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.
The Hopis say the items of religious headwear are sacred beings imbued with divine spirits and have never been intended as art objects. During the court case in Paris, the Hopis said they regarded their public promotion and sale as “a desecration to our religion.†Art dealers have sold similar Hopi religious relics a piece or two at a time during the last half-century, but the Paris auction was by far the largest sale ever held.
The auction house said the objects were acquired lawfully by a French collector and that the sale paid tribute to the Hopis’ vivid and unique culture. But the Hopi tribal chairman, LeRoy N. Shingoitewa, who received the returned item, identified as a Da Sop, or paternal messenger spirit, called the sale a “shameful saga.†A second Katsinam was bought by the family of the French singer-songwriter Joe Dassin, and will be returned to the Hopi later this year, Survival International said.
