BBC Radio 3 Nightwaves: Undercurrents 1 February 2002

What does it mean to possess an object? Is it just a thing - perhaps a thing with its own beauty - or it its story embedded in the object itself. And if that story is one of conquest, of looting or violent dispossession, what is the importance of that story to those in possession of the object?

These questions lie at the heart of one of the most contentious debates in today's cultural world. Should the treasures that are housed in the West's museums be returned to their countries of origin when those countries ask for them? What are the practical and moral problems of restitution and what does it mean for those who recover them and for those who give them up.

This month saw a highly charged and emotional act of restitution as an Ethiopian religious object - a tabot, or replica of the Ark of the Covenant was returned to Addis Ababa to a tumultuous reception. Crowds lined the streets, priests chanted and children danced and sang as the sacred object came home. It was part of a haul plundered by British troops during a punitive expedition against the then Emperor of Abyssinia in 1868 and had been donated to an Edinburgh church by an army officer. There it had lain, forgotten, until last December, when the Reverend John McLuckie decided to clear out a cupboard.

John McLuckie had no doubt that it must be returned. It was, he said, a central part of a living religious tradition. But if that tabot should go back, what of the ten others that are in the possession of the British Museum? And if the museums Ethiopian religious artefacts should be returned, will that strengthen Greece's demand for the return of the Parthenon marbles, or any of dozens of other treasures that are now in contention.

Michael Daley, an artist and director of Art Watch, thinks none of them should be returned. An object is simply an object to be studied and appreciated for its beauty. The history of its acquisition, he says, is not important.

Until recently, most museum directors would have agreed. But now the museum world is divided. The change was largely the result of pressure from Native American and Australian aboriginal communities for the recovery of human remains which had been collected, ostensibly for scientific purposes, in the 19th century. Lyndon Ormond-Parker, a researcher who works on behalf of Australian Aboriginal communities for the return of human remains and other cultural property, has been in the forefront of a movement that has awoken many museums to the moral and cultural difficulties of holding such material. Some museums still resist, but many argue that to continue to hold subjects objects is indefensible and to return them benefits scholarship. Len Pole, director of Exeter Museum, who has returned objects from Exeter's collection, believes that the communication that restitution makes possible with the source communities is more valuable than possession of the objects.

Nancy Lindisfarne, an anthropologist, and Tom Flynn, an art historian who works for the return of stolen art objects, argues that such objects were never of scientific value in any case. But if human remains should be returned, why should the artefacts that came, in some cases, from the same communities not go back? And if they should go back, what about national treasures, like Benin bronzes?

Julian Spalding was director of Glasgow's Museums when the Sioux nation asked for the return of the Lakota Ghost Dance shirt, a garment believed to have been worn by a Sioux warrior in the battle of Wounded Knee. He opposed the restitution of the shirt, arguing that such shirts were not rare in the United States. It was of much more value in a Western museum, he believed, where it could be the focus of education about the Sioux nation.

The argument over cultural restitution is also a debate about what the continued possession of these objects means, both for the possessor and for those who claim them. In the case of Ethiopia, a living tradition is damaged by the absence of the tabots. Aboriginal people argue that they need to recover the objects to restore traditions interrupted and damaged by colonisation.

Now, many Western curators believe that to refuse restitution damages Western scholarship, too. Until the circumstances under which an object came into a museum's possession, and the story of its loss to its original community are acknowledged, the object has lost its meaning and its place in a collection is ambiguous. Other curators, fearful of a floodgate of demands, are equally convinced that the collections must stay intact.

Reading List: Cultural Restitution

The Poetic Museum: Reviving Historic Collections by Julian Spalding, (Prestel Publishing)

Colonialism and the Object edited by Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn, (Routledge)

The Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action - http://www.faira.org.au