Emiline Smith on Demystifying Cultural Trafficking and Nepal’s Quest for Restorative Justice

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Khushi: Welcome to the show, Emiline. How are we doing today? 

Emiline: I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. 

Khushi: I have to tell you, I'm really excited about today's conversation to have a professional criminologist here with us to talk about cultural trafficking. You've built your career studying and collaborating with a wide spectrum of stakeholders ranging from affected communities to renowned museums. So I'm really looking forward to tapping into your expertise and experiences to not only understand the topic at hand, but also to animate it with real life instances. Let's begin with demystifying the process of cultural trafficking itself. A very basic but adequate definition would perhaps be the illicit import, export, and transfer of ownership of cultural property. I think everyone has that basic understanding, but what really is obscure for most of us is the process of it. Often these stolen artifacts that go missing from their original locations are eventually found in the lavish halls of renowned public museums or private collections. So let's begin by tracing how this happens. What typical routes are the artifacts taken through to convert them from loot to antiques? 

Emiline: Hmm, great question. I think there are many different routes that cultural objects can take in the process. They are converted in invaluable, amazing cultural objects that people use for worship and for cultural purposes, and they are reduced to mere commodities in the market. And that is where most of the pain lies around this topic. It's a very emotional and sensitive and political topic. Now, I have to address that you, you, you've used the terms property artifacts and antiquities and which is completely understandable. Terminology is important because of this conversion of what cultural objects go through.I use the term cultural objects, but even that in of itself can be painful because these are not objects to certain people. They might be gods, for example. So in the English language, we don't have a specific term for them in Nepali, you use morti for example. In Tibetan, there's a specific term for sort of the valuables that are held inside of the gompa, the monastery, but we don't have a specific term for it. So overall I'll be using cultural objects because it's the most neutral. 

Khushi: Right? 

Emiline: It doesn't emphasize, for example, if you use art, it emphasizes only the aesthetic qualities, or if you use antiquity, it only emphasizes the age of the object. But we want to. Emphasize that these are really important cultural, religious items. Now, in terms of the routes that they take in order to end up in a museum, they might have been stolen from a monastery or a temple, a place of worship. They might be stolen from a private collection or someone's home, and they might have a direct link to the market, or they might exchange hands multiple times. So, it's a different process. However, in the end, they always end up in the market. They're always reduced to commodities, and even though museums say that they're all about education, they haven't actually been able to address these problematic foundations of their collections up until recently. So that's why we have to do so.

Khushi: In your answer, I really liked the fact that you talked about the pain for a bit, and I would, I think I would like to build on that further. The immediate effects of such smuggling are perhaps first felt by the locals. What does trafficking inflict upon the locals who lose their heritage? Of course, there is this dark absence of communal acid, a very material loss, but the effects seep deeper than that. In an article you wrote last May, on the return of the vulture, the Hara sculpture, you began by illustrating the physical and emotional turmoil, the family who guarded the sculpture faced. Maybe we can start unpacking the layers of loss by first elaborating on this instance. 

Emeline: Mm, you're right. There's definitely a physical loss, but most importantly, there's an intangible heritage loss, so it really impacts the practices, the worshiping and cultural practices of communities. Now, up until recently, this would've been seen as a victimless crime, as a crime of the elite because there's a lot of movies that display the art thief as a gentleman. And so the immediate effects of the art market aren't necessarily on display for those who don't work with communities of origin that lose their heritage. But I think with the, with the recent push for repatriations, a lot of communities of origin have found their voice in asking for what they so rightfully deserve. And so in that sense, I think that we've also been confronted more with the loss on an individual, a communal, a national, and even an international level. It has many different consequences, not only to an individual or a community that loses their heritage. But also, for example, in how we approach art history and how we view certain objects and where they come from, especially when we don't know where they come from because they've been looted from the ground. It may impact worshiping practices, especially outside of the Kathmandu valley. We know that a lot of intangible heritage is changed. We, it might also change how they use  the places where these cultural objects were previously. Where they lived. So for example, Gompa monasteries are abandoned. People move from the places of worship because they feel so guilty and so responsible for the fact that their gods have disappeared. So you can imagine that these are not art objects that should be for sale. These are living cultural objects that are at the core of ongoing worshiping practices that involve intangible heritage, such as food or festivals, rituals, dance songs, and a lot of stories. And so removing those cultural objects from their communities of origin has a a great impact, which is intergenerational harm. So there are many different communities, but even families, caretaker families that may have taken care of these cultural objects. And once they disappear, they also lose their sense of dignity. They're out stood by their own communities or by their own families. It changes not only their worshiping practices, but also their mindset. They feel responsible and and guilty, and this is why I mentioned the term intergenerational harm because it changes the mindset and the practices from father to son, from mother to daughter. We also lose a lot of knowledge when these objects disappear. Not only in terms of where the cultural object comes from, the archeological context, but also how it's being used, how people engage with them, because they don't want to, they feel like they feel too pressured, too guilty, too responsible when they're lost.

