[3xnl]

> I think, as others have mentioned, there is an implicit ethnonationalism here in linking various governments, specifically post-colonial states (say Nigeria) with the tribes that live in them.

Saying that a government/colonial construct where most of those tribes were forced into, doesn't/shouldn't represent them is beyond absurd. London represents them then? Or they are considered lost?

>Now, its important to note two things here. 1) many of these tribes, before colonialism, before the establishment of the contemporary west-african states, were in fact slave empires, and the reason they had such rich cultural products was for the same reason that western nations, at the time, did.

You are forgetting that most of those items can be traced to their indigenous owners. You prefer calling them tribes but they were in fact nations/kingdoms of their own that were forced into colonial constructs like Nigeria, so don't lie yourself that Nigeria is somehow trying to act like colonial Britain.

>2) that these objects should be stored in whatever facility can host them best. We all admit Nigeria is not as wealthy as the UK, so its entirely possible that the UK after returning perhaps, thousands of precious artifacts, worth an uncountable sum, a desperate government might, given the right circumstances, sell them, whereas the UK probably will not (at least not in the near future).

This would be amusing if it wasn't some sort of gaslighting. Yes Africa is poor, most states corrupt. But saying that UK should help them store those items, without their consent, items that they took by force. Wow

> Call me conservative if you like, but culturally important objects are often only designated as such the moment they are placed in a museum.

What does conservative even mean in this case? Aren't you just mixing neocolonialism with conservatism?

So why did the colonial plunderers think they are worth a trip from rural Nigeria, Benin, deep India to the Empire's capital if they were values at the time in their owners poor huts, shambas and valleys?

>Who knows if the former slave empire tribes of west Africa would've valued all the pieces so highly had they not been put on display.

You are really something.

Someone sits in India, creates a paint on their own without force. Thieves still it. After 200 years, you sit in your house to tell us that they didn't know what they created?

By the way, how do you think the plunderers discovered them? Or why do you think the owners at the time put in their time to create/preserve them until they were found? Is your talk of former slave empire tribes of West Africa aimed at a negating European colonial crimes?

>By "getting them back," these ethnic groups are merely reproducing the same order that they oppose, in fact they have completed, in a way, the colonial circuit, by becoming a mirror of the power that created them.

As I said above, the owners of those items can be traced.