France has returned three colonial human skulls to Madagascar, including a Magascar king believed to belong to the French army who was executed in the 19th century massacre.
Assuming it was the skull of King Toera, the other two skulls of the Saccaravar tribe were handed over to representatives of the French Ministry of Culture on Monday. French colonial forces killed Toera in 1897, and his skull was taken to France and later exhibited from Madagascar, an island near the coast of the East African coast of the Indian Ocean, in Paris.
“These skulls entered the national collection in a clear violation of human dignity,” said French Minister Rachida Dati. Her Madagascar colleague, Volamiranty Donna Mara, welcomed the return of the skulls as a “very important gesture.” “Their absence has been over a century of 128 years, and in the heart of our island is an open wound,” she said.
In recent years, France has accelerated its return to rob artworks from its country of origin during the colonial era. But President Emmanuel Macron’s broader ambitions for restoration were hampered by the country’s legacy regulations that categorize the museum’s holding company as “inalienable.” Much of his administration’s legislative work has focused on simplifying the hard disconnection in history. Earlier this year, the government introduced legislation that would make it easier to restore national collections from states “deprived through illegal grants” between 1815 and 1972.
The Ministry of Culture said the law would apply to projects obtained by “theft, robbery, forced transfer or donations made under coercion or violence” or for individuals who have no legal authority to dispose of it. The bill is scheduled to be debated in the French Senate in September.
Since his election in 2017, Macron has made particular efforts to address the lasting trauma of the former French African colonies. In 2023, the National Assembly overcame the opposition in the Senate and transferred ownership of 26 stolen royal artifacts from Muséedu Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac to Benin, as well as an object from the Army Museum to Senegal. The return of these works is to “continue to be preserved and presented to the public in places specifically for this purpose and [cultural] Function. ”
according to Lemond.
