Climbing Together

If you walked into the meeting rooms of the Musée Quai du Branly – Jacques Chirac on Wednesday, June 27th, 2022, you would have encountered a sacred ceremony in progress.

In the room, museum workers, government officials from Cameroon and France, artists, and community members were present as a sacred ritual procedure to transfer power from one Bamendou Tukah Mask to another occurred. On one side of the room were two Tukah masks—”the fifth” sculpted in 1916 and taken by the French during the anti-colonial wars of 1957, and “the sixth” or “brother” mask (a replica) sculpted in 2018, in the forced absence of the fifth.

The Tukah Masks were placed on a table. The fifth was positioned on the right, elevated higher than the other to signal its status and age. From its lower positioning on the table, shiny exterior and absence of scratches and crevices, it was clear that the sixth Tukah Mask was the younger of the two. Two religious leaders, Mo’o Neboga Djeujioho Mathieux and Toulewou Jean Rene, presided over the ceremony. They walked around the table reciting prayers and incantations to appease the older mask and request him to transfer his powers to the younger mask. On the other side of the room, His Majesty Gabriel Tsidie, King of the Bamendou community and his fellow community leader, His Majesty Tientcheu Justin, King of Fomopea, observed the spiritual leaders’ movements with reverent attention. The Musée du Quai Branly’s chairman, Emmanuel Kasarhérou, also followed the movements of Mo’o and Toulewou. 

After the opening prayers, the Tukah masks were moved to a secret room, away from uninitiated eyes. Although the spiritual content of the ritual could not be revealed to many in the room, because it is part of a restricted sacred knowledge, several things are known. Various types of tree bark powder were used to place the two Masks in the comfort of the traditional power they carry, other leaves and tree branches were used to communicate with the masks, and incantations accompanied each step. After this process, King Tsidie, King Tientcheu, Kaserhérou, Mo’o and Toulewou were welcomed into the secret room to participate in the ritual of transferring powers from one mask to the other. After several minutes, both masks were brought out again, marking a high point in a process that had brought together community leaders and representatives, museum workers, academics, heritage experts, curators, and artists to reconnect the Bamendou community with their Tukah mask, which had been stolen from them in 1957.

The Tukah Mask is “the material representation of traditional power in Bamendou cultural life”¹. Bamendou is both a place and a people, part of the ‘Cameroonian Grassfields’ in the west and northwest of Cameroon, and home to 200 independent monarchies, each governed by a king. In 1957, a French doctor, Pierre Harter, secretly took the (fifth) Tukah Mask from the Bamendou palace amid deeply destabilising wars against the colonial oppressor, France. The doctor later donated his collection, including the mask, to a French museum. In 2017, the former director of the Musée du Quai Branly² made a statement about the doctor’s collection of Cameroonian belongings in the Pavillon des Sessions (a permanent exhibition owned by Musée du Quai Branly) at the Louvre. Through this, the mask’s location was made globally public.

After 61 years of absence the Bamendou community was finally able to identify the location of their Tukah Mask. Now aware of its location, in 2018, King Gabriel Tsidie, together with community representatives, requested its return to Bamendou. King Tsidie’s request for its return was denied by Louvre museum officials, who oversee the Pavillon des Sessions. His request was stated to have been denied because negotiations for the restitution of cultural belongings and human ancestors in France ‘are only conducted between states’. Consequently, Bamendou community members began gathering support amongst themselves, and local stakeholders in restitution. Thus began the journey of growing a chorus of voices, partnerships and collaborations that would contribute to and support the Bamendou communitv’s demands for the restitution of their Tukah Mask.

ORA’s case study data indicates that significant breakthroughs in restitution processes share a common ingredient—a chorus of voices comprising different actors who come together to work toward repairing what was severed: cultural identities, forms of spiritual and artistic practice, and indigenous epistemologies. For 56% of cases (just over half), unsuccessful attempts at contact between communities and museums or collections transitioned to successful contact (a breakthrough) at the point when many more stakeholders were involved in the process.

In general these breakthrough moments are characterised by stakeholder groups that has significant numbers of African stakeholders, and included practitioners from other parts of the world (non-Africans), and government and non-government actors.

In Bamendou, the Tukah mask had historically been the main symbol of the Ngim Nu Festival; a community gathering that existed long before colonisation, and was held every five years. Traditionally, the king would gather all community members for cultural activities celebrating Bamendou’s rich heritage through the festival. The Tukah Mask was only viewed by the public at the festival or during the enthronement of a new king. When the Mask was removed from the king’s palace in 1957, Ngim Nu Festivals were no longer held³. In 2018, when the Louvre Museum denied King Tidie’s request to return the Tukah Mask in Paris to Bamendou, a mask was sculpted by various Bamendou artists to replace it and a decision was made to revive the festival. In 2019, in preparation for the first Ngim Nu Festival since 1957, Bamendou academics approached Cameroon’s Ministry of Arts and Culture, requesting financial support. The Ministry supported the festival’s aims of celebrating Bamendou’s cultural heritage and provided partial funding. The Ngim Nu Festival of 2019 brought together traditional and spiritual leaders, academics, museum workers, artists, other community leaders, local media houses and community members. The festival commenced with the activation of the recently sculpted sixth Tukah Mask to reinvigorate ritual practices that had been erased from Bamendou’s cultural life since 1957.