Khushi: As we try to understand this phenomenon, I think an important angle we often miss out on is the relevance of cultural trafficking to larger criminal activities. Current studies have found that while cultural trafficking is a crime in and of its itself with its own ends, it is also sometimes a part of larger criminal activities and essentially acts as a revenue source for them. What are your observations on this? 

Emiline: I think with larger criminal activities, you might be referring to terrorism and other funding of war time activities. 

Khushi:Yeah. 

Emiline: and we have very limited empirical evidence for that. Even though it sounds very likely that antiquities are used or cultural objects are used for this purpose, this empirical evidence comes. Some of it comes from Asia and some of it comes from the Middle East, so we do know that some of it is definitely goes towards wartime financing or terrorist activities. In general, there is this, or there has been this discussion within criminology. Criminology is a, social science is very much interested in how and why criminal activities and harms take place. And so we've been discussing for a number of years if cultural objects trafficking. The trafficking of cultural heritage is a form of organized crime. Does it finance organized crime in any way? Is it linked and yes it is, but in and of itself, it's a crime that is organized and it may interlink with organized criminal activities such as, for example, traditional criminal enterprise, like the mafia or the aquiza or whatever, by way of logistics, for example, or by way of financing. But again, we have very limited empirical evidence for that. 

Khushi: Mm-hmm. 

Emiline: We do know that it is connected to other forms of white collar crime, like fraud and other types of financial crime, and that very serious crime is involved. So going back to my previous statement about victimless crime, it definitely isn't. A lot of murder, physical violence, and other type of serious crime is involved in this. 

Khushi: Definitely. So Emily, let's zoom in on Nepal for a bit. It is one of the many nations that have been plagued by cultural trafficking, and Nepal has also been a prime subject of interest for you as a scholar of criminology, and you've studied its cases in great depth. I'm curious to know why Nepal was of such particular interest to you as a scholar and a practitioner. 

Emiline: I came across Nepal very early on during my doctoral research. There were a lot of dealers that formerly were based in Khatmandu and were now based in Hong Kong. Hong Kong being one of the renowned centers for cultural objects, especially because it's a transit portal because it doesn't have any, Laws that pertain to the trade import export of cultural objects. And when I was talking to these dealers, they would always tell me about the golden age of Kathmandu trafficking. That they would get an unlimited supply of cultural objects fresh from the ground or from their places of worship that they could sell for so much money abroad. And so I was always very interested in appal. What's also interesting about Nepal is that it was never colonized in the traditional sense. So of course it was exploited by foreign powers for a long time, but because it was never colonized, it became an interesting question of what to do with repatriation because the moral argument might not have necessarily been there. And yet, because the looting in Nepal has happened relatively recently. Only since the 1950s, it was very easy to pinpoint exactly what was illegal and illegally held abroad because everything outside of the 1956 Ancient Monuments Preservation Act would've been exported illegally. So it would've been held illegally outside of Nepal. And so it was a very interesting defined period to focus on in terms of a source of study. And what I found most interesting is that there was a lot of information around the Kathmandu Valley around what was lost and what should be repatriated. But Nepal is a very diverse country with a lot of different cultures and religions and languages, and I felt like they were very underrepresented in the scholarship that we have on this topic to date. 

