For a week after Elizabeth Sackler announced her intention to return three American Indian masks she bought at auction for $39,050 to the American Indian tribes they belong to, she was overwhelmed by phone calls, letters and even faxes from people who wanted to express their approval, joy and even gratitude at what she had done.
”One woman wrote and thanked me for doing something she can use to illustrate to her sons the importance of moral priorities,” says Sackler, 43. She says that she`s delighted at the response to her action, but she`s also surprised.
As she sees it, she has simply done the right thing: ”I didn`t think about it much. I just knew it had to be done.”
The masks, two Hopi and one believed to be Navajo, were auctioned by Sotheby`s in New York in late May despite protests by both tribes that they are sacred objects, not pieces of art, and that as such should be returned to their respective nations.
Similar protests over the years led Congress to pass the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which went into effect in November. The law calls for the repatriation of certain cultural property by museums, but not by individuals unless they bought the object from a museum after the law was enacted. Because the seller of the masks acquired them before November 1990, the auction took place and Elizabeth Sackler stepped in.
She never had bid at an auction before but had heard about the masks and decided she had to buy them and return them to their rightful owners.
”Native Americans do make things for sale-pottery, art works. These
(masks) aren`t works of art. To the Hopis they aren`t masks. They are kachinas, regarded as living representations of sacred spirits. One of them is one of the most revered Hopi kachinas, a sun kachina.”
Sackler believes there is much to be learned from Native Americans, from their art, culture, psychology and even the way they raise their children. She admires the sense of connection with life, with the Earth, with animals and with each other in Native American culture.
A native New Yorker, Sackler lives in the city with her husband, Fred Berner, a film producer-who is in Chicago shooting ”Straight Talk,” a film with Dolly Parton-their 7 1/2-year-old son, 17-year-old daughter and cocker spaniel named Kahlua.
She is president of the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, started in 1965 by her late father, a well-known collector of Asian and Middle Eastern Art. The nonprofit organization has been involved with exhibiting and cataloging of the Arthur M. Sackler collections, among other activities.
But Elizabeth Sackler makes it clear that she bought the masks on her own with her own money.
And it is very much her personal philosophy that comes through when she explains that there are ways of learning about a culture in addition to going to a museum or collecting objects.
”I`m a supporter of museum and collectors,” she says. ”But enlightenment, and by that I mean in a larger, spiritual sense, can come in many different ways. Some collectors feel that their soul is fed by having these objects. But one can gain that feeling of connection and excitement in other ways. You don`t have to go out and gather things.”
Part of her own enlightenment she credits to her son: ”He has been studying about Native Americans all year at school and has taught me a great deal. Kids are very aware of what has been lost.”
She says that when Christopher Columbus landed here, historians say there were as many as 20 million Native Americans living in North America. By 1800 there were 600,000, and by 1890 only 250,000 remained.
For that reason she finds plans to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Columbus` discovery of America ”highly offensive and insensitive” and believes it is necessary that non-Indian Americans understand what was lost when many tribes were virtually erased from this country.
”It`s important to establish some sort of communication to begin a healing of that.”
The return of the masks seem to be her personal way of participating in this healing. In early July, the Kachina Chief of the First Mesa and members of his clan received the two Hopi masks. She also has been in touch with the secretary of the Dineh Spiritual and Cultural Society of the Navajo nation for guidance in how to return the other mask.
”I don`t feel that I`m the owner (of the masks),” Sackler says. ”I`m only the guardian.”
As to the overwhelming public support for her action, Sackler realizes that many people were responding to their own desire to be able to do something they feel is right or ethical.
”Lots of people wish they were in a position to do what I did,” she says, but adds that she feels that ethics is not limited by how much money you can spend.
”Everyone can afford to be ethical. There are no big ethics or little ethics. If everyone did something they felt strongly about, it could make a difference.”
All the letters and phone calls and faxes give her hope that she has helped create an awareness of the difference between art and spiritual, ceremonial artifacts as well as a desire to understand and learn more about Native American culture.
