A confession: I am an archaeologist and a museum curator, but a paradoxical one.
首先我要坦白：我是一位考古学家，也是一位博物馆馆长，但我是一个矛盾体。
For my museum, I collect things, but I also return things back to where they came from.
我所在的博物馆不仅收藏东西，也会将藏品物归原主。
I love museums because they're social and educational, but I'm most drawn to them because of the magic of objects:
我之所以喜欢博物馆，是因为它具有社会价值和教育意义，但博物馆最吸引我的是各件极具魅力的藏品：
a one-million-year-old hand axe, a totem pole, an impressionist painting all take us beyond our own imaginations.
一把一百万年“高龄”的手斧，一根图腾柱，一幅印象派画作，都超乎我们的想象。
In museums, we pause to muse, to gaze upon our human empire of things in meditation and wonder.
人们会在博物馆展品前驻足、欣赏，陷入沉思，惊叹连连。
I understand why US museums alone host more than 850 million visits each year.
我知晓为什么仅仅美国的博物馆，每年接待的访客数量就超过了8.5亿人次。
Yet, in recent years, museums have become a battleground.
然而，博物馆近几年却沦为了战场。
Communities around the world don't want to see their culture in distant institutions which they have no control over.
全球各地的人们均不希望到自己并无控制权的遥远的他乡博物馆，去看本属于自己祖国的文物。
They want to see their cultural treasures repatriated, returned to their places of origin.
人们希望本国文化瑰宝能回到故土。
Greece seeks the return of the Parthenon Marbles, a collection of classical sculptures held by the British Museum.
希腊希望帕特农神庙大理石雕塑能回归，这些雕塑现存于大英博物馆内。
Egypt demands antiquities from Germany.
埃及要求德国归还文物。
New Zealand's Maori want to see returned ancestral tattooed heads from museums everywhere.
新西兰的毛利人希望各地博物馆归还带有纹身的祖先头颅。
Yet these claims pale in comparison to those made by Native Americans.
然而，这些索求与美洲印第安人的索求相比可以说是小巫见大巫。
Already, US museums have returned more than one million artifacts and 50,000 sets of Native American skeletons.
美国各个博物馆已经归还了他们一百多万件手工艺品和5万具美洲印第安人骨骸。
To illustrate what's at stake, let's start with the War Gods.
为了说明其中的利害关系，我们先来说说战神。
This is a wood carving made by members of the Zuni tribe in New Mexico.
这是新墨西哥州祖尼人刻的木雕。
In the 1880s, anthropologists began to collect them as evidence of American Indian religion.
19世纪80年代，人类学家开始收集这种木雕，用来证明美洲印第安人的宗教信仰。
They came to be seen as beautiful,
人们认为这些木雕非常精美，
the precursor to the stark sculptures of Picasso and Paul Klee, helping to usher in the modern art movement.
毕加索和保罗·克利的雕塑也受其影响，战神木雕推动了现代艺术运动的发展。
From one viewpoint, the museum did exactly as it's supposed to with the War God.
从某个角度而言，博物馆收集战神木雕正是其职责所在。
It helped introduce a little-known art form for the world to appreciate.
博物馆将这种鲜为人知的艺术形式介绍给世人了解和欣赏。
But from another point of view, the museum had committed a terrible crime of cultural violence.
但从另一个角度而言，博物馆犯下了严重的罪行：文化暴力。
For Zunis, the War God is not a piece of art, it is not even a thing. It is a being.
对于祖尼人而言，战神木雕并非艺术品，甚至都不算是一件物品。它有生命。
For Zunis, every year, priests ritually carve new War Gods, the Ahayu:da, breathing life into them in a long ceremony.
每年，祖尼牧师都会按仪式雕刻新的战神，Ahayu:Da，在漫长隆重的祭典上，为其注入生命的气息。
They are placed on sacred shrines where they live to protect the Zuni people and keep the universe in balance.
祖尼人将战神木雕放置在神庙，祈求它们保佑自己的族人，并维护宇宙的平衡。
No one can own or sell a War God. They belong only to the earth.
任何人都不能占有或者贩卖战神。战神只属于大地母亲。
And so Zunis want them back from museums so they can go to their shrine homes to fulfill their spiritual purpose.
