Posted on: Sunday, December 19, 2004

Museum claims right to Moloka'i wood figure

By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer

The Bishop Museum has declared it has a "right of possession" over a small wooden figure from Moloka'i and is not bound under federal law to return it to Native Hawaiian ownership.

The museum's assertion of this right suggests that its return to native ownership, or "repatriation," will become mired in conflict, although the Bishop Museum may ultimately decide to return it anyway, a museum official said yesterday.

The museum bought the figure, or ki'i, at around the turn of the century from Dr. C.M. Hyde, who had himself purchased it from a Native Hawaiian, said Malia Baron, museum registrar.

Museum attorneys have reviewed the case and found no evidence to suggest the original sale was illegal so is asserting its right as a "good faith purchaser" of the ki'i, Baron said.

The image is described in the handwritten 1939 catalog entry as "a small human image of wood, an idol found, wrapped in tapa with 'awa and bones of redfish, in a cave."

The ki'i and two other objects from Moloka'i — a cowrie shell and a rock oyster shell pendant — are being claimed by competing Native Hawaiian organizations.

The other objects had been picked up off Mo'omomi Beach, the cowrie in 1937 and the pendant in 1941, and then acquired by the museum, but the museum considers them funerary objects that did not legally belong to the people who found them, Baron said. That is why the museum is not asserting right of possession for these items, she said.

The museum still must formally publish the intent to repatriate the pendant in the Federal Register, but Baron said that won't happen at least until after the museum board next meets in late January.

One of the four organizations making claims on Moloka'i objects, Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawai'i Nei, has been pressing the museum to offer the pendant for repatriation and has filed a claim on all three objects.

Three other organizations have announced their claim on the shell and the ki'i. The museum has recognized Hui Malama and Na Lei Ali'i Kawananakoa as qualified claimants. The eligibility of claims by the Royal Hawaiian Academy of Traditional Arts and one other undisclosed group is still under review, Baron said.

Reach Vicki Viotti at vviotti@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8053.