First Nations leaders talked about the need to develop a national repatriation strategy for artifacts, cultural items and ancestral remains at the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) annual general assembly in Winnipeg.
[ in Dutch ]'Dutch' fossils soon to be seen again in Indonesia: 'Young people here only know the Javaman from textbooks'
Indonesia will soon receive thousands of fossils that are still in museum Naturalis. It is a historic moment for his country, says Indonesian paleontologist Sofwan Noerwidi.
On 26 September 2025, the Dutch government returned 28,000 fossils, including the famous skullcap, a molar, and a thighbone (the so-called Java Man), to Indonesia following an official claim submitted by the Indonesian state in July 2022. They were part of the collection of Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in Leiden. With this, the government followed the advice of the Colonial Collections Committee. Now that the dust about this massive return has begun to settle, it is time for some reflection. I consider the acceptance of the advice of the independent Colonial Collections Committee groundbreaking in several respects.
[ in Dutch ] At the Indonesian Ministry of Culture, they can't count on their luck. The Netherlands returns an important archaeological find to Indonesia. It concerns the skullcap of Dubois, named after the Dutch finder Eugène Dubois. This proved in 1891 that other humanos had existed, which Dubois called the Javamen.
[ in Dutch ] The restitution process of the Dubois collection took an unusually long time. The responsible advisory committee and Naturalis point out the complexity of the case, experts make sharp accusations against the museum.
[ links are in Dutch or in English ] Today, Dutch Minister Moes (Education, Culture and Science) presented a letter to Indonesian Minister Fadli Zon (Culture) announcing this decision. The so-called Dubois collection is now managed by Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the city of Leiden.
Kulasumb Kalinoe (East Sepik area, Papua New Guinea; currrently James Cook University, Australia) focuses on the collection and removal of cultural material from Papua New Guinea (PNG) during the colonial era. She discusses views among the Papua New Guinean diaspora in Australia on museums and PNG collections, and argues that cultural heritage issues must be addressed before the work of decolonisation can begin.
Ahmad Mohammed writes: Sacred objects, ancestral remains, and ritual artifacts remain estranged from the communities that created and cherished them. This condition is what many scholars and practitioners now identify as cultural heritage alienation: the systematic displacement of heritage from its social, spiritual, and cultural lifeworlds into the frameworks of Western curatorial authority. But community control is crucial.
Muhammad Nishat Hussain writes: The 100th anniversary of the first formal excavation at Harappa (Punjab, NE Pakistan) is more than a commemoration of a century-old dig. It is an opportunity to reimagine how Pakistan studies and safeguards its past. Since the 1970s the country has tried to regain lost treasures. In vain.
BREAKING: Three shrunken heads of South American persons and one hand of a mummified person from Egypt are currently offered by Hannam's Auctioneers, The Old Dairy Norton Farm, Selborne, GU34 3NB, Hampshire, UK.
Nigeria should establish a bilateral negotiating group with Germany on reparations to pay for its crimes against humanity, comprising the indigenous peoples of Nigeria and other African nations. Not as charity, but as a binding act of justice and a guarantee that such atrocities will never be repeated.
Tilda Gladwell likes to divert your attention from news of war and geopolitical instability for just a moment to an equally pressing issue: the decades-long debate concerning repatriation.
[ in French and in English ] Claimed for decades by Antananarivo, these bones had been taken as trophies by French colonial troops after a deadly attack in 1897 in Ambiky, the former royal capital of Menabe. 'Their absence was an open wound on our island'.
This workshop marks the conclusion of the interdisciplinary provenance research project "Human Remains from Colonial Contexts: Provenance Research in the Anthropological Collections of the University of Göttingen and MARKK Hamburg".
The past decade has seen a worldwide tendency to re-examine human remains found in old museum collections. To obtain a full picture of the life history of the individuals under consideration, an anthropological study might be mandated, although this approach is not yet systematic.
According to Darius Spierman, France has begun a significant process of confronting its colonial history. This includes the recent return of human remains to Madagascar and a draft restitution bill.
For several years, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) have been discussing returns of cultural heritage to Australia. This event will reflect on those discussions with community members and AIATSIS staff.
[ in Dutch ] How are Belgium and the Netherlands dealing with the sensitive issue of returning looted art and researching its colonial origins? An exploration of some treacherous areas in the quagmire of new Dutch and Belgian restitution policy. A discussion between museum director Wayne Modest and activist Nadia Nsayi.
Social media is helping drive trade in skulls, bones and skin products as UK legal void risks new era of ‘body snatching’. Paul Boateng (Labour Party), who will meet the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, next month to appeal for a change in the law, has raised specific concerns about the trade in remains of ancestors from Indigenous communities.
Reclaiming stolen artefacts: Africa’s landmark museum at the heart of global discussion about restitution.
Senegal’s Museum of Black Civilisations is asserting Africa’s right to secure its cultural heritage and tell its own story.
