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mlwspace2005 t1_isrdad2 wrote

Reply to comment by corrado33 in UC Berkeley is repatriating cultural artifacts, including ancestral remains, to Indigenous tribes by KTnash

Does it matter if they are safer? If I broke into your house and stole your TV or the urn with your grandmother's ashes would my keeping them be justified if I had better storage facilities? It's their cultural artifacts and human remains. And let's not forget that those artifacts which are stored in larger institutions arnt necessarily safer, people do dumb and highly destructive things to them even there.

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corrado33 t1_issxtkc wrote

If the artifact is of significant provenance, yes.

Imagine something extremely important to the way we figured something out, say... the Rosetta stone. This artifact was extremely crucial to figuring out how certain languages work, and it's of great cultural importance as well. However, it's in the british museum which likely means it was stolen from elsewhere. What if that elsewhere doesn't have any place to properly store it? What if it's likely to get stolen and lost if it's given back. Do we just give it back, knowing full well it's likely to get stolen/destroyed?

What then?

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mlwspace2005 t1_istcx6s wrote

If that place it was taken from does not have the capacity to store it you should still return it, whatever cultural significance you attach to it means nothing against it's original cultures claim to the artifact. Especially if it's someplace like the British museum, who in the past have decided such culturally important artifacts should be scrubbed with the likes of a stiff metal wire brush and chemicals, thus permanently damaging such artifacts. Not to worry though, if you can ever scrape together enough money to travel to the UK you too can pay to see your artifact, assuming it's among the few thousand on display and not part of the 8 million objects locked up in the basement forever.

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AsianSensation1087 t1_it05vzk wrote

Yes. Give it back. It's theirs. They'll take care of it.

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corrado33 t1_it0dvvg wrote

And if they don't?

And an important artifact is destroyed/lost/stolen?

What then? We say "Whoops! That's their right, even though it's part of our history now too!"

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machinegunsyphilis t1_it3nay5 wrote

What if UC Berkeley caught and fire and everything they had burned down? What if aliens crashed their ship into their storage? We can go on all day with nonsensical what ifs.

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corrado33 t1_it4hncc wrote

UC Berkeley has top of the line fire suppression systems, ESPECIALLY wherever they'd hold artifacts.

That's.... literally the advantage of keeping artifacts in museums where they're well taken care of.

You're arguing my point here.

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