Known for its towering stone statues, the island of Rapa Nui holds immense cultural value to its native clans. With more than 100,000 visitors annually, tourism threatens the traditional rights of native people to own land and protect their sacred sites, including more than 900 moai statues, burial sites and ceremonial grounds.
On April 7, 2018, artifacts from the West Berkeley Shellmound and Emeryville Shellmound, some of them thousands of years old, were removed from storage at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum and, for the first time ever, shown to the general public at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive. More than 300 people joined the California Institute for Community Arts and Culture and friends to view these remarkable objects and hear a panel of contemporary Native California artists.