This paper is the outcome of joint reflections by the two authors, based in Europe and in Africa. Since the diverse practices of restitution have attracted more attention than certain concepts related to it, this paper addresses this imbalance by focusing on conceptual issues.
The article 'Journey of No Return: The Impact of Looted Heritage on Nigeria’s Cultural Legacy' explores the profound impact of looted heritage on Nigeria’s cultural legacy, highlighting the historical, cultural, and economic implications of the plundered artifacts.
Paul Dailey (Guardian Australian columnist) writes: Bodies and body parts have long been part of collections of imperial plunder over the years – but museums must understand that attitudes have moved on.
It’s no easy matter resolving the current ethical debate over the retention and exhibition of human remains. But one public collection is asking visitors to cast their vote.
[ in Spanish ] This special issue of Revista Memorias Disidentes shows debates and reflections on restitution, repatriation, return and reburial of ancestors in South America.
Vanessa Hava Schulmann (Freie Universität Berlin): The stories I will tell you about happened during my work in a Berlin university collection. I was tasked of meeting the deceased whose bones and tissues were stored in those dusty wooden cupboards and figure out how to handle their presence in a dignified way.
The June 2025 report by a working group of Edinburgh University DECOLONISED TRANSFORMATIONS CONFRONTING THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH’S HISTORY AND LEGACIES OF ENSLAVEMENT AND COLONIALISM focusses mainly on slavery an its current impact. At the en dit has an interesting recommendation for the university's Anatomical Museum and its 200 skulls.
[ in Portuguese ] A delegation from Nagaland in north-east India travels to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford to negotiate the return of remains and artefacts taken during the colonial period.
The remains of a woman, described as a “non-European skeleton,” were given a full funeral service by Highgate School, the fee-paying secondary in Highgate Village. No relatives could be found.
An institution is asking its visitors for their view: The Manchester Museum is running a public consultation about the future of Asru, a woman who lived in Thebes, southern Egypt
The human remains of a man from the indigenous Selk’nam community in Chile were handed over to a delegation from Tierra del Fuego at Lübeck Town Hall. The Selk’nam have now requested that their ancestor be buried in a Lübeck cemetery.
On March 14, the remains of eight Mirning ancestors were returned to their country and buried. The ancestors lived between the late 1800s and 1979, and their remains had most recently been stored at the West Australian Museum.
The path to true restitution requires more than symbolic gestures, demanding that Britain repeal its obstructive laws, France accelerate its glacial restitution process, and all former colonial powers establish transparent frameworks for repatriation.
Gov. Greg Gianforte last week finalized Montana’s two-year budget, which contains several new investments for Indian Country, including a historic increase in funding for tribal colleges and money devoted to repatriation efforts.
This year’s theme explores the material return, digital reunification, and recontextualization of Philippine artefacts, manuscripts, and sound heritage kept in institutions outside of the Philippines.
[ in Dutch ] Tervurologie sets its sights on the AfricaMuseum and radically bets on imagination - to think new Tervurens, plural. Not as escape, but as intervention. Not as recovery, but as restart. Not as an answer, but as another question. Tervurologie is an attempt at exorcism.
Since 2018, the Association on American Indian Affairs has monitored 1,159 auction houses worldwide and provided auction alerts regarding the sale of sensitive cultural heritage. The Association’s work to monitor domestic and international auctions help fill this gap by identifying and reporting items that may warrant repatriation. The alerts have been shown to stop improper sales and support the return of important items.
The Albanese Labor Government has welcomed the return of 10 First Nations ancestors from three Japanese collecting institutions. A joint ceremony was held in Tokyo. This is the first ever return of ancestors from Japan.
A delegation of Naga elders and leaders, along with representatives from the Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR) and Recover, Restore, and Decolonise (RRaD), gathered at the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM), University of Oxford, to initiate the repatriation of Naga ancestral human remains.
This article postulates that what we have seen in the past decade has been a turning point in memory politics of the colonial past, and it asks whether a new Franco-German paradigm in memory politics has emerged?
Southern Africa is spearheading a transformative shift in the restitution discourse. This shift means reframing restitution as an act of healing, justice, and empowerment for communities still grappling with the enduring scars of historical dispossession.
In a five pages long joint statement, eight archaeological organisations from across the UK said a “cross-sector consultative forum” should be established to enable a wide range of viewpoints to be heard on any proposed changes to human remains legislation and practice.
[ in Portuguese ] A 15-point action plan is the most tangible proposal put forward by the working group in a report on “sensitive heritage” at the University of Coimbra. Among the actions consists are “identifying and systematizing all the ‘sensitive heritage’ of UC”, the adoption of principles on dealing with them, legislation for restitution and the repatriation of a skull collection to Timor Leste.
Remains taken by Japanese researchers from a tomb in Okinawa Prefecture in the early 20th century have been returned, sources said Thursday. + comment Nathan Sydenham
A first activity will be the hosting of a Memorial Service to honor 19 individuals whose crania were taken from New Orleans in the 1880s and sent to Leipzig, Germany.
