By Harold Knight, Slytherin 6th Year

Are you, dear reader, generally glumbumbled to seeing Gringotts lined with grey-haired goblins? Resigned to regularly respecting with the receding hairlines of short arithmancers? Crestfallen with continually catching accountants' condescending, wizened glares always looking down upon you?

Well, aren't you the ageist?

Regardless of your social failings, if you have heard murmurings about younger goblins sporting a different set of ears and an actual sense of fashion then worry not, this has nothing to do with your horrid imagination! You've just caught wind of SSEARCH, the multi-Species Syndicate of Expert Artisans Recovering Cultural Heritage, and their rarely-seen teams of African diasporic archivists, often led by an elusive goblin named Manoka Olabode. 

Since there aren't any red robes wandering about, SSEARCH is most likely helping Gringotts with some routine antiquities insurance policy, or claim, by ensuring artifacts' authenticity, preservation, safety, and provenance (its history of ownership or history of where it's been). Now, this may sound extraordinarily dull, but if there's enough SSEARCH officials present that even the Hogwarts grapevine knows about them, then that means they're probably reviewing enough artifacts to fill a vault. Add that to the fact that the relentless Manoka Olabode might be among those officials also means SSEARCH may question antiquities' authenticity, provenance, or both—always a brilliantly nasty affair. Of course, proving that in a legal court is an entirely different issue.

Cultural heritage laws tend to favor the Statute of Secrecy first, wixes second, muggles third and non-human creatures last, meaning that evidence of provenance may not result in repatriation if authorities believe it would result in a breach of the statute. In fact, if authorities believe the magical tests related to proving provenance may simply breach the statute, then a cultural object's provenance may remain a stubborn mystery.

However, contrary to the authorities' goals, their dragging their feet on this issue often results in the mistreatment, destruction, or loss of cultural heritage among muggles as commercial goods, among wixes as powerful magical goods, and among the illict trade of antiquities as a murky mix of both. Even the Goblet of Fire was lost after the Tetrawizard Tournament!

This is usually where entities like SSEARCH or Gringotts step in and start throwing their weight around in gold (…and silver, diamonds, iron—you get the picture). While Gringotts is known having leveraged the economy in the past, SSEARCH is notorious for revoking excavation rights and permits alongside banning access to their academic archives. The two also have their own, secretive way of keeping track of cultural heritage objects, repatriating objects and providing safety and security for said objects—services that older magical families often apply for at Gringotts and which we may only get a glimpse of through Gringotss' public art loss registers. However, while these two powerhouses do plenty to bolster international cultural heritage rights, sometimes it's just not enough.

Goblins-made cultural objects may only get to be added to The Affronts (a document that is not recognized by the British Ministry of Magic) and old magical families may seek out their own justice when aurors and ministry officials place an impossible burden of proof upon proving provenance. Again, this is counter-productive. since the ensuing chaos of goblin riots or vigilante justice means the authorities are going to have to intervene anyway, so their excuses and protocols end up backfiring a lot.

Regardless of what SSEARCH and Gringotts are up to, if magical folks can't exercise their cultural heritage rights, then bet on them exercising their magical rites!