Around this time three years ago, I met with Guam Museum curator Michael Lujan Bevacqua to write about his participation in a museum institute training program organized by the East-West Center in Honolulu. While it was exciting to re-connect with representatives from the Marianas while covering the story about this program, he let me in on an even bigger discovery: the existence of huge latte pieces from Guam sitting in an outdoor space at the Bishop Museum about five miles away.
I was thunderstruck when he told me the history of the latte and how it was just a very small part of the Hornbostel Collection, which consists of 10,000 artifacts collected by Hans Hornbostel in the 1920s. Days later, I covered a story on Miget and the other institute members from the Marianas visiting the latte and conducting a very moving ceremony with prayers in CHamoru for the return of the latte to the Marianas.
Guam Curator Michael Lujan Bevacqua, far right, leads a chant in CHamoru on July 25, 2022, in front of latte stone artifacts outside the Bishop Museum. The latte were part of the museum’s Hornbostel Collection, but will be repatriated home in August.
(photo: Therese Padua Howe)
Since that time, I’ve followed the efforts to get the entire collection repatriated to the Marianas — and today, THE NEWS HIT: the Bishop Museum announced in their newsletter that the board of directors unanimously voted for the “deaccession” of the collection, with a phased return of the artifacts starting in August.
“This is incredibly exciting,” Miget said in a phone interview on Friday afternoon. Noting that the repatriation can take years, now that it’s been approved, “it’s moving very, very quickly and what’s amazing about it is it’s a collaborative process.”
Marianas members of the Weaving a Net(work) of Care for Oceanic Collections museum institute conducted a ceremony on July 25, 2022 to pray for the return of latte at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, part of the museum’s Hornbostel Collection.
(photo: Therese Padua Howe)
When Miget and the other Marianas officials visited the collection in 2022, “we told the Native Hawaiian curators at the Bishop Museum that it’s not our place to formally ask, but we intend to go home and do everything we can to bring these home,” he said.
“And those curators we were working with, they said we feel you, it’s not our place to give them to you but we will work with you because they belong to you.”
In its newsletter, the Bishop Museum indicated that they had been working with the Guam Museum, Guam Cultural Repository, Guam State Historic Preservation Office, the Northern Mariana Islands State Historic Preservation Office, and the Northern Mariana Islands Museum of History and Culture.
In a phone interview, Guam Lt. Gov. Joshua Tenorio indicated that the Department of CHamoru Affairs, which oversees the Guam Museum and Guam Cultural Repository, would be taking the lead on the process.
Three latte pieces lie outside the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. In August, a ceremony will be held before the latte are prepared to be shipped home to Guam, about 100 years after they were first removed from the Marianas as part of the Hornbostel Collection.
(photo: Therese Padua Howe)
“I’ve been working on this for a good year now, talking with them and working on establishing a good partnership (with the Bishop Museum),” Tenorio said. “My view is that we also have an opportunity to develop academic and educational materials and programming from this collection. It's really an exciting time, I feel, for for the island.”
Miget said that while some details of the phased return have yet to be finalized, some of the artifacts are already home, at the Guam Cultural Repository. During a family trip to Hawaii in June, he took a detour to Honolulu to visit the Bishop Museum, where he packed a Pelican case full of artifacts meant for a Guam Museum exhibit of the Hornbostel Collection early next year.
In the case, “it has sinahi pieces from Guam, it has spondylus pieces from Guam, it has the pictograph from the cave in Talo'fo'fo that Hans Hornbostel had carved out of the wall with the drawing on it,” he said. “If you go to the cave you can see the other drawings on the wall, you can still see the area where there’s scratches and marks where the chisel was used, see the hole where the piece came from.”
A small bouquet lies on one of the latte during a July 25, 2022, CHamoru ceremony at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu.
(photo: Therese Padua Howe)
These and other smaller pieces meant to be loaned for the exhibit will be brought in Pelican cases by other Guam and Northern Marianas officials later this year, and they will be staying on the islands, thanks to the Bishop Museum’s recent decision.
BUT perhaps the most exciting news: the latte tåsa and haligi sitting outside the Bishop Museum will be the first large artifacts to be sent home. A ceremony at the Honolulu museum is scheduled for sometime in August, with Lt. Gov. Tenorio and other Guam officials.
Si Yu’os Ma’ase to the Bishop Museum team that has made this possible — I look forward to hopefully covering the return process as it happens!