The paper argues that the ensuing negotiations and the state-imposed criteria for reburial reflect an ongoing colonial impulse to control Indigenous bodies and restrict ontological and political self-determination.
Why and how is filmmaking important to the search for justice and efforts to right historical wrongs? Because filmmaking, as an art, is partly responsible for didactic, historical portraiture.
The exhibition explores the current debate surrounding collections gathered during the colonial period and the question of restitution. Visitors not only learn about the provenance of cultural objects but also to reflect on ownership, value, and the ethical implications of a colonial history that continues to resonate in museum collections today. [ English version and Dutch version ]
British Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy: “In the arts and creative industries, Britain and India lead the world and I look forward to this agreement opening up fresh opportunities for collaboration, innovation and economic growth for our artists, cultural institutions and creative businesses." (Not a single word about restitution)
The Natural History Museum in London hosted a formal ceremony on 10 April 2025 with Traditional Custodians from Queensland communities to mark the return of 36 First Nations ancestors.
[ in French ] France Culture interviews historian Benjamin Storashares about some of the issues with the restitution of documents and objects that were looted during the 1950's war of independence of Algeria.
[ in English and in Dutch ] Science museums are full of skeletons, skulls and other human and animal remains. How were these obtained? Colonial heritage researchers shed new light on that question and come to painful conclusions.
According to the Japanese government, the remains of three Ainu Indigenous people that were kept at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland will be returned.
Dan Hicks' 'Every Monument Will Fall - A Story of Remembering and Forgetting' reappraises how we think about culture, and how to find hope, remembrance and reconciliation in the fragments of an unfinished violent past.
At Galeria Avenida da Índia in Lisbon, Uriel Orlow’s exhibition Memória Colateral unfolds like a sensory mapping of historical violence and of how memory is inscribed – or erased – within Western structures.
France will repatriate the skulls of King Toera and two Sakalava warriors to Madagascar, marking the first return of human remains under a new French law passed in 2023.
The Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) has established a committee to investigate what part of the current collection has a connection to the former colonies or slavery past. Based on this investigation, the committee will issue a recommendation at a later date.
Algeria submitted a list of items held by France since the colonial era in order to restore them as part of the joint memory committee to look into that historical period.
The African Union (AU) has said that the Year of Reparations 2025 is about economic liberation and ending Africa’s systemic wealth drain. Onyekachi Wambu writes: 'Restitution is a key part of the agenda. it has been explicitly mentioned in all the AU related reparations meeting I have attended.'
'Deconstructing Dinosaurs - The History of the German Tendaguru Expedition and its finds, 1906-2023' takes a fresh look at the history of the German Tendaguru Expedition (1909–1913), using recently uncovered sources to reveal how Berlin’s Natural History Museum appropriated and extracted 225 tonnes of dinosaur fossils from land belonging to modern-day Tanzania.
[ simultaneous translation into German, French and English ] 'Hidden paths and emerging networks - Provenance research between memory and responsibility' is the title of the event on the occasion of the 7th International Research Day on the Provenance of Cultural Objects, the Franco-German Research Fund on the Provenance of Sub-Saharan African Objects invites leading scientists and experts working at the intersection of provenance research, restitution issues and museum practices.
How are museum objects valued and who decides? Trevor Engel explores the relationship of perceived scientific value to the idea of hoarding applied to colonial institutions' holdings.
After more than 170 years at the Scottish University of Aberdeen, the remains of a young Aboriginal man who was killed on his Country have returned home.
Geraldine Kendall Adams delves into the moral and ethical arguments that surround the highly sensitive issue of human remains held in British museum collections.
[ conference in French ] Germany, Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Mali, Sénégal, Switzerland - Academics, activists, artists, experts from communities and museum actors debate the future of museums in Africa and in Europe.
The display of human remains in museums has long been a contentious issue. Earlier in March, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Afrikan Reparations (APPG-AR) published the report Laying the Ancestors to Rest. Returning African human remains is time- and money-consuming. With the ongoing budget cuts, it becomes harder to return them.
At present, the law that regulates the storage and use of human remains in the UK only requires consent for acquiring and holding body tissue from people under 100 years old. Fiona Twycross, a junior minister in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, acknowledged that the guidance was dated and “the world has changed substantially” since then.
Until 25 May 2025, the Louvre Abu Dhabi unveils 'Kings and Queens of Africa: Forms and Figures of Power', an exhibition celebrating 350 works of African art and majesty, most of them on loan from Musée Du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac. Is this a manner to postpone their restitution?
This article presents recent provenance research on the Indigenous ancestral human remains gathered by Alphonse Louis Pinart (1852-1911) during his journey in Oceania on board the French navy cruiser Le Seignelay.
