/world/europe/26france.html

A few more information about Maori heads was found in some other articles - condensed here for your pleasure.

"Tattooed, shrunken heads sparked a brisk, grotesque trade among European collectors until it was outlawed by the British in 1831. Some of the estimated 200 held around the world were stolen from burial caves. New Zealand launched a campaign to recover the heads from museums and private collections around the world in 1992, responding to Maori grievances at the treatment of the remains.

Dr Tapsell said that before the introduction of the musket moko was only worn by those who had killed in hand-to-hand combat. The moko represented the warrior's lineage but also was a testament to the vanquished person's whakapapa.

"It [the moko] wasn't worn lightly, it had great mana. There was also the pain of the whakapapa of those lives you'd taken." Once a warrior with a moko was killed in combat his head was removed by his enemy.

"The mana of that person was taken when the head was taken." At some point the preserved head could be offered back to the kin group, as utu - a rebalancing - for peace

It looks like Chicago's Field Museum has already returned their Maori heads to New Zealand.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2007/09/07/field-maori-bones.html

Ripley's Believe or Not (headquartered in Florida) claims to have the world's largest collection of heads, shrunken and otherwise. Many of them probably originated as the result of Western greed for bizarre colonialist souvenirs.

Seems to moi the original purpose of the Maori decapitation was spiritual in nature. The museum could easily make a copy if it if the art is so all-fired important, and return the head to the Maori people. After all, it's a pretty dicey bit of art that can't be publicly displayed and is accessible only to a "few specialists." What else falls into that suspicious category? Antique porn?

I predict this will eventually go as it did over the museum possession of Native American remains in the name of anthropology. Or those horrid Nazi artifacts of recycled concentration camp victims' skins. Ick.

[ Edited by: Carmine Verandah 2007-11-14 18:49 ]

It is a fact that a single head displayed is a problem, everyone knows that two heads are better than one...sorry, I must have lost my head.
Imagine being a slave to the Maori's first of all then being forcefully tattooed knowing that you are going to be killed so it can be shrunk. Gives me a different outlook on the funny faces made during the performance of the Haka, these were some bad Hombres.

Quote Carmine Verandah;
Ripley's Believe or Not (headquartered in Florida) claims to have the world's largest collection of heads, shrunken...

Isn't that collection called Congress?

Quote ikitnrev;
"It [the moko] wasn't worn lightly, it had great mana. There was also the pain of the whakapapa of those lives you'd taken." Once a warrior with a moko was killed in combat his head was removed by his enemy.
"The mana of that person was taken when the head was taken." At some point the preserved head could be offered back to the kin group, as utu - a rebalancing - for peace

It's a relief to know that there was a protocol to wear a head and returning heads. Bad enough taking some poor slobs head but then letting the kids put lipstick and a pink dress on it to play "Tea"
Without a good Ginsu knife, it must have been a task to take off a head and imagine the nice aroma around camp as the head was "cured?"

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I know of one for sale.
An antique dealer in my city has had one for a while. I recall it's between $3000-$4000.
It's breathtaking. I admire it every time I'm in his shop.

Part of me wants it.

Part of me wants it far away from me.

No part of me can afford it, so there is little interior strife....
F

Maori exhibit in Chicago with same delima.
Chicago article

The article reads like the Field returned the head to New Zealand and put it into another museum collection there to be sorted out later.