ABSTRACT
It is timely-given the increased attention now being paid by archaeologists, ethnologists, auction houses, national museums and governments to the UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects, the UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the fact that we are approaching the end of the UN Decade of Indigenous Peoples1-to question a number of practices undertaken by France in her former colony, Algeria, regarding both the discovery and recording of prehistoric rock art and the excavation, collection and removal of cultural objects, especially from regions within Algeria which have long been recognised and are now designated by the UN as belonging to ‘indigenous peoples’. The intervention is made more urgent by France’s seeming determination to undermine both the UNIDROIT Convention2 and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples;3 the intransigence being shown within France towards the continuation of a number of long-accepted but nevertheless regrettable practices regarding illegally exported cultural objects;4 the elevation to cult status of certain personages5 associated with such practices; and the question of restitution being raised by both Algerians and-perhaps more importantlythe indigenous peoples, namely the Tuareg,6 from whom this cultural heritage has been expropriated.7