所以祖尼人想从博物馆把战神木雕要回来，放回自己的神庙，履行自己的精神使命。
What is a curator to do? I believe that the War Gods should be returned.
博物馆馆长要怎么做呢？我认为应该归还战神。
This might be a startling answer.
这个答案或许让人觉得不可思议。
After all, my conclusion contradicts the refrain of the world's most famous archaeologist: "That belongs in a museum!"
毕竟，我的答案与全球大部分知名考古学家的观点相左：“战神属于博物馆！”
is what Indiana Jones said, not just to drive movie plots, but to drive home the unquestionable good of museums for society.
这是电影《夺宝奇兵》的男主角印地安纳·琼斯说的，他说这话可不单单是为了推动剧情发展，更是为了全社会的利益。
I did not come to my view easily. I grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and fell in love with the Sonoran Desert's past.
当然，我也并非轻易得出了自己的答案。我在亚利桑那州的图森市长大，从小就喜欢索诺拉沙漠的历史。
I was amazed that beneath the city's bland strip malls was 12,000 years of history just waiting to be discovered.
使我惊奇的是，在图森一条条商业街的下面埋藏着12000年的历史故事，等着人类去探索。
When I was 16 years old, I started taking archaeology classes and going out on digs.
我16岁那年，开始上考古学课，也会外出进行考古发掘。
A high school teacher of mine even helped me set up my own laboratory to study animal bones.
我的一位高中老师甚至帮我建了属于我个人的实验室，以便我研究动物骨骼。
But in college, I came to learn that my future career had a dark history.
但上大学时，我发现我日后的职业生涯还涉及了一段黑暗的历史。
Starting in the 1860s, Native American skeletons became a tool for science,
自19世纪60年代以来，美洲印第安人骨骸就成为了科学工具，
collected in the thousands to prove new theories of social and racial hierarchies.
人们收集成千上万的骨骸来证明新的社会和种族阶级理论。
Native American human remains were plundered from graves, even taken fresh from battlefields.
有些人强行把美洲印第安人的骸骨从坟墓里挖出来，甚至还从战场收集尸骸。
When archaeologists came across white graves, the skeleton was often quickly reburied,
当考古学家挖到白人坟墓时，一般会尽快把骨骸埋回去，
while Native bones were deposited as specimens on museum shelves.
而挖到美洲印第安人的骨骸时，却会做成标本放到博物馆展示柜里。
In the wake of war, stolen land, boarding schools, laws banning religion,
战争过后，家园故土被侵占，学校成为寄宿制，宗教被法律禁止，
anthropologists collected sacred objects in the belief that Native peoples were on the cusp of extinction.
人类学家收集各种神圣物件，认为美洲印第安人即将灭绝。
You can call it racism or colonialism,
你们可以称之为种族主义或殖民主义，
but the labels don't matter as much as the fact that over the last century,
贴任何标签都无所谓，重要的是上世纪发生的事情，
Native American rights and culture were taken from them.
美洲印第安人的权利被剥夺，文化被侵犯。
In 1990, after years of Native protests, the US government, through the US Congress,
1990年，在多年的本土抗议之后，美国政府通过美国国会，
finally passed a law that allowed Native Americans to reclaim cultural items, sacred objects and human remains from museums.
终于通过了一项法律，允许美洲印第安人从博物馆取回文物，圣物和祖先遗骸。
Many archaeologists were panicked.
考古学家纷纷表示震惊。
For scientists, it can be hard to fully grasp how a piece of wood can be a living god or how spirits surround bones.
对于科学家而言，可能很难理解一块木头怎么就变成有生命的神了，亦或神灵如何守护遗骸。
And they knew that modern science, especially with DNA, can provide luminous insights into the past.
而科学家知道，现代科学，尤其是DNA，能有助于洞悉过去。
As the anthropologist Frank Norwick declared,
人类学家弗兰克·诺维克曾说过，
"We are doing important work that benefits all of mankind. We are not returning anything to anyone."
“我们手头在做的事情对全人类而言意义非凡。我们绝不会把任何东西还给任何人。”
As a college student, all of this was an enigma that was hard to decipher.
对于大学生而言，这一切都是谜，难以解读。
Why did Native Americans want their heritage back from the very places preserving it?
为什么美洲印第安人想把文化遗产从保存文化遗产的地方拿回来呢？
And how could scientists spend their entire lives studying dead Indians but seem to care so little about living ones?
