Curators see themselves as guardians of a shared past for all humanity, and they argue that once an object enters 'world art' it cannot be withdrawn. Yet a profession's value 'does not trump all other human obligations.' In a society of many cultures, one group's beliefs about knowledge must not unjustly limit others' freedom to live by theirs.
The same thing can be a piece of art or scientific data to one culture and a living god or a relative to another. Every disputed object carries the seeds of the larger conflict: religious freedom against academic freedom, spiritual truth against scientific fact, moral rights against legal duties, and keeping old objects against keeping living cultures alive.
Museums assume that saving an object from decay is always good. But some peoples hold that everything should be allowed to wear away and return to nature, and that people should not interfere with that. Treating preservation as an unquestioned good overrides those beliefs without ever weighing them.
Some scientists argue that ancient bones unrelated to any living group belong to the government. That argument depends on a narrow, family-tree idea of who counts as kin. Broader native ideas of kinship, which count ancestors as belonging to the whole people, undo the claim that such remains have no rightful family.
Collectors often treat any sale as clean title, but in some societies sacred objects belong to a group, such as a clan, and no single person has the right to sell them. A widow from the opposite clan sold a clan robe to a curio dealer, and that sale did not make it hers to sell. Group ownership is one way to block the pull toward selling heritage for cash.