May 24, 2024
Speech of ancestors wins Oxford Debate for Jackson
Labour MP Willie Jackson has used his speech at the Oxford Union debate to demand the return of seven mokomokai held by the British Museum.
Mr Jackson and American museum curator Gary Vikan won the debate against British politicians Bell Ribeiro-Abby and Lord Vaizey of Didcot by arguing against the moot that British museums are not very British.
He said the British Museum itself is a symbol of Imperial privilege and cultural condescension.
The entire cultural history of the British is stealing good ideas and culture from everyone they encountered. and even Isaac Newton’s work on Gravity was based on a Muslim text 556 years before his apple fell.
Mr Jackson the British stole from the Greeks, Indigenous peoples and Muslim scientists and when they don’t like something – they try to pack it off to Rwanda.
The British Museum holds the largest Māori collections outside New Zealand – not only artefacts Māori view as ancestors but the preserved heads of actual ancestors.
He implored the museum, on behalf of Māori, to honour the partnership agreement between Maori and the British Crown that is the Treaty of Waitangi and let the ancestors come home.