[ in French ] Study day organised as part of the PRD-ARES project (ULB-UNILU-UCLouvain) ‘Towards the psychosocial reappropriation and resocialisation by the source-communities of Katanga of the remains of former soldiers to be repatriated and the cultural objects to be recovered’.
British lawmakers, NGOs, and researchers urge the UK to address a 'legislative vacuum' permitting the display of African ancestral remains from the colonial era. T
The All-Party Parliamentary Group for African Reparations (APPG-AR) has produced a policy brief, ‘Laying Ancestors to Rest’, which makes the case that the display and sale of African ancestral remains by British institutions “causes profound distress to diaspora communities and countries of origin”.
Tristam Hunt, director V&A Museum, discusses the contradictory state of the restitution debate in Great Britain (GB): on the one hand, a quickening rhythm of returns from university and regional museums and on the other, continued confusion around deaccessioning contested objects from national collections such as the V&A and British Museum (BM).
On social media and in auction houses, there is a lively trade in ancestral remains from colonial areas. Skulls, skeletons and other body parts regularly change hands. While this may be an acceptable practice for those involved, it is painful for many descendants of these dead.
[ open access ] This Special Issue of UMAC Journal has a Guidance for restitution and return of items from university collections and interesting contributions about ancestral remains in these collections.
The collection of the Musée des Rois Bamoun (MRB, Museum of the Bamoun Kings), located in Foumban in Cameroon’s West Region, testifies to the richness and diversity of the Bamoun Kingdom’s art, culture, and history.
Argentina has one of the most important and sensitive bioanthropological collections in Latin America. Most of the remains in museums come from Tehuelche and Mapuche victims of the so-called "Conquest of the Desert". However...
This blog discusses the necessity for a comprehensive monitoring system for tracking restitution efforts involving cultural belongings and ancestral remains in Latin America.
The AfricaMuseum in Tervuren near Brussels conserves two mummified persons. Where they came from and how they reached the museum was long shrouded in mystery.
[ open access ] 'Displacing and Displaying the Objects of Others - The Materiality of Identity and Depots of Global History' brings a diverse range of contributions inspired by research from the "Hamburg’s (post-)colonial legacy" research center.
The centuries-old African artifacts housed in European institutions and that are worth billions of dollars should be returned to the rightful owners, Global Black Centre (GBC) Vice President and the prominent historian Robin Walker said.
In the late 1800s, Andreas Reischek, an Austrian scientist, robbed Māori graves and plundered Māori artefacts for his private collection. More than 140 years later, officials of the Austrian government have been repatriating what Reischek looted.
A foundational handbook for critical heritage research about Africa and its diaspora. Part III African Objects and the Global Museum-Scape is relevant for RM*.
During a solemn ceremony at the GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig, ancestral remains, which had been in the possession of the Staatliche Ethnographische Sammlungen Sachsen (SES), were returned to representatives of their Māori (New Zealand) und Moriori (Chatham Islands) communities of origin.
Buckingham Palace has declined a request to return the remains of an Ethiopian prince who came to be buried at Windsor Castle in the 19th Century. Prince Alemayehu was taken to the UK aged just seven and arrived an orphan after his mother died on the journey.
The State-centric discourse that surrounds Indonesia’s cultural heritage protection and repatriation policies impede locally-led activism related to cultural heritage.
[ in German, English and French ] German museums of world cultures hold 40,000 objects from Cameroon, more than the entire African collection of the British Museum, according to a new study, presented by Bénédicte Savoy (Technische Universität, Berlin) and Albert Gouaffo (University of Dschang).
This article explores the ownership of cultural objects within national and traditional customary law in Suriname, with the aim to provide a legal context to the issue of claims for the return of some of these cultural objects from the Netherlands.
In Switzerland, the decolonization of ethnological and historical museums and collections is in progress. This is true in practice, especially by federally funded provenance research projects and by single restitutions of human remains and colonial objects.
Museums in Leipzig, Göttingen, Stuttgart and three other German cities have transferred the remains of Māori and Moriori people to a New Zealand delegation, headed Te Herekiekie Herewini of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
The German government says it wants to confront the legacy of its colonial rule in Africa. But it is still failing to address issues such as its brutal repression of the Maji Maji uprising in Tanzania.
According to a recent ProPublica investigation of the failure to bring about the expeditious return of human remains by federally funded universities and museums, over 110,000 ancestral remains are held by institutions in the U.S., from Harvard to Berkeley.
[ in Dutch ] They are the most controversial items in the collection of the Dutch Mission Museum in Steyl, Limburg: five human skulls from Papua New Guinea. How did they get there? And why don't the locals want them back?
The question of stolen cultural property during the colonial era is not just one of legality; it is deeply embedded in morality, historical injustice, and the unequal dynamics of power between former colonies and colonisers, argues dr. Naazima Kamardeen.
The Cape Verde President, José Maria Neves, has called on African nations to unite in demanding compensation for the invaluable properties and artifacts stolen from the continent by colonial powers.