Khushi: That's amazing. And in your study you have traced the history of cultural trafficking in Nepal. I first read or came to know of this in your 2022 paper titled The Ongoing Quest for Nepal's Looted Cultural Heritage, and I really found it to be very intriguing. Could you maybe briefly share that, the findings of that paper with our listeners too?

Emiline: Hmm. Yeah, for sure. In the 1950s when Nepal opened up, there were a lot of European and North American travelers that had the funds to travel around the world post World War II, and there developed something called the Hippie Trail. So in the 1960s and seventies especially, there were a lot of these travelers that would settle in, hi, the Kathmandu Valley. They would smoke a lot of weed and find enlightenment and.  

Khushi: mm-hmm 

Emiline: Base themselves here. And at the same time, of course there were a lot of Tibetan refugees that were fleeing Chinese genocide. And they had with them a lot of cultural objects that out of necessity they had to sell. So there was a ready supply and there was also a ready market because these European and North American travelers that followed the hippie trail, they were so impressed with the Exoticized Oriental culture and cultural objects of the Kathmandu Valley, which ultimately spread out to the rest of Nepal. And so I think that Nepal was relatively closed off until 1950, and therefore relatively protected from looting. But when it opened up, It opened up with an explosion to the market. This is when most of the North American Himalayan collections, for example, came about in the 1960s, seventies and eighties. And when most of the looting happened, now the looting was so drastic that individual two and individual scholars started documenting these, these removals and thefts. And that's what we use as evidence nowadays. Their books. 

Khushi: So now that we have the past sorted out, let's talk about contemporary events in this topic. Recently, we have seen a significant rise in activism for the return of Nepali cultural objects, and really not in vain, because only last year, Nepal retrieved almost half a dozen of its cultural objects from all over the world. Most of the efforts occured online though with social media pages like Lost Arts of Nepal, gaining immense traction as one of the core advisors to these organizations, both online and otherwise. What do you think caused this sudden interest and fast mobilization and what interesting features do you see in this movement? 

Emiline: Great question. This is such an interesting time, especially in Asia because you see that a lot of communities are finding their voice in asking for these cultural objects back. In Asia it's definitely Cambodia, Nepal, and India that have taken the lead on this. Although of course the movement for the return of the Benin bronzes have has also gained a lot of traction in recent years. In Nepal. I think all of the noses are pointing in the right direction. The government, the NGOs, The social media activists, everyone wants to work together to bring the Gods home, and that's a wonderful opportunity that we don't get in a lot of these other, especially Asian countries, where some of these movements have perhaps popped up, but there hasn't always been governmental support or enough activist support. I think what happened in Nepal is that Covid happened. A lot of the museums put their collections online, which was a wonderful opportunity. 

Khushi: Mm-hmm. 

Emiline: For us to look at exactly what they have in storage especially, and it democratizes the search for people's heritage. Everyone can look at a museum website from their own home and think, oh, you know what, 

Khushi: Uhhuh. 

Emiline: That is exactly what I used to have in my temple. Why is it now behind glass, you know, somewhere in London or New York? And so I think COVID played an especially large part in this because there was much more social media engagement around this topic. At the same time, social media has also very much helped in spreading awareness about this. For example, most of my field work at the moment takes place in dolpa. You know, there is no electricity for six months out of the year. Most of the electricity comes from. Solar panels, but everyone has a smartphone and knows about lost hearts of Nepal Facebook page. Everyone is asking, Hey, have you seen this statue? And so it's wonderful to see how many corners of the world it can reach. Again, bringing in people that would've perhaps, usually not thought about this topic or not have the confidence to research this and ask for their statues back. Now we actually can connect those links. 