Each session throughout the festival facilitated a meeting ground for these diverse and distinct voices to remember, repair, and celebrate Bamendou’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage, past and present. Specifically, academics and museum workers from local institutions gave talks and lectures on the history of the Tukah Mask, seeking to re-educate members on its value and the loss it brought to the community when it was taken. Community members were encouraged to exchange ideas on supporting the traditional and local economy at the festival. Local businesses sold their products at the festival market, while media houses publicised the festival through radio and television. Additionally, sports activities and health campaigns were included in the programme.

Dr Martin Donlefack, an academic, activist and Head of the Technical Organising Committee for the Ngim Nu Festival, has been one of the key voices negotiating for the restitution of the fifth mask. In reflecting on the success of the festival, he says:

“This festival has enabled us to identify and restore many other elements, some of which were in decline and others which were in danger of disappearing altogether…The second thing is that we’ve managed to create a trigger in the minds of the Bamendou people so that from now on, they pay particular attention to their community. They are proud to take their identity and say, I am Bamendou. ” That’s something we didn’t see before.“

Although the 2019 Ngim Nu Festival was successful in reconnecting community members with the sixth Tukah Mask, anomalous occurrences that followed it, where most of the casualties were Bamendou community members, confirmed to the spiritual leaders that the mask in Paris was angry for being abandoned and replaced. They said:

Accordingly, community leaders, artists, academics, and community representatives sought communication with the Musée du Quai Branly about setting up a meeting for both Masks to meet in Paris. Despite the expanding coalition of voices on the Cameroonian side, the French remained unresponsive, and a way forward was unclear. However, in early 2021, King Tsidie was approached by Cameroonian cultural organisation, Routes des Chefferies¹⁰, asking for the sixth Tukah Mask to be included in a loan of belongings that were to leave Cameroon for Paris as part of the Cameroonian Cultural Season between April and July 2022, in collaboration with Musée du Quai Branly. King Tsidie and others saw the trip as an opportunity to request a ceremony at the Musée du Quai Branly, where a transfer of powers would occur between the Masks.

Many different actors were involved at this stage, working together to enable contact between the Bamendou community representatives and the museum. Routes des Chefferies facilitated the engagement, and they were joined by the French Embassy in Cameroon, which communicated with the Musée Quai Branly about hosting the ritual ceremony. Le Musee des Civilisations du Cameroon also joined the effort, supporting the process throughout. The Association Bamendou d’Europe—the primary organising body for the diasporic Bamendou community in Europe—committed to financially supporting the group’s transport from Cameroon to Paris. On 27th June 2022, a delegation comprising His Majesty King Tsidie, respected elders of the community, spiritual leaders, academics and heritage experts held the sacred ceremony, seeking to transfer powers from the fifth to the sixth Tukah Mask.

Specifically, with the Tukah Mask, between 2018 and 2022, the voices working together grew from the royal kingdom to include artists, academics, community leaders, community representatives, state and non-state actors. They collectively approached restitution in ways that articulated the profound loss, while also seeking ways of repairing harms caused by the removal of the Tukah Mask. As a result, the significant breakthrough of holding a spiritual powers transfer ceremony between the “fifth” and “sixth” Tukah Masks became a reality.

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Upon returning to Cameroon after the ceremony, spiritual leaders advised that the transfer of powers had not succeeded—the ceremony to transfer the powers would need to take place in the sacred forests of Bamendou. This process is still ongoing and has garnered significant momentum within Cameroon, as well as among other partners around the world. While the process has not been simple or easy, the community of various actors committed to working together to restore Bamendou cultural sovereignty has grown.

From the cases of the Bamendou Tukah Mask, the Pokomo Ngadji Drum, and Sara Baartman, among many others, we see a pattern in the potential of a broader stakeholder base. As more voices join the climb toward restitution, significant breakthroughs emerge as the movement transforms from isolated advocates to a unified force advancing together. This gives us an insight that when multiple voices climb together, harnessing their specialised knowledge to frame restitution demands in a particular way, the shared effort eventually yields a breakthrough. The collective energy from diverse voices—artists, academics, community leaders, spiritual leaders, Africans, and non-Africans, as well as government and non-governmental voices—brings greater resolution to the need for restitution.