South Africa's Department of Sports, Arts and Culture is preparing to repatriate human remains which were allegedly stolen from graves in Port Alfred, in the Eastern Cape and other places. They currently are in the US and Europe.
The article 'Hidden Colonial Legacies and Pathways of Repair'investigates how the question of ancestral remains out of colonial contexts in Belgian museum collections is understood in the DR Congo.
This book examines the ways in which law can be used to structure the return of indigenous sacred cultural heritage to indigenous communities, referred to as repatriation in this volume. In particular, it aims at developing legal structures that align repatriation with contemporary international human rights standards.
The 1990 Native American Graves and Protection Act (NAGPRA) is generally presented as a breakthrough in favour of First Nations. NAGPRA set up a process by which Native American tribes can request the return of human remains and cultural objects from museums and government agencies, including federally funded universities. How successful has it been in California?
Despite the existence of codes of ethics and other published guidelines for the ethical treatment of human remains in many countries and for most professional bodies, there is still widespread anxiety among many professionals in museum and research contexts about whether they are getting it right.
Modern treaties and statutes protecting cultural property apply only prospectively to items stolen or illegally exported after their effective dates. But while the United States does not have a law concerning looted cultural objects taken from formerly colonized peoples overseas, it does have a statute governing the repatriation of Native American cultural items and human remains.
[ in English and in Dutch ] In April 2024, a Netherlands delegation visited Suriname and mapped out which objects are present in Dutch public collections through the colonial history of the Netherlands and Suriname.
[ in English and in Dutch ] The Indonesian Repatriasi Commission and Naturalis will work together to explore how the importance of the Homo erectus fossils from the Dubois collection can best be safeguarded for Indonesia, the Netherlands and the rest of the world.
Crania from a Nordic 'golden age' sit in a Harvard museum basement, and now researchers on both sides of the Atlantic want to reunite them with their bodies.
The Rochester Museum in New York and Harvard University return ancestral remains of Native Americans and funerary artifacts to the Oneida Indian Nation.
During the European expansion constant fighting and violence and the taking of spoils of war went hand-in-hand. Palaces, shrines, homesteads and entire villages were plundered and destroyed. In the restitution debate, the focus is mostly on state-collections resulting from these confrontations. There is ample evidence, however, that many more parties were involved. This blogpost has soem of the evidence.
Why is research into colonial collections in the private sector - I mean art dealers, auction houses and private collectors - so tough? The main reasons is that most of them have built a wall around themselves, and there is rarely a hole in this wall through which an outside observer can look inside their closed bulwark.
Why is research into colonial collections in the private sector - I mean art dealers, auction houses and private collectors - so tough? The main reasons is that most of them have built a wall around themselves, and there is rarely a hole in this wall through which an outside observer can look inside their closed bulwark.
[ in Dutch ] The theme of 'looting art' is back on the agenda, as more and more requests are coming in from museums to bring collection pieces back to former colonies.
During the European expansion constant fighting and violence and the taking of spoils of war went hand-in-hand. Palaces, shrines, homesteads and entire villages were plundered and destroyed. In the restitution debate, the focus is mostly on state-collections resulting from these confrontations. There is ample evidence, however, that many more parties were involved. This blogpost has some of the evidence.
Since 2017, Berlin's Museum of Prehistory and Early History has been carrying out research on around 1,100 skulls from what was known as German East Africa.
Manchester Museum, UK, has handed over 174 items to the Australian Aboriginal Anindilyakwa Community, marking one of the largest restitution projects ever undertaken in the UK.
A project to investigate the origins of human skulls taken from the former colony of German East Africa has concluded that nearly all are the remains of people from the same colonized region
Museums from Glasgow to Cambridge are proactively repatriating objects. Glasgow has become the first UK museum to repatriate objects to India (“a very emotional event”, as Glaswegians of Indian heritage said).
[ in French or in English ] Provenance research into non-Western heritage in Europe has become a must in the field of museology and cultural policy. Yet no scientific work has yet examined the collections of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren (Belgium) in their entirety.
[ in French ] Marie-Sophie de Clippele’s book maps the numerous recent regulations relating to legal limitations on the marketing of objects and to assess their impact on the art market.
Archaeology in its formative years was often less a meticulous science than an exercise in vandalism. A little-known horror unfolded in the Southwestern United States.
The story of the discoveries is being told for the first time by Elisabeth Goring and her successor, Dr Margaret Maitland, in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland of 30 November 2023.
The American Alliance of Museums has brought out a special issue Museum as part of a larger project exploring the next horizon of museum practice with regard to voluntary repatriation, restitution, and reparations. The articles in this issue provide a window into practices regarding the Benin-objects, lost items of the Yaqui, voluntary returns, and the application of NAGPRA.
Germany asks forgiveness for 'dark' colonial legacy in Tanzania and discusses repatriation of human remains. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said his country would "open negotiations" with Tanzania to discuss the is colonial past in the East African nation.
