if a museum feels under threat

If you run a museum in Afghanistan and are afraid that the Taliban is going to execute you unless you destroy some blasphemous statue, are you going to risk your life to send the artifact to the British Museum, or are you just going to destroy it? Yeah, some heroes will definitely risk their lives, but most won't.

The only opinion that should matter is that of the people the artifacts belong to.

Which people? The government? So in Afghanistan it's up to the Taliban? If you don't trust that the government of a country represents the will of the people, then how do you determine what the people want?

And, again, which people? Is a totem pole in a museum in Canada the property of the Canadian people? Or is it something that belongs to the Haida people, and it doesn't matter what other Canadians want? If it is up to the Haida, it is up to the Council of the Haida Nation, or is it up to the band the original artist belonged to?

What about a Tatar artifact found in Donetsk? Who gets control over that? Is it the Russians since they occupy Donetsk? The Ukrainians because they used to occupy it? Do you have to study the blood of various Ukrainian people to figure out who has the most surviving Tatar DNA?

What if some of the locals want it taken away for protection, but the government wants it destroyed?

There's no clear 'owner' in many cases. I think it places where it's uncertain, then we should prioritize saving the artifacts over the ones that seek to destroy them.

In many cases there is no owner, they're from a completely separate culture that happened to occupy the same region in the past.

That's the question. Where is the line between racism and artifact protection?