Khushi: That's very interesting that those are amazing observations. Now I wanna take this conversation forward into talking about the long way home for these cultural objects. But before I do that, there's a very interesting question that I have in my mind, and this came from reading the same 2022 article where you mentioned. The role of avid scholars in historians of culture in the whole process of cultural heritage trafficking. The intrigue for me in this was when we think about the extraction of cultural heritage, we suppose the perpetrators are criminals, smugglers, or entitled aristocrats. While that is true for most parts of it, there have been some unusual groups and those are the avid scholars and historians, and they are in some ways complicit. But I understand that their role is like of a double-edged sword, as in they're both enthusiastic scholars who produce this myriad of information and knowledge, but also very avid consumers. What is your take on this? 

Emiline: For sure. We recently with my colleague, Dr. Erin Thompson. We recently published a paper on Mary Slesser, who's a renowned scholar of Nepali art history. She's still very much celebrated as a renowned scholar of Nepali history, even though there's plenty of evidence that points in the direction that she not only benefited from looting, but also was complicit in it. And I think that we have to now realize that academics have long benefited from the looting and trafficking of cultural objects because they have the privilege of studying them, interacting with them, building knowledge on them, publishing about them, and building a career on them, right? Not everyone has that, but these academics have had that privilege and especially museum representatives and academics, those who engage with these cultural objects, they are clear stakeholders in the trade, but they haven't necessarily been acknowledged as such. This is the time to hold them accountable as well, and they've definitely actively benefited from the don't ask, don't tell culture that the art market is based on the global trade and cultural objects. Now it is my position that collecting, retaining, displaying, handling cultural objects that were removed due to exploitation or violence, whether it's colonial or otherwise, is a continuation of the perpetration of this violence. You're continuing to commit that violence when you keep these objects in your collection and not only do people keep them in their collections, but they build knowledge upon them. They put them on the internet. These are objects. These are gods that should perhaps never even have been seen by outsiders, and yet now they're on a museum website, on a bag, on Instagram. Everyone is sharing it. That is extremely problematic. So we're not only talking about the physical lives of objects, we're also talking about the, the intellectual property around it, the digital lives of these objects. And I don't think a lot of us that handle or talk about or write about cultural objects have asked ourselves how exactly are we contributing to the illicit trading cultural objects? How are we also complicit? And how should we hold each other accountable? Now. At the moment because there's such a wave of repatriation and in Nepal, it's not just, you know, a dozen objects. In the last two years, we've seen over a hundred objects returned, so this is the time to ask yourself, what can we do differently? Repatriation in its itself can also be performative. It's not just about giving back the object and you're done with it. Right. It's also about addressing epistemic injustice. So how have these voices of underrepresented communities continuously been silenced? How are they not benefiting from their own cultural heritage, and how can we actually change that? How can we rectify that?

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Khushi: The point that you bring about regarding restorative, the sense of restorative justice and repatriation. I think that's central to most of your works, and we will come back to those later in the conversation. But before that, I think what we need to clear out is, Certain groups still exist that defend museums and art institutions claiming that cultural objects are safer and better preserved under the care than they are in their origin or others emphasize the fact that these institutions are free for all to visit and consume. How do you challenge these arguments? 

Emiline: In criminology, we call that techniques of neutralization. These are justifications of wrongdoing. 

Khushi: Mm-hmm. 

Emiline: The fact that they hold Nepali cultural objects is illegal. It is against Nepali law. So yeah, of course you can embellish it and say that it's better to keep them there because you clean them once in a while. But we're talking about the illegal removal of a God from a community of origin that you then put behind glass. It's not worshiped, it's not washed, it's not, you know, there's no rituals around it, and instead, hundreds of people a day agle it. That in itself is extremely unethical. So, of course museums, private and public collectors, they come up with justifications to say why they should keep these objects, especially because they paid a lot of money for it. 

Khushi: Mm-hmm. 

