No, Indy, it does not belong in a museum
No matter what your white entitlement taught you
*Trigger Warning* Colonial trauma, racism, demonization of Indigenous peoples, cultural appropriation, Hinduphobia
No matter who someone is, if they live in the west they’ve been trained to think like a colonizer. One of the thought patterns of a colonizer is a sense of entitlement to the cultures of Indigenous peoples. That’s why they’ve been trained to think that sacred Indigenous artifacts belong in a museum.
Hollywood has helped to train them in thinking this way. They made films about a very attractive character, Indiana Jones, who was always getting into scrapes because rich powerful people wanted to own something that he thought “belonged in a museum”. How many times did he say that in every film? He said it at least once every film if not multiple times per film.
The significance of such sacred items to the actual Indigenous cultures they come from is not important to the charismatic archeologist Indiana Jones. What, for example, is this artifact pictured below? Which culture holds it sacred? What does it mean to them? Is it an ancestor? A God? An art piece? All of those things? None of those things?
