Towering at the entrance of the British Museum’s Wellcome gallery is a 2.5-metre basalt statue from Easter Island. For indigenous Rapa Nui islanders, such statues – known as moai – carry the spirit of prominent ancestors and are considered the living incarnation of their relatives.
Next week, a delegation from the island – which has been part of Chile since 1888 and is officially known as Rapa Nui – will travel to London to request the moai’s return, emboldened by the backing of the Chilean government and the museum’s willingness to engage in talks for the first time since it acquired the statue in 1869.
“We want the museum to understand that the moai are our family, not just rocks. For us [the statue] is a brother; but for them it is a souvenir or an attraction,” said Anakena Manutomatoma, who serves on the island’s development commission. “Once eyes are added to the statues, an energy is breathed into the moai and they become the living embodiment of ancestors whose role is to protect us.”
Having spent 150 years away from its home, the statue – known as Hoa Hakananai’a –has become the focal point of a movement to return the moai which has steadily gathered momentum since August, when the island’s mayor, Pedro Edmunds, wrote to the museum requesting the statue’s return. Among the proposals the delegation will bring to the table is the idea of a replica statue being carved by artisans on the island to take the place of Hoa Hakananai’a.
Chile’s indigenous development agency, Conadi – which oversees the government’s relations with the country’s nine indigenous ethnicities including the Rapa Nui – is helping to fund the delegation’s visit. The group will be led by the country’s minister for national property, Felipe Ward.
“The Rapa Nui people want to explain to the museum’s administrators that the moai is the living soul of the island. Hoa Hakananai’a acts as their ambassador and we want that to remain the case – but we want to exchange him for a moai that will be sculpted by craftsmen on the island so that the representative is there voluntarily. This is very important,” said Ward.
The British Museum’s press office said that they were looking forward to the delegation’s visit and “discussing any future proposals they have”.
Under the command of English navigator Commodore Richard Powell, the crew of HMS Topaze removed Hoa Hakananai’a from a clifftop in 1868, along with a second, smaller statue known as Hava.
Powell gave them to Queen Victoria when the ship returned to England the following year, and the monarch donated them to the British Museum.
When the island became part of Chile in 1888, the state assumed sovereign rights over the territory as well as the moai that dot the island’s windswept grassland. Under Chilean law, the moai are not considered objects but an integral part of the land.
According to Jo Anne Van Tilburg, an archaeologist who leads the Easter Island Statue Project and has devoted her career to the island’s renowned monoliths, the object is one of the finest examples of a moai.
“Hoa Hakananai’a is a superb example of the Rapa Nui statue carver’s art. It is carved of a basaltic stone, unfinished but embellished with a suite of bas-relief petroglyphs – thus it is unique,” she said.
Although the museum is governed by a strict charter that dictates the circumstances under which objects can leave its collection, Manutomatoma said the Rapa Nui are encouraged by its openness to enter into dialogue.
However, she is not content with just repatriating the statues in the British Museum’s collection, given that all of the moai are of equal cultural and spiritual importance to the Rapa Nui. “To recover Hoa Hakananai’a would be great, but with time we will be asking the other countries to return our ancestors,” she said.
Museums in a number of other countries, including France, New Zealand and the United States, have moai.