ABSTRACT
Some people unconsciously draw a distinction between their own loss and other people’s losses. When indigenous people angrily demand the return of their artifacts from museums, for example, we sometimes struggle to understand the depth of their grief. How can a concern for some small physical item be the source of so much pain? Events over which they mourn happened so long ago. But loss is loss. Big losses are re-opened by smaller ones, and sometimes the smaller ones are embodied in little objects.