[ in Dutch ] The University Museum Groningen has a collection of human remains from Petrus Camper (1722-1789). Where do they come from and how can their presence there be understood? This issue of Magazine De Boekenwereld is about Camper, his ideas and his collection.
It might seem impossible to hurt the feelings of a 3,000-year-old corpse, but woke museum chiefs have stopped using the word 'mummy' to describe the remains of ancient Egyptians, all in the name of 'respect'.
Human remains held in French public collections and less than 500 years old, can now be returned to their countries of origin by a decision of the prime minister.
[ in French and in Dutch ] Although it is accepted that human remains are out of trade and therefore should not be sold, practice shows that this happens anyway.
A museum in Limburg has decided not to return five ornamental human skulls taken by missionaries from Papua New Guinea after the local population turned down the offer.
The Missiemuseum in Steyl investigated the origin of the artefacts in the wake of the controversy surrounding a skull from Benin that was sold by an auction house in Amsterdam.
In 1863, Emperor Tewodros II of Abyssinia took a British consul hostage; five years later, the British sent a punitive expedition. This military expedition shaped later campaigns in Sudan and West Africa in the1890s. What was new for Maqdala was the inclusion of a member of staff from the British Museum.
How do we trace the origin of collections? What new insights can be gleaned from these provenances? And what should become of such collections, within and beyond museum walls?
Three decades after legislation pushed for the return of Native American remains to Indigenous communities, many of the nation’s top museums and universities still have the remains of thousands of people in their collections.
Switzerland has returned four mummies to Chile, including two of them among the world’s oldest, after their private owner agreed to their restitution. Other remains, in an “advanced state of degradation”, buried in Geneva.
[ in Dutch ] What to do with the human skulls from Africa or Asia in their collection? The days when this kind of heritage could be easily in museums seem to be over. The call for return to the place of origin is louder and louder. But are they waiting for it there?
[ in German ] ‘African human skull, early 20th century, €2000’ - this is how dealers openly advertise human skulls on social media such as Instagram. Panorama reporters uncover just how dubious this trade is, especially when you realise the origin of these skulls.
[ in Dutch ] The University Museum Groningen has a collection of human remains from Petrus Camper (1722-1789). Where do they come from and how can their presence there be understood? This issue of Magazine De Boekenwereld is about Camper, his ideas and his collection.
Over the past several weeks, museums across the United States have been covering up and removing displays of Native American ancestors and cultural objects.
The documentary "The Empty Grave" traces the mission of two families in Tanzania that embark on an emotional journey to reclaim their ancestors’ human remains from German museums.
Tea sets, paravents, spears and shields – even if today’s heirs were not involved in their acquisition or theft, these artefacts are inextricably linked to German colonial history.
Some 17,000 human remains are said to be in the collections of German museums and universities. It's often no longer clear how they ended up in Germany. Colonialists committed horrific crimes.
Two great granddaughters of a Sakalava king, who was beheaded in 1897 by colonial troops, publicly addressed the French ambassador, asking him to speed up the repatriation of their ancestor’s skull.
Europeans collected a huge number of Aboriginal artefacts during the colonisation of Australia. Gemmia Burden's research is on the Queensland Museum’s collecting networks.
With tens of thousands of African artworks in French museums, curators face a huge task in trying to identify which of these were plundered during colonial rule in the 19th and 20th centuries and should be returned.
This report was developed as a response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action #67 under the guidance of the CMA Reconciliation Council.
Resist, Reclaim, Retrieve - The Long History of the Struggle for the Restitution of Cultural Heritage and Ancestral Remains Taken under Colonial Conditions, brings together authors from countries in the Global South and North. They shed light on the long history of restitution claims from colonised countries, with a focus on the pre-1970 period.
An international group of two hundred scientists and specialists in predatory art protests against the trade in human remains by the Amsterdam auction house De Zwaan. It is a skull of a person of the Fon people from Benin. The skull was sold last month for eight hundred euros.
Sarah van Beurden: What is new is the wave of research on the origins of colonial collections, and several projects – both academic and artistic – reflect on the larger cultural loss the removal of these objects caused in their communities of origin.
Police played an important role in the collecting of Aboriginal objects for colonial and imperial museums. Although most scholars have noted the unequal power relationship that occurred when police ‘collected’ Aboriginal objects on the frontier, scholarship has not previously explored the ‘authority’ of the police to collect objects.
Semley Auctioneers – based in Dorset – have made 18 skulls available for auction and estimate each skull will be sold for between £200 and £300. The auction is scheduled to take place on 18 May 2024.
Kodzo Gavua has called for an intensive education on the plunder of African cultural heritage objects and systems and the need for their return. Such efforts would help safeguard the nation’s cultural legacy and contribute to tourism and scholarly research.
On Wednesday (Nov. 20, 2024), Labour's Bell Ribeiro-Addy told the Commons that human remains are sold at auction and on social media and asked the government to end what she described as a "depraved practice."
