Paper short abstract:

The case of K. Th. Preuss Náayeri ethnographic collection (West Mexico, 1906) shows that any decision of a repatriation process should contemplate not just the history of the collection, but also the cultural study of these objects through time and that of their permanence in the Occidental world.

Paper long abstract:

The actual focus of discussion around contemporary anthropology museums resides in the tension between two possible futures for ethnographic collections: restituting or keeping. This debate is based on the question "to whom should the objects be physically consigned?".

Generally, to answer this question, we look into the history of ethnographic collections. In this paper, I want to propose that what we consider "the history of ethnographic collections" should not limit itself to the process though which a particular object came to be part of an institution's collection. It should include also an ethnologic study about two other levels: first, the sense given through time to that particular object in its cultural context, from its conception to its destruction or preservation; and second, the contemporary history of that object throughout its permanence in the Occidental world.

I will analyze here a concrete ethnographic collection: the one obtained by Konrad Theodor Preuss among the náayeri of Western Mexico in 1906. This collection was immediately sent to Germany and preserved at the Ethnologisches Museum of Berlin. History of this collection points to repatriation as a suitable and legally strong case, whereas its ethnological study -in two directions, as we suggest- shows that its actual "status" -culturally and conservationally speaking- may not be appropriate for such process, because it would imply a lack of politeness and even danger for the Amerindian population from which the collection was originally removed from.