For “Where Heritage Meets Violence,” Donna Yates turns to the art market. The sale of heritage from the Pacific is entangled with colonial narratives that sensationalize cultures of the region—especially through narratives of cannibalism and violence. As Yates shows, stories of conflict, from “native savagery” to heroizing tales of “white men in boats” (whose destruction of Indigenous cultures directly leads to the rarity of the marketed items), actually increase the value of artifacts in a market that is still deeply colonial.