[ in Portuguese ] Portugal has been doing little to develop knowledge on the provenance of its collections that came from former colonies. This can be partly explained by the lack of human and financial resources in archives, museums and universities.
In response to a request by the Mexican government, the Netherlands has decided to return a human skull which is part of the Dutch State Collection of Wereldmuseum Leiden to Mexico. The Ministry of Culture has handed over the skull to the Mexican embassy in The Hague.
[ in French ] Algeria has made a request for the return of objects that belonged to Emir Abdelkader, a great resistance fighter in the conquest of Algeria in the 19th century, who was defeated in 1847.
Some French parties pressure their country’s authorities to prevent them from responding to the requests submitted by the Algerian-French mixed commission concerning the restitution of some “symbolic” property that France had looted from Algeria during the occupation period.
The contents were two skulls molded with mud and three large effigies, called rambaramp, each containing the skull of a man, uniquely painted to depict the final stages of his life.
Sela K. Adjei and Yann LeGall (eds.): Debates around restitution and decolonising museums continue to rage across the world. Artefacts, effigies and ancestral remains are finally being accurately contextualised and repatriated to their homelands.
In 1905, a colonial British officer killed Koitalel Arap Samoei, the supreme leader of the Nandi tribe. According to oral history, his severed head was taken to the UK. The Nandi have been searching for it ever since. The Nandi have been searching for it ever since.
In the colonialist moves to collect human remains, and the desire to demonstrate grandeur and strength, many soldiers relied on racist and blood-thirsty narratives to rationalize their cruel actions.
The Museum of Cultures and the Natural History Museum in Basel, Switzerland, returned a collection of approximately 90 aboriginal artefacts, including human bones and tools, of Sri Lanka’s indigenous population.
(In English, French and Spanish) This issue of ICOFOM Study Series is the result of an international seminar at the University of Marburg in Germany in June 2024, where a wide range of speakers from the global south and north met.
The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) institution holds the bodies of 12,000 individuals from communities within and outside the United States. The majority of which lack identification.
Over the centuries, a multitude of items – including a cannon of the King of Kandy, power-objects from DR Congo, Benin bronzes, Javanese temple statues, Maori heads and strategic documents – has ended up in museums and private collections in Belgium and the Netherlands by improper means.
In 'The Empty Showcase Syndrome - Tough Questions about Cultural Heritage from Colonial Regions', author Jos van Beurden explores three questions that slow down the restitution process.
(In English, Italian and French) The central issue examined in this impressive collection of essays is how to respond to the desire of African-origin communities to reclaim what was taken from them.
People buy and sell human remains online. Most of this trade these days is over social media. In a study of this 'bone trade', how it works, and why it matters, the authors review and use a variety of methods drawn from the digital humanities to analyze the sheer volume of social media posts in search of answers to questions regarding this online bone trade.
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), which stewards the De Young Museum and the Legion of Honor, has begun consulting with Native tribes on how to return remains that were gifted, in some cases, over a century ago.
Nigerian creators Shobo and Shof, known for New Masters, are set to debut their latest project, Bronze Faces, a gripping art heist drama that brings real-world issues to the comic stage in 2025.
An estimated 350,000 African artefacts and manuscripts, as well as human remains, photographs and natural history specimens, have been found in the stores and archives of the eight museums and the Botanic Garden which together make up the University of Cambridge Museums, as well as the University Library and less-well known collections in university departments and institutions.
In a lengthy contribution, Kwame Opoku wonders how long the Ovaherero must wait for justice and reparation for the German genocide? He extensively quotes a press release of the Ovaherero Traditional Authority-Ouhonapare uo Mananeno uo Vaherero. Part of it is about repatriation.
More than 128,000 Native American ancestors and 4.5 million sacred objects have been identified in collections across museums, universities and government agencies. Those numbers don't include more than an estimated 90,000 ancestors and 700,000 associated funerary objects that have not yet been identified in collections.
It is seven years since President Emmanuel Macron of France announced his revolutionary plan to return African heritage to the continent. But following his declaration in Burkina Faso in November 2017 that “African heritage can’t just be in European private collections and museums”, the restitution journey has been arduous.
The project, running until March 2025, highlights objects associated with the ship Saida. His Majesty's Ship Saida was built in 1878 and sailed from the main naval harbour of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in Pula, Croatia. From 1884 to 1897, ship's doctors and other crew members collected objects, partly on behalf of the museum, during four so-called training voyages.
In October 2024, a 19th-Century skull from the north-eastern Indian state of Nagaland was up for auction in the UK. The horned skull of a Naga tribesman was among thousands of items that European colonial administrators had collected from the state.
Justin M. Jacobs examined the allegedly immoral provenance of Western museum collections and challenges the widely accepted belief that many of Western museums’ treasures were acquired by imperialist plunder and theft.