科学家怎么能穷其一生研究死去的美洲印第安人，却不怎么关注活生生的美洲印第安人？
I graduated but wasn't sure what to do next, so I traveled.
我虽然从大学毕业了，却不知道之后要做什么，于是我就出去旅行了。
One day, in South Africa, I visited Nelson Mandela's former prison cell on Robben Island.
有一天，我到了南非，去了罗本岛上关押过纳尔逊·曼德拉的监狱。

I had an epiphany. Here was a man who helped a country bridge vast divides to seek, however imperfectly, reconciliation.
我恍然大悟。这里关过的可是曼德拉啊，他致力于帮助国家消除分歧，寻求和解。
I'm no Mandela, but I ask myself: Could I, too, plant seeds of hope in the ruins of the past?
虽然我不是曼德拉，但也不禁扪心自问：我是否也能同他一样，在曾经的废墟之上播种希望？
In 2007, I was hired as a curator at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
2007年，我出任丹佛自然科学博物馆馆长。
Our team agreed that unlike many other institutions, we needed to proactively confront the legacy of museum collecting.
我们的团队达成了共识，和其他机构不同，我们要主动归还馆藏文物。
We started with the skeletons in our closet, 100 of them.
我们先从储藏室里的遗骸入手，共有100具。
After months and then years, we met with dozens of tribes to figure out how to get these remains home.
月复一月，年复一年，我们与几十个部落取得了联系，想办法将这些遗骸送回部落。
And this is hard work. It involves negotiating who will receive the remains,
这项工作十分艰难。我们要协商谁来接收这些遗骸，
how to respectfully transfer them, where will they go.
如何转移这些遗骸才能显示尊重，要把这些遗骸送到哪里去。
Native American leaders become undertakers, planning funerals for dead relatives they had never wanted unearthed.
美洲印第安人部落领袖承办了殡葬仪式，为那些被强行挖出来的逝去的亲人置办葬礼。
A decade later, the Denver Museum and our Native partners have reburied nearly all of the human remains in the collection.
十年后，丹佛自然科学博物馆和美洲印第安人差不多把馆藏的人类遗骸都重新埋葬了。
We have returned hundreds of sacred objects. But I've come to see that these battles are endless.
我们已经归还了数百件圣物。但我发现，这些战争无休无止。
Repatriation is now a permanent feature of the museum world.
归还文物如今成了博物馆的固定工作内容。
Hundreds of tribes are waiting their turn. There are always more museums with more stuff.
数百个部落等着博物馆归还文物。博物馆越来越多，需要归还的文物更是数不胜数。
Every catalogued War God in an American public museum has now been returned -- 106, so far
美国公共博物馆里每一个登记在册的战神都已经归还给了祖尼部落，截至目前一共归还了106个，
but there are more beyond the reach of US law, in private collections and outside our borders.
但是还有很多的战神并不在美国法律的管辖范围之内，比如私人收藏的和美国领土之外的。
In 2014, I had the chance to travel with a respected religious leader from the Zuni tribe named Octavius Seowtewa
2014年，我有幸与一位受人敬重的宗教领袖一同出行，他名叫奥塔维斯·西欧特瓦，来自祖尼部落，
to visit five museums in Europe with War Gods.
我们访问了欧洲五家收藏了战神的博物馆。
At the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, we saw a War God with a history of dubious care.
在柏林民族学博物馆，我们发现其对战神的保存能力令人生疑。
An overly enthusiastic curator had added chicken feathers to it.
这所博物馆的馆长对战神怀着满腔热忱，甚至还把鸡毛放到了战神上。
Its necklace had once been stolen. At the Musée du quai Branly in Paris,
战神的项链被偷过。在巴黎的凯布朗利博物馆，
an official told us that the War God there is now state property with no provisions for repatriation.
一位管理人员称那里的战神现在属于国有财产，没有归还的规定。
He insisted that the War God no longer served Zunis but museum visitors.
他坚称战神不再为祖尼人服务，而是在博物馆供游客观赏。
He said, "We give all of the objects to the world."
他说：“我们把所有的展品呈现给全世界。”
At the British Museum, we were warned that the Zuni case would establish a dangerous precedent for bigger disputes,
在大英博物馆，则有人警告称，把战神归还给祖尼人会开创危险的先例，会引起更大的争端，
such as the Parthenon Marbles, claimed by Greece.