Emiline: But, By way of doing that, they're also very much highlighting their privilege because who are we actually educating? We're only educating the few. We're only educating the people that are able to go to museums, for example. And often these museums are very far removed from their communities of origin. We're also highlighting the fact that knowledge around these objects, again, is only created for a select few. This is only created for audiences that can read in a specific language that can interact with these objects in a specific way. And so it's not a democratization process if you exclude the voices that have actually made the object themselves and own the object. Not only that, but. Keeping these cultural objects in public and private collections abroad means that you're continuing the injustice, the violence, the exploitation that caused their removal of their communities of origin in the first place. And so these cultural objects are symbols of that violence, of that exploitation, of that exclusion. So cultural objects are an integral part of Nepal's cultural and spiritual life. And of course, they should be with the communities of origin if they sow desire once they're removed. No mantle piece, no frame, no beautiful glass case can do justice to the context in which it is present in Nepal, right? And so why would you loot just one object? When you can travel to the community of origin, you can travel to the original context and you can interact with the cultural and spiritual life that it is part of truly soaking in the full experience of Nepal's culture, heritage.

Khushi: Wow. That's brilliant. And I think that that does justice to the argument, but something that keeps coming back time and again, is a talk surrounding institutional mechanisms, the provisions, policies and acts that have been put in place to protect cultural objects from trafficking and displacement. Could you please outline these from both the perspectives of national and international aspects, but also art and culture institutions that house the objects. 

Emiline: Yeah, for sure. Nepal has its 1956 antiquities ordinance, which protects a culture objects from being looted or trafficked. So for example, it prevents the export of cultural objects if there's no governmental approval for this. In general, almost all countries in the world have some form of cultural heritage law that protects the cultural heritage, which can be found within its borders and. Internationally, there are several agreements that countries have to adhere to if they are a state party to these agreements. Like for example, the 1970 UNESCO Convention, there's a 1995 Undr convention. They are international agreements where state parties say, listen, we should definitely work on this together in general, only recently, these agreements are addressed on a regional perspective, on a regional level, and on a regional level you might say they're much more effective in Asia. For example, you should work with neighboring countries to address the trafficking of cultural objects because that's probably where the objects go first. So there are definitely international and as well as national agreements, as well as memorandum of understanding between two or more countries. And these are bilateral agreements where countries make specific agreements around the import and export of cultural objects. From the perspective of art institutions and cultural institutions, they have tried to become more transparent and become more accountable. Ethics is a very sexy word. 

Khushi: Mm-hmm. 

Emiline: And so you'll find it on a lot of different museum website, but policy and practice of museums can be very different. Right. A museum can say that it's all about transparency and ethics, but then when we ask for a cultural object that is clearly looted to be returned, they may drag their heels and it might take years and years in order to get this object back, if at all. So in that sense, I think that what we have on paper looks fantastic. But it's all about implementation and that's where, where it's lacking. 

Khushi: That's a point well noted, and it takes me to my other question, which is in the case of Nepal, despite having very strict legislations very early on, it still struggles to keep its cultural objects safe. What's the problem here? 

Emiline: There's a multitude of problems and challenges that Nepal faces that are not unique to Nepal. For example, there's limited law enforcement, so there's limited enforcement of these laws that I previously described. There's limited security resources, so when you walk around Kathmandu Valley, for example, you'll see that a lot of the temples and places of worship are gated off. These gates and fences have usually been paid for by the community themselves because it would be a huge financial resource to protect all of the cultural heritage that Nepal has and. We're only talking about the Kathmandu valley. We haven't even started thinking about how to protect the cultural heritage that is in remote and isolated areas like in Dolpa. So these remote areas are very much underrepresented when it comes to the making of policy, when it comes to the creation of legislation, when it comes to the creation of security measures for cultural heritage, what works for them might not work for those in the Kathmandu Valley and vice versa. There are not a lot of inventories of culture heritage in Nepal, which also makes things very difficult because when something is lost, we need some form of evidence to get it back.

Khushi: Mm-hmm. 

