Activist calls for repatriation of Native Americans killed in Paris ‘human zoo’

Corinne Toka Devilliers says the bones of these six people have been kept for more than a century in the Musee de l'Homme (Museum of Man) in the French capital.

“They were in a box for 132 years,” she told AFP indignantly.

She is campaigning for them to return to their ancestral land in French Guiana, an overseas territory in South America, so that they can perform the proper rituals.

According to Devilliers' research, 33 Native Americans boarded a ship in Paramaribo in early 1892. The capital of what was then Dutch Guiana became Suriname after independence.

They were between three months and 60 years old. They were children, women and men from the Kali'na and Arawak tribes at the mouth of the Maroni River, which today flows between French Guiana and neighboring Suriname.

Since 1877, so-called “ethnological shows” with people from far-flung continents have been held in a Paris park – today denounced as “human zoos”.

The director of the Jardin d'Acclimatation, an amusement park in Paris, had asked French explorer Francois Laveau to bring Native Americans as part of his latest exhibition.

Laveau promised the 33 indigenous people payment and their return, said Toka Devilliers.

But “they were never paid and eight of them never saw their homeland again,” she said.

“Descendants of Moliko”

Toka Devilliers heard their story in her childhood, because her ancestor Moliko, then a young girl, was among them and survived.

“My grandfather often told me her story, but I didn’t pay attention,” she said.

But after watching a documentary about these deeply racist “human zoos” in 2018, she decided to do something.

She founded the non-governmental organization Moliko Alet+Po, whose name means “The Descendants of Moliko” in the Kali'na language, to demand redress for the treatment of her ancestors.

From 1877 to 1931, the Jardin d'Acclimatation hosted around 30 “ethnological shows,” according to its website.

It depicted people from Africa, America, Oceania, the Arctic and the Subarctic who were then referred to as “savages”. Some of them were paid for this, it is said.

Only “some anthropologists” denounced the events.

Toka Devilliers says that eight of the 33 who left Guyana in the middle of winter to arrive in Paris developed “bronchitis or other lung problems.”

Of these eight, one was buried and a second was dissected for alleged scientific research.

The remains of the other six are in the Musee de l'Homme.

“If they had known, they would never have gotten on the boat,” she said.

Toka Devilliers' efforts to bring her back have so far been in vain.

Last year, the French parliament passed a bill paving the way for the repatriation of human remains from French museum collections to their countries of origin.

However, this law did not contain any provisions for the French overseas territories.

When asked by AFP, the French Ministry of Culture said it was looking into the issue.

“Discussions are currently taking place to enable us to find the appropriate legal framework,” it said.

Shamanic ceremony

Until a solution is found, Toka Devilliers has brought a shaman – a spiritual healer – to hold a ceremony around the remains at the museum on Tuesday.

Toka Devilliers and her team were able to identify 27 of the 33 people who arrived in 1892.

She is now looking for a copy of the contract between Laveau and the then governor of Dutch Guiana, hoping that it will contain a full list of names and details of the promised payments.

“Maybe it was just a verbal contract,” she said.

“Or perhaps the document ended up in the Netherlands after Suriname’s independence in 1975.”

As soon as she has succeeded in returning the remains of the six, she will continue to fight for the memory of her ancestors, says Toka Devilliers.

Next, she will look for a plaque in a Paris park that would show curious visitors the ancestors of her people, she said.

She would also like one in the western French port of Saint-Nazaire, where they docked, and another in Paris' Saint-Lazare station, where they arrived in the capital.

The only monument so far exists in French Guiana.

In August, two statues were erected there to commemorate the victims who were brought to France and exhibited there.

They commemorated another, smaller group of people who left in 1882.

© 2024 AFP