French Lawyer Aquires and Returns Hopi Artifact

THE NEW YORK TIMES 
By Tom Machberg
Antique tribal masks, revered as sacred ritual artifacts by the Hopi Native 
American tribe in Arizona, are displayed at an auction house in Paris, April 11, 2013.
FRANCE---A French lawyer who represented the Hopi tribe pro bono in April when it tried to halt a Paris auction of 70 sacred artifacts returned one of the masklike objects to tribal elders on Monday at their reservation in northeast Arizona. The lawyer, Pierre Servan-Schreiber, who acted for the Hopi on behalf of Survival International, a group that advocates on behalf of tribal and indigenous groups, bought the Hopi object, called a Katsinam, for about $9,000 during an auction at the Néret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou auction house that generated $1.2 million in sales. “It is my way of telling the Hopi that we only lost a battle and not the war,” Mr. Servan-Schreiber said in an e-mail. [link]

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