比如说，希腊人会索回帕特农神庙大理石雕塑。
After visiting the five museums, Octavius returned home to his people empty-handed.
访问了这五家博物馆之后，奥塔维斯空手而归。
He later told me, "It hurts my heart to see the Ahayu:da so far away. They all belong together.
后来，他告诉我，“看到战神散落在远方，我非常心疼。这些战神都应该在一起。
It's like a family member that's missing from a family dinner. When one is gone, their strength is broken."
它们好比家庭成员在家庭聚餐中缺席了。缺少了一个，它们的凝聚力就被破坏了。”
I wish that my colleagues in Europe and beyond could see that
我希望欧洲及其他地区的同仁们能够明白，
the War Gods do not represent the end of museums but the chance for a new beginning.
归还战神并不会对博物馆产生负面影响，而是代表一个新的开端。
When you walk the halls of a museum, you're likely just seeing about one percent of the total collections.
当你参观博物馆的时候，你看到的展品很可能只占全部馆藏的1%左右。
The rest is in storage. Even after returning 500 cultural items and skeletons,
剩下的全在储藏室放着。即使是在归还了500件文物和遗骸后，
my museum still retains 99.999 percent of its total collections.
我的博物馆还有99.999%馆藏。
Though we no longer have War Gods, we have Zuni traditional pottery, jewelry, tools, clothing and arts.
虽然我们博物馆没有了战神，但是我们有传统祖尼陶器、珠宝、工具、衣物及艺术品。
And even more precious than these objects are the relationships that we formed with Native Americans through the process of repatriation.
还有比这些文物更珍贵的，那便是我们在归还文物的过程中与美洲印第安人建立的关系。
Now, we can ask Zunis to share their culture with us.
现在，我们可以请祖尼人与我们一同分享祖尼文化。
Not long ago, I had the chance to visit the returned War Gods.
不久前，我有幸见到了归还的战神。
A shrine sits up high atop a mesa overlooking beautiful Zuni homeland.
神庙建在一座平顶山上，俯瞰美丽的祖尼家园。
The shrine is enclosed by a roofless stone building threaded at the top with barbed wire to ensure that they're not stolen again.
神庙由一些石屋围起来，没有屋顶，石屋上面设有带刺铁丝网，确保战神不会再次被盗。
And there they are, inside, the Ahayu:da, 106 War Gods amid offerings of turquoise, cornmeal, shell, even T-shirts
神庙里共有106尊战神，它们的周围摆满了祭品：绿松石、玉米粉、贝壳，甚至还有T恤衫……
a modern gift to ancient beings. And standing there, I got a glimpse at the War Gods' true purpose in the world.
这是献给古代生灵的现代礼物。站在那里，我突然理解了战神存在的真正意义。
And it occurred to me then that we do not get to choose the histories that we inherit.
我明白了，我们不能选择我们能够继承的历史。
Museum curators today did not pillage ancient graves or steal spiritual objects,
当代博物馆馆长并没有掠夺古代坟墓，没有偷盗圣物，
but we can accept responsibility for correcting past mistakes.
但是我们应该承担责任，纠正前人的错误。
We can help restore dignity, hope and humanity to Native Americans,
我们可以帮助美洲印第安人，恢复尊严，重获希望，推崇人道，
the very people who were once the voiceless objects of our curiosity.
因为我们的好奇，他们曾被迫保持沉默。
And this doesn't even require us to fully understand others' beliefs, only that we respect them.
我们并不需要完全理解他人的信仰，只需要去尊重他们的信仰。
Museums are temples to things past. Now they must also become places for living cultures.
博物馆收藏历史文物。现在，博物馆也要收藏当代文化作品。
As I turned to walk away from the shrine, I drank in the warm summer air, and I watched an eagle turn lazy circles high above.
走出神庙的时候，我尽情享受着温暖的夏日阳光，我看到一只鹰在高空中缓缓盘旋。
I thought of the Zunis, whose offerings ensure that their culture is not dead and gone but alive and well,
我想到了祖尼人，各种各样的祭品证明了他们的文化并未消逝，而是依旧鲜活，
and I could think of no better place for the War Gods to be. Thank you.
我相信，这就是战神最好的归宿。谢谢大家。