Nurturing the Natives

Bill Brown's adventure in Hawaii.


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Published: Apr 11, 2007

When he arrived in Hawaii, William Brown knew more about the social rituals of Hawaii's birds than its people. So when an aide told him that a simmering dispute between native Hawaiian groups over disposition of the museum's most valuable pieces had been satisfactorily resolved as far as the museum was concerned, he let the matter lie fallow.

However, the dispute had more deeply divided the native Hawaiian community (which makes up a quarter of Hawaii's 1.3 million people) than any other. It grew out of the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) which was designed as a legal instrument for Native Americans to get back from museums and universities bones and associated funerary objects that they could rebury with dignity, along with cultural icons and sacred objects for use in traditional religions.

America's 550-odd Native American tribes all have federally recognized governments, which NAGPRA designates as the appropriate recipients of these objects. But in Hawaii, the government dissolved with the U.S. forced annexation of 1893. There are scores of native Hawaiian organizations with a wide diapason of goals, and figuring out who should get the bones and objects has proven an exceedingly thorny issue.

In 1994, the museum received a letter from several native organizations requesting the repatriation of 83 objects that included some of its rarest and most prized possessions, altogether worth at least $20 million, according to a prominent Honolulu Polynesian art dealer. The pieces, known as the Forbes cave collection, were found in 1905 on Hawaii's Big Island by David Forbes, a federal judge with an interest in Hawaiian art, and two friends. While many pieces had been hidden in caves only to be later stolen and sold, this cave had clearly remained walled and undisturbed for more than 100 years.

At first, Forbes recounted, after crawling though a narrow tunnel, "We found ourselves in the last resting place of hundreds of Hawaiians" who had been, essentially, "stuffed, as a taxidermist treats a bird or an animal." The cave left the trio with a "weird feeling, so that but few words passed between us." A narrow passage led to another hall where they found a "beautifully shaped dugout canoe" covered by a "nicely finished and polished surfboard." In the canoe rested the mummified remains of a 6-foot-7-inch man, apparently a chief.

Further on, rolled in bark cloth, they found two striking female wooden statues with full heads of human hair and mother-of-pearl eyes, about 2 feet high, which William T. Brigham, then the director of the Bishop Museum, described as "the finest specimens known of Hawaiian portrait work."

Most of the contents of the cave were sold to the Bishop Museum, including one of the female statues. The one the Bishop Museum got, estimated at $5 million, became one of its signature pieces; a picture of it was placed on the cover of its brochure.

It was this Forbes collection, Hawaii's single most important archeological find, that the native Hawaiian groups asked to be repatriated in 1994. The most influential of these groups, Hui Malama I Na Kupuna 'O Hawai'i Nei (Group Caring for the Ancestors of Hawaii), was incorporated a year before the act was passed by, among others, a lawyer named Edward Ayau. He had worked for Sen. Daniel Inouye in Washington, D.C., when the act was being drafted and the act lists Hui Malama as one of two native Hawaiian organizations habilitated to receive objects listed under the act, though others could qualify too — today 14 qualify. Inouye, who is in his eighth term, essentially controls the flow of federal funds to Hawaii and is widely acknowledged as the state's most powerful person.

Ayau, who long believed all the objects in the cave should be repatriated, said the man in the canoe had been identified as Chief Mahi, who probably died around 1830. Unlike mainstream archeologists, he believes all the objects in the cave were placed with his body, which he called "standard burial practice." He also claimed that the very taking of the remains and the objects constituted theft by Forbes, and he accused the museum of having knowingly received or bought objects from grave robbers.

Still, the museum hesitated, in part because there were now several recognized claimant organizations who were against repatriation and in part because the collection's value would make it a target for thieves if it were returned to the cave. It was the first time anyone had proposed to repatriate museum pieces and it caused much soul-searching in the native Hawaiian community.

At a Feb. 16, 2000 meeting, Hawaiian elder Henry Auwae warned that the statues may have been used in witchcraft and returning them to the cave could be harmful. Within minutes, Edward Kanahele, a founder of Hui Malama, who had just finished arguing for reinterment, collapsed and died.

"You have to be careful when you mess with that," Melvin Kalahiki, head of Living Nation, another claimant, later commented.

Eight days later, the head of the Hawaiian Homes Commission, a state agency, wrote to Bishop Museum vice president Betty Tatar, warning her not to give the collection to Hui Malama because the four claimants could not agree what to do with it. But on Feb. 26, Tatar (without Duckworth's knowledge, he says) did just that, in violation of multiple museum rules, not least that such an action required the board's approval. The paperwork described the transaction as a loan for a year. Tatar said Hui Malama had assured her that the other claimants had signed off on the handover (they had not, and opposed it) and claimed she was deceived.

Once it was reported in the news media, Hui Malama announced that the objects were back in the cave, and Duckworth, who was pilloried in the press, apologized, but punished employees who condemned the handover. Eventually, the museum wrote a letter to the claimants asserting it had fulfilled its obligations under the act and had no more responsibility in the matter.

"The museum basically said, 'Let the natives fight it out,'" said La'akea Suganuma, president of the Royal Hawaiian Academy of Traditional Arts, who worked hard to get the collection back and called Hui Malama "a bunch of schoolyard bullies."

When Brown finally read up on the case, he realized that what the museum had done was "horrible. I felt we had an ethical obligation to try to recover the objects," he said.

Although most people thought Hui Malama would never give up the collection because of Inouye's supported, Brown talked the board into reversing itself and voting for recovery. Hui Malama refused, even hinting that to re-enter the newly sealed cave would be unsafe, but the board would not let Brown sue them.

Discussing Brown's campaign to recover the collection on television, Lilikala Kameeleihiwa, director of the University of Hawaii's Center for Hawaiian Studies, said that when Brown dies, she will dig up his body and take the gold fillings from his teeth (although Brown says he has no gold fillings).

Enter Princess Abigail Kawananakoa, 80, who is both the senior descendant of Hawaii's last monarch and a racehorse-breeding multimillionaire. To Brown's delight, she provided more than $400,000 for a 2005 federal lawsuit against both Hui Malama and the museum for violating NAGPRA rules. According to Jim Wright, her lawyer, Hui Malama insured their defeat by telling a rather conciliatory federal judge that he had no right to interfere in Hawaiian religious matters, and then staging a small riot in his courtroom. Ayau refused to say exactly where in the cave the objects had been put and was jailed on a contempt charge for three weeks.

The judge ordered the entire collection returned, a decision that was sustained on appeal, and in September 2006, a museum team flew by helicopter to the cave and recovered the objects.

Today, under the NAGPRA process, 14 native Hawaiian claimants are still arguing over who should get the collection. Under the court order for their return, the museum is barred from exhibiting it until the matter is resolved.

Brown predicts that with the claimants unable to agree, the museum will eventually retain possession and, in a year or two, the collection will probably be exhibited again. In the meantime, the objects are in what Brown describes with satisfaction as "a very, very safe place."