INDIANAPOLIS — While Don Miller was hauling the world’s treasures into his Rush County farmhouse over the decades, one wonders whether he foresaw a posthumous international ceremony.

If he did, then he was right.

Chinese diplomats came together with U.S. officials Thursday afternoon at the Eiteljorg Museum for an event that is guaranteed a seat of honor in the field of art-crime posterity: what the FBI says is the biggest return of cultural artifacts from the U.S. to China.

Kristi Johnson, chief of the FBI’s Transnational Organized Crime Section, and Wen Dayan, deputy director general of China’s Department of Foreign Affairs, signed a ceremonial certificate that puts 361 artifacts spanning millennia back into the hands of their home country.

“It was a tragedy, I think. We have to change this situation. We have to protect not only our cultural heritage but the cultural heritage for everybody. This is for human(s), not only for China or not only for United States,” Dayan said.

The FBI spent six days in 2014 seizing more than 7,000 cultural artifacts that 91-year-old Miller had schlepped to his Waldron home after world travels over 60 or so years. Agents found mammoth tusks from Canada, a Ming Dynasty vase, an Italian mosaic and enough human bones from Native American burial sites to make 500 people.

The FBI said Miller’s items were taken illegally or improperly.

Source: IndyStar