Marie Hoffmann and Wanda Zinger write:
The collections Pinart brought back, including both ancestral remains and artefacts, are currently scattered between different museums in Paris and Boulogne-sur-Mer (France).
Based on the documentation available, it appears that the context of acquisition of the remains is vague and highly questionable in terms of ethics.
The recent introduction of a new set of legislation in the French cultural sector increases the complexity of the issue.
In this article, the authors explore the ethical and decolonial questions raised by working with the ancestral remains ‘collected’ by Pinart and to offer some points of consideration with regards to interdisciplinarity and the cultural and historical specificities of Oceania.
They argue for the contribution of scientific data in provenance research, showing that physico-chemical and anthropological analysis, if consented to, are not necessarily antagonistic to ethical considerations.
