Debate contribution: Decolonisation of Museum Collections and Repatriation of Artefacts

Debate contribution by Mr Doug Beattie MC on 20 May 2025.

MLA

Mr Doug Beattie MC

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

20 May 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Decolonisation of Museum Collections and Repatriation of Artefacts

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4963876

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have to start by saying, although I will not dwell on the issue, that there is a certain irony in a Sinn Féin motion that includes returning human remains to Hawaii while we still wait for the return of the human remains of those who were disappeared. I ask the party opposite to use the influence that it still exerts on those responsible to have the remains of Columba McVeigh, Joe Lynskey, Seamus Maguire and Robert Nairac repatriated to their families. I have to admit that, when I first read the motion, I had two thoughts. First, the motion sounded like a bit of Brit-bashing. Secondly, the motion lacks any kind of nuance and is grounded purely on decolonisation without looking at what else museums offer, particularly education and learning. Our amendment aims to address that. For example, National Museums NI clearly states that it is:

"a leading cultural institution in Northern Ireland. We are responsible for ensuring that Northern Ireland's significant collection is developed, cared for, and accessible to the widest possible audience."

For us, the museum is a place of learning and understanding our past, the shared history, the global cultures and the painful parts of our past. Clearly, returning ancient remains and artefacts to Hawaii was the right thing to do, but was that part of decolonisation? The artefacts in question were donated to the museum by Mr Gordon Augustus Thomson, an ethnologist who studied people and culture. He was not part of any colonisation of the Hawaiian Islands or Sandwich Islands, when he visited them in 1835. Indeed, the UK is held in such high regard in Hawaii that the Union flag still forms part of the Hawaiian national flag and Great Seal. Many items in museums in Northern Ireland are protected and preserved and tell a story. Some were acquired through conflict; some through expeditions; and some via trade. Some would be lost, if they were not protected. Do we need to protect artefacts? Are they in danger? Let us take ourselves to Dublin in 1966, when Nelson's pillar, which dated back to 1808 and marked an important moment of our history, was deliberately reduced to rubble by an IRA bomb. It was not dismantled and returned to the UK, possibly to the national museum; it was just destroyed due to hatred of others' history and culture. We saw the similar destruction of artefacts in Afghanistan when the 6th-century Bamiyan Buddhas were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 and when ISIS destroyed the great Baalshamin temple at Palmyra in Syria. Museums have a role to protect, preserve and make artefacts available. That assists learning and understanding of cultures past and present. National Museums NI states:

"The Inclusive Global Histories project involves understanding the ways in which colonialism is rooted in our collection and working to address racism and exclusionary practices. This approach is not limited to the exhibition but extends across our collections and sites."

Sanitising such collections does not help us learn. Museums need to help us learn, and, for generations to come, an understanding of our shared history is a story worth telling. Part of that has an expeditionary nature to it, given the British and Irish impact globally. Even the negative impact tells a story. The Sinn Féin motion mentions "colonialism ... on this island". That includes the 15,000 ecological items in Irish museums from Africa, Asia and the Far East that the Irish collections provenance working group identified before it was disbanded 2023, with no action being taken to return any of them. They are not on display; they are just being held. It also includes two highly sacred whale teeth from the Solomon Islands, which were donated in 1900. There is even a Cromwellian armoured breastplate with a musket ball through the chest. Should that be returned as stolen loot? I do not think so. It needs to be held, retained and used as an aid to learning. Of course, there are items in Northern Ireland museums that you could put down to colonialism, because, hundreds of years ago, that is how the world was. It was a world of exploration and understanding but with primitive knowledge of the impact on various cultures. No matter how hard we try, we cannot fix what happened two, three or four centuries ago, but we can learn. Museums help us learn, and the stuff that is retained in them helps us understand better.

How about a spear from Benin, a colonial artefact from the French protectorate — it was not colonised by the British — donated following an expedition in the area? What can we learn from that about the culture of the time? A bronze manilla or bracelet from West Africa — without a doubt, from when the area was colonised. It was used as currency in the slave trade. Can we learn from that? Can we expose the collective shame of the slave trade or just return the manilla in order to sanitise our museum collection? I say that the former is more important. A Solomon Islands tomako — war canoe — from the World Cultures collection is an important artefact in understanding the cultures and civilisations of the time.

To me, learning about and understanding other cultures and people is important, while protecting and caring for our own history. I am a great believer in protecting our indigenous heritage. Some will know that I have raised many issues in regard to Knock Iveagh, a neolithic site just outside Rathfriland that is older than the Pyramids. We stuck a wind turbine on top of it. The Ballintaggart giant gravestones, a 6,000-year-old court tomb that we excavated in 1966, sat idle in the Ulster Museum before being replaced not to the original site where they were ripped up from but to somewhere else. It is a failure of our historical environment division that sits alongside the destruction of an early Christian rath in Waringstown. I add that the present Minister was not in the chair at any stage of that. I have no issue with certain items, such as ancient Hawaiian remains and artefacts, being returned, but to completely sanitise our museum collections would remove a key asset in learning. My party's amendment makes it clear that we must protect and preserve items of cultural and historical importance whilst supporting National Museums Northern Ireland's ethical policies. We can do so by understanding who we are, where we came from, what influenced us and who we influenced, and what our impact on the world was, positive and negative. We cannot just wish any of this away; we need to preserve it. In preserving it, we learn. I learn, you learn and our children learn by seeing these items. I ask Members to look at our amendment and see that we have not taken away the key components of the Sinn Féin motion, but we have brought nuance that allows us to look at items that we held, some with shame, and remember that we can learn from that. In learning, we can make sure that we do not repeat what we did in the past.

1,198 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:32 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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