Sacred Hopi masks sold at auction despite legal bid to prevent sale

A Paris auction house went ahead with the sale of 70 ceremonial masks from Arizona’s Hopi tribe on Friday, just hours after a court ruled that the sale could go ahead. Representatives of the Native American tribe had requested an injunction, claiming the objects are sacred and should be rightly returned to them.

Reuters/John Schults

The brightly coloured Kachina masks and headdresses were sold for more than 900,000 euros by several buyers at the Neret-Minet auction house, with one mask selling for more than three times the pre-sale estimate at 160,000 euros.

The sale went through, despite efforts by representatives of the Native American tribe, the US ambassador to Paris and actor Robert Redford to prevent the auction. Two Arizona museums also called for the sale to be cancelled.

A Paris court ruled on Friday that the sale did not violate the law, even if the objects were considered sacred. The Neret-Minet auction house said the objects had been legally acquired by a French collector during a 30-year residence in the United States.

Pierre-Louis Dubois bought two masks for a total of 16,000 euros, growing fond of the Hopi culture following a visit last year to the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, home to some of the Hopi ancestors.

“I saw a lot of these masks in museums, and it's fantastic to be able to buy one,” Dubois told RFI, “It's to put in my home. When I look at this mask, I will think about the Hopi. It's a romantic feeling.”

But Dubois, like buyer Alain Giraud, expressed the fact that the sale of the Hopi objects was problematic.

Giraud bought one of the first masks with a winning bid of 3,700 euros, in memory of French pop singer and friend Joe Dassin, who wrote his Master’s degree on Hopi tribes at the University of Michigan.

When asked what he would do with the mask, Giraud said it would be returned to the tribe.

“We didn't have time to organise anything, but I hope we can take a trip to Arizona and deliver it,” Giraud said.

Members of the 18,000-strong Hopi tribe say the objects are blessed with divine spirits. Bo Lomahquahu, a 25 year-old Hopi and student in Paris, claimed that the objects are traditionally used in private rituals and should never have been allowed to be put up for sale.

“They aren’t just objects,” he told the AFP news agency. “We believe they have a spirit in them.”

The sale of Native American artefacts has been outlawed in the United States since 1990, but the law does not apply to sales overseas.