It doesn’t matter how many ceremonies you put on for the return of 10, 20, or 30 ancestors because the hundreds of thousands of other people in museum collections still need your attention.
As a curator, I have some sympathy.
Much more can be done on research to inform restitution. Anyone reading this is doubtless among those who could in some way make that basic transparency materialise.
Meanwhile, as with tombs of the unknown soldier, there will be a need for the dignified and respectful treatment of the remains of unknown museum exhibits. Sometimes the violence will have taken the form of a redaction so violent and vast that it requires another kind of reconciliation, truth-telling and remembrance. I
The first step will be openness so that informed collective decisions can be made in the future. When it comes to the non-consensual presence of human remains in the collections, we might take a cue from what American academic Christina Sharpe says in her 2023 book Ordinary Notes: “The answer to these obscene questions? Return the bones…Empty the museums.”
