Hopi Katsinam for Sale

An auction house in Paris is getting set to sell a collector's trove of Hopi religious artifacts. The Hopi tribe has protested, arguing that these are sacred objects, some of them possibly stolen; and even if they were purchased from Hopis, the tribe says, such sales are invalid because the artifacts belong to the tribe. The cultural confusions here run deep. Many Indians object to the treatment of their spiritual artifacts as "art," and want them placed in a completely different category. But in France, there is no category higher than art; a spokesman for the auction house called the sale "an homage to the Hopi people." To art collectors, paying a high price for an object is a sign of respect for its maker, not a cultural slight. Similar conflicts beset archaeological research. Many Indians think we should be honoring their ancestors, not studying them like so many specimens. But to a person of scientific bent, like me, there is no higher honor that can be given to anything than to make it the object of serious study. I worship the world by learning about it, and I mean that with utter, un-ironic seriousness.

I have often detected in Indians an ambivalence about the attentions of the international art world toward their cultures. On the one hand they are flattered by the attention, but on the other they want these things to be theirs, something that belongs to the Hopi and is under their control, not something sold by French collectors to other art lovers who may not know or care what they once meant.