Date: Fri 11-Dec-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: LIZAM

Quick Words:

Aluet-Alaska-AP-Sotheby's

Full Text:

ALEUT MASK RETURNS TO ALASKA

NEW YORK CITY (AP) -- A carved wooden mask will be returned to the Aleut

people of Alaska after a Californian paid $40,000 for the cultural artifact

after spirited bidding at Sotheby's.

"It seemed like the right thing to do," Anne Bleecker Corcos said December 2,

after beating out an unknown telephone competitor. "I think it is important

for these objects to go back to the people, for their sense of integrity and

of themselves."

Corcos, the head of a nonprofit group that supports Indian issues, said she

made the hasty decision to fly to New York after hearing about the

controversial sale.

She said she spent her own money to acquire the prehistoric mask and was

prepared to offer $50,000 if the anonymous bidder on the phone hadn't caved in

first.

Allison A. Young, cultural heritage director of the Aleutian-Pribilof Island

Association, Inc. in Anchorage, was worried that private collectors would buy

the mask and a 200-year-old wooden Aleut "hunter's hat," denying the objects

to a people that wants to establish a museum in Alaska.

But the hat and several other items were withdrawn from the sale before they

were put up for bid.

"I am almost speechless," said Young, who had sat nervously through hours of

bidding on other items and was in tears when the mask was rescued by a

benefactor she had only just met.

Both she and two companions, Dimitri Philemonof and Daniel Duame, a lawyer for

the Aleut group, seemed stunned by their sudden turn of luck after traveling

4,000 miles from Anchorage to attend the auction.

"It's an emotional moment for me -- a trip made in heaven," said Philemonof.

Ted Carpenter, an anthropologist and author who had put the two items up for

sale, made no secret of his resentment over the dispute -- even though the

mask sold for more than twice the pre-sale high estimate of $18,000.

"To say I'm disgusted is too positive," he said. "Saddened is a little more

dignified."

Carpenter said he withdrew the hat, a rare example valued pre-sale at

$35/40,000, because "it wasn't worth the controversy" raised in news reports

over the Aleuts' demand for its return.

"They are trying to blackmail Sotheby's and the media is helping," Carpenter

said. "Under the law, Native American tribes can obtain virtually anything of

their cultural heritage from museums for the price of a 32-cent stamp. Why

don't they do that instead of starting with the private sector?"

Carpenter said he and his wife have carefully preserved native art and

cultural objects collected in a lifetime of global travel. But he worried that

the Aleuts had no way of protecting the fragile wooden mask, estimated to be

400 to 500 years old. "They have no museum or facility for it. How can you

give it to something that doesn't exist?"

Carpenter also assailed the US Congress for passing legislation to create

Native American museums without providing any funds for them, as the

governments of Canada, Australia and New Zealand have done.

Sotheby's also pulled the hat because the feathers adorning it could be from

endangered species and therefore illegal, spokesman Matthew Weigman said. He

acknowledged that Carpenter had asked to withdraw the hat from sale, however.

The conical wooden hat, dating from the early Nineteenth Century, was among

several items yanked from the sale at the last minute for what Sotheby's said

were questions about their origin.

Another dispute over a cultural object was resolved when Ann Rockefeller

Roberts paid $10,000 for a ceremonial dance apron to be returned to the Yurok

people of northern California. It had been valued at up to $18,000.

Elizabeth Sackler, head of the American Indian Ritual Object Repatriation

Foundation, which had joined in the effort to secure the artifacts for the

Aleuts, at first called the outcome "a success," but then revised her view.

"It's not a success. Native peoples shouldn't have to buy back their own

cultural things," she said. "This is a last ditch effort. I'm glad it's going

back, but this is the last hope it has to go back."

--RICHARD PYLE