Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto has taken possession of a collection of cultural artifacts originating from the country’s Papua region that had been illegally brought into the United States, officials confirmed Thursday.
The handover occurred late Wednesday evening when FBI Director Kash Patel met with President Prabowo at his residence in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. Patel had traveled to Jakarta following separate discussions with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet about joint efforts to fight international online scam operations that drain billions of dollars from victims each year.
Indonesia’s Culture Minister Fadli Zon said the exchange highlights deepening collaboration between Indonesia and the United States in tracking down stolen cultural property and returning it to its home country.
The Papua artifacts belong to the cultural traditions of the Dani and Asmat tribes, as well as the Lake Sentani communities. Zon explained that the items were brought back through a partnership between Indonesia’s Culture Ministry and the FBI, after research into the objects’ origins confirmed they had been smuggled out of the country.
“These are very valuable objects because this repatriation process is part of our effort to restore our cultural sovereignty,” Zon said, noting the artifacts will eventually go on display at Indonesia’s National Museum.
Photographs released by Indonesia’s Presidential Secretariat show the collection includes polished stone ax heads and ceremonial objects historically connected to Papuan communities.
The Culture Ministry noted that traditional Papuan stone axes were far more than everyday tools. In highland communities like the Dani, these axes historically represented wealth and social standing, were exchanged during marriage and ceremonial events, and were frequently passed down through generations as prized family heirlooms.
The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta said this handover is the most recent in an ongoing series of American efforts to recover and return Southeast Asian cultural property that was trafficked through global antiquities networks.
Earlier this month, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton announced the return of two bronze Buddhist sculptures of Avalokiteshvara dating to the eighth century, according to the embassy. At a repatriation ceremony held at the Indonesian Consulate on July 10, Clayton said U.S. authorities would continue working alongside Homeland Security Investigations to fight the illegal trade in cultural property and return stolen works of art to their countries of origin.
Those sculptures were taken from Indonesian archaeological sites and sold to an American collector by the late antiquities dealer Douglas Latchford. They were among 34 Southeast Asian antiquities the collector voluntarily surrendered in 2021 after investigators determined the pieces had been looted.
The Indonesian sculptures had been removed decades ago by organized looters before entering the international art market through Latchford, a Bangkok-based dealer who was indicted by U.S. authorities in 2019 on allegations of running a large-scale trafficking operation involving antiquities looted from Cambodia and other Southeast Asian nations. The case was dismissed after his death, the U.S. embassy noted.
Zon said the FBI has helped Indonesia recover stolen cultural items on previous occasions as well, including bronze statues and artifacts from historical and archaeological sites. He expressed hope that the two countries would continue working together on cultural repatriation efforts.
In recent years, Indonesia has stepped up its push to locate cultural treasures that ended up abroad through colonial-era collecting, theft, and illegal trafficking — including items taken during centuries of Dutch colonial rule.
