THE French Government says it supports the return of more than a dozen mummified Maori heads to New Zealand, as lawmakers vote to hand back the remnants of a "barbaric trade" in human bodies.
The Upper House Senate has voted unanimously in favour of a bill calling for France's museums to return all Maori heads still in their possession to New Zealand.
The bill now heads to the National Assembly for debate.
France's culture ministry last year blocked a museum in northwestern Rouen from returning a Maori chief's head to New Zealand's national Te Papa Tongarewa museum, fearing the move could force Paris to return mummies to Egypt.
But the newly appointed Culture Minister, Frederic Mitterrand, has come out in favour of the bill drawn up by a cross-party group of senators, telling them: "The Government fully shares their ethical concerns."
"In what began as a ritual, a sign of respect from tribe and family towards the dead, these mummified heads led to a particularly barbaric trade, fuelled by the sinister curiosity of travellers and European collectors," he said.
France has about 15 Maori heads, including eight at Paris' Quai Branly museum of tribal arts, which opened in 2006.
In recent years, authorities in Australia, Europe and the United States have already returned about 300 of the 500 heads held in museums around the world for burial according to Maori tradition, according to the bill's supporters.
The British government in 1831 passed a law forbidding the export of the heads to Australia, which served as a hub for the Maori head trade.
Supporters of the French bill say the heads fuelled a "barbaric trade" that saw slaves decapitated and tattooed in the style of war chiefs to satisfy the whims of European collectors.
"The Maori heads that are still dispersed in European and US museums have a history that reminds us of the worst hours of colonialism," reads the summary of the draft bill.
France is no stranger to this type of cultural controversy after refusing to return the remains of Saartjie Baartman, a slave dubbed the Hottentot Venus, to South Africa, before eventually agreeing to do so in 2002.