Emiline: Now you can imagine that old tourist photos have been extremely beneficial to us, and now that lost arts of Nepal and the Nepal Heritage Recovery campaign are gaining traction. A lot of tourists that were here in the 1960s, seventies and eighties are sending us their old photos. Which has helped tremendously in matching up cultural objects held abroad because again, if they were exported after 1956, they're definitely illegal. But in remote areas, they may not have had these photos. They definitely would not have had cameras. There's no lists or other types of inventory, so it's very difficult to find [00:32:00] proof, evidence of theft in general. Now is the time to hold the market accountable. This is not only a question of what should governments do, what should local communities do? What should academics do? For example, to hold the market accountable or governments to hold the market accountable, but as a museum goer, for example, where are the critical questions? Why are we not asking, Hey, how did you get this object? Where is it from? Does the community of origin know? Knows that it's here. Are they okay with how it's displayed? Why are you telling this story in such a way? Is the museum the best place for these objects? This is something that we can start with tomorrow. If you're a museum goer, I. And one of the most important things, I think, is to make this a talked about topic. So there's a lot of stigma, a lot of emotion attached to this topic, especially when a community has lost its God that, you know, it's a very sensitive topic to talk about. But it is essential to talk about this in order to address how we're actually going to fix it. And this is one of the reasons why I recently published, wrote and published a children's book called Pema in the stolen statue from dolpa. Dolpa is a very isolated and remote area in Nepal, and so we want to inspire the future generation to think about, okay, what works for them in terms of culture, heritage? How do they want to protect, use own culture, heritage? Now I say use own and engage with cultural heritage because this should be their choice. It should not be the choice of public and private collectors. Where these cultural objects are held now and their voices have been completely removed in this process, but with more equitable, sustainable collaboration and knowledge exchange practices, we can actually foreground. Those underrepresented voices because they should be the ones leading these conversations. 

Khushi: Mm-hmm. And I think this really brings us back to the point you were making previously about restorative justice in the processes of returning these cultural objects. I think for most of us, it's hard. To understand that a return isn't always what communities want, or at least not all of it. Do you have certain examples or case scenarios where certain groups have wanted something otherwise or things of that sort?

Emiline: In many cases, local communities want their cultural objects back because it's the rightful place and they want access and agency back. So they want to be the ones that decide over what happens to the cultural objects, and it is their legal and moral right to do so.

Khushi: Mm-hmm. 

Emiline: Especially in the case for Nepali cultural objects because they were removed illegally, so even if they wanted to throw it off a cliff, and Nepal doesn't have a lot of cliffs, but even if they wanted to throw it off a cliff tomorrow, It should be their right to do so because it's their heritage, right?But sometimes communities of origin want more than just the repatriation of a cultural object. They want, they strive for reparations. This is especially the case in formerly colonized countries, and so they might want request, for example, financial reparations. Or equitable knowledge exchange practices, like, for example, a collaboration between museum and local communities, or the building of scholarship and that sort. And this is where repatriation, again, can be so performative because once a museum gives back the object, then that's it, and there's no engagement with the community of origin that will also not build any paths towards justice instead. The community of origin should always be asked what they actually want, and repatriation might not be what they want and need in that time. So to increase custodianship of cultural heritage, it also means working towards epistemic injustices. Repatriation, or the question for return is a wonderful opportunity for market stakeholders to work towards rectifying epistemic injustices, meaning. That they empower communities of origin to think about their own priorities and needs, what works for them, instead of shutting them out of the conversation, ignoring their wishes, and excluding them from these conversations. Because realistically, market actors have dominated the conversation around what should happen to culture, heritage, how it should be displayed, how we should think about it for so, so long, and yet this is where communities of origin should be foregrounded. 

Khushi: Amazing. I think that brings us to the end of our conversation, at least on my end. Emiline, is there anything else you want to share with our audience maybe as a parting thought? 

Emiline: I'm excited to read about and learn about all of the critical questions that you're going to be asking these museums all around the world to hold them accountable for their role in the illicit trading cultural objects. And I would love to engage with you all on social media, especially when you have evidence of looted cultural objects, because this is a movement that we are all part of. This is not just my work, but this is the work of a generation. 

Khushi: Definitely. Thank you so much, Emily, for being here with us. I think that was a brilliant, brilliant conversation.I enjoyed it thoroughly. 

Emiline: It was a pleasure. Thank you. 

Khushi: Yeah, we thank you for sharing with us your time and knowledge, and we wish you all the very best for all your future endeavors. 

Emiline: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. 

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