00:00The British Museum is the largest depository of stolen goods known to man.
00:06How many people here are friends of this institution or the other?
00:11I am a friend of the British Museum, in the sense that I've signed up and I pay a certain
00:17amount of money every year.
00:19I'm a friend of the British Museum.
00:22The British Museum is the largest depository of stolen goods known to man.
00:30It's a charnel house, literally, quite literally, a charnel house of bones and of relics that are sacred to our
00:41indigenous people globally.
00:44And yet, where the British Museum has consistently failed to and ignored a dialogue which delivers.
00:54They've talked.
00:56And where they've been dragged kicking and screaming to the table, they've talked, but they have not delivered.
01:02So if you're talking about reparative justice, I want next year the Ethiopian tabo to be returned.
01:10Next year, I want, within the next couple of years, the Benin bronzes, I want the Ashanti gold not to
01:27be lent back.
01:28Ashanti was looted.
01:31Elgin, at least, there was some sort of transaction.
01:35Ashanti was looted.
01:38And they have the gall to loan back to the king of the Ashanti the stuff they stole in the
01:44first place.
01:46I want the trustees of the British Museum and those of us who are friends of the British Museum to
01:51tell the trustees that they should be part and parcel of reparative justice in the way the Church of England
01:58and other institutions globally have been.
02:00That's what I want to see as immediate objectives.
02:05Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.
