On Saturday, Honolulu’s Bishop Museum will begin the phased return of more than 10,000 latte and other artifacts to Guam and the Northern Marianas.
The items – mostly from Guam, some from the CNMI and a few from the Caroline Islands – were removed in the 1920s by amateur archaeologist Hans Hornbostel.
Hornbostel served in the Marine Corps on Guam and later worked as a collector for the Bishop Museum, gathering artifacts and human remains and moving them across the Pacific.
He excavated sites, but was also known for chiseling a pictograph from the wall of a cave in Talo’fo’fo’ and encouraging youngsters to trade artifacts for movie tickets.
He sent the cultural treasures, as well as the remains of about 300 CHamorus, to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. The remains were returned to the Marianas about 25 years ago.
On Saturday, the Bishop Museum will hold a ceremony blessing the artifacts before they are sent to Guam.
The collection is massive. The 10,000 items make up 1/8 of the Bishop Museum’s total collection. About 2,500 of the pieces are from the Northern Marianas.
Guam Museum curator Michael Lujan Bevacqua said officials on Guam and the Northern Marianas have been working on the return of the artifacts for three years.
The largest pieces are the latte, including one from Ypao, one from Urunao and one from Rota. Bevacqua said although the Rota latte was not collected by Hornbostel himself, it is considered part of the same collection.
“In that collection, you'll find our pottery, sling stones, burial beads, sinahi,” Bevacqua said.
The voluntary repatriation of items is known as an “ethical return” of material to its rightful owners. Bishop Museum officials say this will be one of the largest ethical returns on record.
Bevacqua said ethical returns from museums don’t happen quickly, so the group on Guam developed a strategy for pushing the process forward.
“Repatriations can take not just years, but decades,” Bevacqua said. “It can take a really long time. And so one of our strategies to kind of help push this ahead and make clear that we were very interested in getting these artifacts - these are the treasures of the CHamoru people - we'd like them back. One of our strategies was that Nicole Duenas, who works at the Guam Cultural Repository, she proposed curating an exhibit at the Guam Museum, which will be next year.”
The Bishop Museum agreed to let the Guam Museum borrow part of the collection for the exhibit, and Bevacqua brought some of the items to Guam in a suitcase in June. Later, the Bishop Museum Board of Directors voted to permanently turn the items over.
Duenas will be attending the ceremony Saturday and bringing back another suitcase with artifacts. Guam Lt. Gov. Josh Tenorio and Department of CHamoru Affairs President Melvin Won Pat-Borja will also be at the event.
The largest pieces of the collection, the latte, will be brought back on Navy ships.
Bevacqua explained that Hornbostel collected the items when tensions were high between Japan and the United States. As an archaeologist, he was granted access to the Northern Marianas – which was then under Japanese control.
“Under the guise of being an archaeologist, he traveled into the Mariana Islands and he collected he collected bones, he collected artifacts, and he also took pictures. And then he also spied for the United States. He spied for the U.S. Navy. He took pictures of the facilities there, and then he reported that back to the Navy, and in exchange, the Navy shipped his items to Hawaii for him,” Bevacqua said. “One of the stories is that Hornbastel hid rolls of film in the skulls of CHamorus that he had dug up to get them past the Japanese on their way back to Guam.”
Bevacqua said the Bishop Museum presented archival evidence showing that the Navy had assisted Hornbostel in bringing the latte to Hawaii.
“The Navy agreed that they would bring the latte back. So it's an interesting full circle moment,” Bevacqua said
Bevacqua said the collection will arrive in phases, with smaller, suitcase-sized transfers happening first. Most of the artifacts will be stored in the Guam Cultural Repository, with the pieces from Rota being returned to the Northern Marianas.
Saturday’s ceremony will be livestreamed by the Bishop museum at 6 a.m. Sunday Guam time.
