The settler government in Northern Turtle Island banned potlatching for seventy years, a ban with consequences. One of these consequences includes the theft of artworks from Indigenous people living in the Northwest. Repatriating these objects has been difficult work but one must consider the complexity of recent history. Neil Diamond and Joanne Robertson’s So Surreal: Behind the Masks examines a history with multiple beginnings. One of these beginnings is a Yu’pik mask that sold for prices comparable to settler art.
Surreal asks how these masks ended up in settler collections, which started during settler colonisation of Alaska. One of these settlers moved to New York, where he encountered surrealists escaping from Hitler. Fast forward to today, when both Indigenous people and settlers have different opinions about these masks. Some people in both communities see museums as caretakers for work that belongs to the earth. Both communities also have memebrs who believe in repatriating objects that clearly belong to Indigenous people.
There are similarities between Diamond’s Reel Injun and this one, even if this covers more ground. The criticism of settler museum culture is mild, which sometimes comes in a documentary with nuance. One of So Surreal: Behind the Masks‘ subjects is Yu’pik artist, storyteller, and dancer Chuna MacIntyre, standing at the basement of the Louvre, smiling in the presence of a Yu’pik mask. He exists in a documentary that also criticises the sterility of museums that see these objects differently, but expectedly and thankfully it prioritizes the Indigenous perspective.
- Genre: Documentary, History
- Release Date: 9/10/2024
- Directed by: Joanne Robertson, Neil Diamond
