Although this news item is slightly dated (October 2024), it is relevant as it shows the vulnerable position of indigenous communities in repatriation claims and the rather varying outcomes of repatriation negotiations.
The man’s skull had been sent as a gift to Lübeck Ethnological Museum by a German emigrant who was in the city of Punta Arenas in 1914. The world cultural heritage collection Kulturen der Welt contains the mortal remains of 25 individuals.
Most remains were taken to Lübeck during the colonial era without the consent of relatives, having been looted from graves, for example.
Courtesy Sammlung Kulturen der Welt | photo: Michael Haydn
At the beginning of the 20th century, the indigenous population of Tierra del Fuego was expelled and murdered on a massive scale because European emigrants wanted to use their territory as grazing land. Many Selk’nam deported to mission stations also died of epidemics imported from Europe.
Since 2022 the Lübeck museums have been in talks with the organisation “Hach Saye” which represents the Chilean Selk’nam community on Tierra del Fuego.
A Selk’nam delegation visited Lübeck in September 2023 and baptised the deceased Hoshkó so as to acknowledge the man’s personal identity and enable him to be referred to by name. From the outset it was the stated wish of the community to bury Hoshkó in native soil so as to ensure he could never be exhibited or examined again.
At the beginning of 2024, Lübeck’s municipal assembly officially authorised the Lübeck museums to repatriate mortal remains, and the first remains were returned to Peru in August (an indigenous infant from a grave at the archaeological site of Ancón, where numerous tombs were plundered during the construction of a railway line at the end of the 19th century).
The Chilean government was also open to supporting repatriation by the Lübeck museums. Under Chilean law, mortal remains must be handed over to the local Ministry of Culture, which then issues a release for burial.
The Selk’nam have reservations about this procedure, however, and are calling for the remains to be handed over directly by the Lübeck museums, without going through the Chilean authorities.
Two years after restitution negotiations began, the Selk’nam have now requested that their ancestor be buried in a Lübeck cemetery as a compromise.
