[This was published in the "Not Honolulu Weekly" column of the 07/12/00 issue of the Honolulu Weekly. Editor Stu Dawrs is responsible for the cool title. I also sent it as an email to the British Museum with my permission to "make as many copies as they wanted" to pass around the office. I haven't received a response yet. Ha ha! -- Doug]
Dear British Museum,
Now, before I launch off into this rant, let me say that it's not just vacant Limey-bashing. We love you guys. In fact -- and I bet you didn't know this -- our state flag's got the Union Jack up in the corner. Right there, the crosses of Saint George, Saint Patrick and that other saint, symbolizing the unity of England, Ireland, and that other country -- Scotland, that's it.
I don't really know why it's up there. Oh yeah, I think Captain Cook claimed this place before the locals got pissed and hacked him to pieces. It must be our way of saying, "Sorry, no hard feelings." And a lot of the descendants of those guys that did the hacking are now in jail having run afoul of the Anglo Saxon legal codes that survived that little hacking incident, particularly the one against stealing. But more on that later.
So we have this Union Jack up in the corner of our flag just like Australia and Aotearoa (New Zealand to y'all). And we love British cars. You can see Jaguars rolling down Bishop Street all day long. Of course, you guys sold Jaguar to Ford so they're really not British cars -- but more about that later too.
What I should have said in the first place to be more friendly is that you have a great museum. When I hit your web site (http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/) and saw that big stone moai from Rapa Nui (Easter Island to y'all) staring at me I thought, wow maybe I hit some Polynesian site. But okay, I get it, you put that there to help illustrate your motto, "Illuminating world cultures." I read on your web site that you're going to install the Hao Haka Nana Ia moai in your Great Court some time soon. That Great Court project cost $147 million dollars. That's a STACK of Benjamins ("Elizabeths" to y'all)! I wondered how much that moai set you back, but in fact, it took 200 people to drag it to the HMS Topaze back in 1868. Gotta hand it to you, that's "illuminating." It's not a gone in 60 seconds kind of gig.
You guys have sure done a lot of illuminating. But let me put it to you this way: Things have changed from back in the day when you were the ones with the big ships and big guns so I hope you can handle this but it's time to dismantle this system of taking without a slap on the wrist...sorry, listening to too much Ice Cube. What I'm doing is asking you to give it up.
I tried hitting the "Compass" on your web site on June 21, the first day of summer and and the first day of operation for Compass, what promised to be the database of objects in your collections. But damn, it only lists 2,000 of the 7,000,000 objects the British Museum holds. That's only two one hundredths of one percent! So of course, I couldn't find much stuff from Hawaii there. Just mostly the stuff you illuminated from Egypt, Greece, etc.
As I was saying, I'm asking you to give it up. I think we can work-furlough some boys from Halawa (that's where the prison is) to help out in the effort, some of them really know how to illuminate. They got there illuminating Jags, and not even -- Chevy's and Honda's. Damn, just trying to start their own museums. [Aside to the guys: Just goes to show if you really want to illuminate you better dump those AK's and get yourselves some proper canons.] Better hitch a trailer to the Jag for that moai. Whoops! That's not from Hawaii. But tell you what, we'll drop it off at Rapa Nui on the way.
Something about all this worries me, though. I mean, you sell Jaguar to Ford, Rolls Royce and Bentley to Volkswagen and BMW (ouch! that must have hurt) and don't tell me you're actually going to sell Rover Automotive to the Japanese! You think you can get away with that just because Lord Mountbatten is dead? Yipes!
So, I wanna ask this:
(1) Are you selling off any Hawaiian artifacts? I mean museums do buy and sell stuff, no? And hey, you're not using your collections as collateral against loans, are you? I've heard some talk, and it's distressing. If you can't manage to keep Jaguar and Rolls, what'll you do with all the stuff you illuminated from others?
(2) Do you have any Hawaiian "osteological" artifacts? By that I mean bones. You've got Egyptian mummies, hope you don't have any Hawaiian royalty in your vaults.
(3) When do you plan on returning this stuff? Just return it to the museum here and let them take the heat for holding it. (Ha ha. That's a little joke 'cuz we're having some museum probs of our own here.)
I'm open to a swap. Say, all the loot you took from Hawaii for all the Union Jacks on our flags. What do you say?
Sincerely,