As one of the oldest educational institutes in Scotland, the University of Edinburgh holds more than a million items in its historic collections. Around 13,000 are anatomical artefacts and of these, more than 1,800 are skulls. A large number of the skulls in the collection were amassed during the colonial period.
The contents were two skulls molded with mud and three large effigies, called rambaramp, each containing the skull of a man, uniquely painted to depict the final stages of his life.
Although there is no lack of information on individual repatriated works, the larger picture of where they came from and how, who is returning them and why can be lost in the anecdotes. This is where the Museum of Looted Antiquities (Mola) comes in—a new digital platform that traces not only the histories of specific repatriated objects but also compiles metadata in order to better understand smuggling networks and the museum industry’s intensifying repatriation efforts.
Anmol Irfan, a Muslim-Pakistani journalist, writes: Governments delay the process; museums often answer to wealthy donors. Complexities arise that require each case to be handled individually. But the first step of acknowledging the generational hurt and trauma caused by the removal of these culturally important and sacred artifacts has opened doors to broader solutions on a global scale.
For decades, families in Tanzania have been demanding the return of their ancestors’ human remains from Germany. These ancestors, executed leaders of resistance efforts against German colonial rule, were exhumed from their graves and taken to Germany. Cece Mlay discusses co-producing a new documentary on how their descendants are seeking justice and closure today.
Panorama of the Nord Deutsche Rundfunk wrote an extended commentary on a 35-minute-long documentary: ‘African human skull, early 20th century, €2000’ - this is how dealers openly advertise human skulls on social media such as Instagram. Panorama reporters uncover just how dubious this trade is, especially when you realise the origin of these skulls (in German).
Although there is no overarching framework for the repatriation of human remains at the international level, most repatriation efforts now operate within a more rigorous legal framework at the national and subnational level, which includes national laws and guidelines from public authorities.
2024 marks the 140th anniversary of the start of the historic Berlin West Africa Conference of 1884/85. Germany is working hard to come to terms with its colonial history, including restitution.
Germany was a significant – and often brutal – colonial power in Africa. But this colonial history is not told as often as that of other imperialist nations. A new book called The Long Shadow of German Colonialism: Amnesia, Denialism and Revisionism aims to bring the past into the light. It explores not just the history of German colonialism, but also how its legacy has played out in German society, politics and the media.
Exactly 130 years ago, the World Exhibition took place in Antwerp. For that occasion, 144 Congolese were exhibited at the KMSKA. Seven Congolese died. The AfricaMuseum, which has a similar colonial history in Tervuren, organizes an online MuseumTalk about the memory and commemoration of this tragedy. The speakers are a researcher, an activist and an artist.
In June 2024, 39 artifacts were formally handed back to the government of Uganda by Britain's University of Cambridge. While the return is technically a three-year loan between museums, it is extendable, and could see them remain in their country of origin.
Conference Sensitive Legacy in University Collections: Adaptation and Restitution, organized by the ANU Centre for European Studies in collaboration with The Urban Memory Foundation and the University of Wroclaw, Poland.
[ in Dutch ] Fifteen skulls originating from the Moluccas have been returned to the island group Tanimbar. These skulls had been part of the collection of Museum Vrolik, the anatomical museum of Amsterdam University Medical Centre, since the very early 20th century.
Until the late 1980s Indigenous art was being ripped off left right and centre. It was open slather. First at the cheap end of the market on T-shirts and then on fancy carpets made in Vietnam. The rip-off merchants maintained black artists were just painting old patterns, so their work was for the taking.
(Book in French; review in English) Claire Brizon describes in her 2023 book the military, traders and missionaries who collected in colonial regions; their collection culture and the use and meaning of the collections they had in Europe.
The return of artefacts to their countries of origin is not just an act of repatriation, but an opportunity for healing and reconnecting with cultural roots, said Tuuda Haitula, the museum development officer at the Museums Association of Namibia.
The Pennsylvania Museum’s Cultural Center in Philadelphia is launching a study that examines 450 museum collections, collecting policies and practices in the US and formulates a collection framework.
Early in October 2024, RM* distributed news about an auction by Swan Fine Art at Tetsworth (UK) of Naga human remains estimated at 3,500 – 4,000 UK pounds. This had infuriated the Forum for Naga Reconciliation and many others.
Thanks to Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige, the Museum of Cultures and the Natural History Museum in Basel, Switzerland returned a collection of approximately 90 aboriginal artefacts, including human bones and tools, of Sri Lanka’s indigenous population this week.
[ in Dutch ] In colonial times, thousands of human remains ended up in Dutch museums. Soon, Moluccan activists will bring back 15 skulls single-handedly.
In July 2020, the Australian Government announced the introduction of the RoCH program with funding until June 2024. The research and community work continued and at the end of this period RoCH identified 383 overseas collecting institutions holding 126,000+ Aboriginal and / or Torres Strait Islander cultural heritage items.
