CAG on museums: Repatriations of human remains and cultural heritage

Germany is the newest country to join in the trend of museums repatriating human remains to the indigenous communities and former colonies from which they were originally taken. Last month the Charité Hospital in Berlin returned the skeletal remains of Australian and Torres Strait Islanders with a ceremony marking the occasion.

Ngarrindjeri elder performing ceremony at human remains repatriation Exeter 2008

Though repatriation has been a hot topic for museums since the early 1990s in the United States and United Kingdom, it continues to be a source of strife for the source communities who feel they are the cultural carers of their ancestors whose remains are out of their control and out of their homelands. In the New York Times article on this recent repatriation outcome, Torres Strait Island community member Ned David explained that the return of human remains provoked 'moving moments for indigenous people around the world' and 'there are mixed emotions, one obviously of relief…and then the moment is tinged with sadness for what was involved with the removal of the remains'. 

Drawing of a mokomokai from H.G. Robley's Moko or Maori Tattooing 

For people that don't work in museums or have contact with the community members who feel these repatriations are integral to their cultural identity, the existence of skulls and bones in a museum might seem like a normal part of the museum experience. The collection of human remains was often made in the name of science to explore archaeology, medicine, and the natural world sciences in general. Many western museums tend to agree that continuing to hold human remains no longer has much scientific merit, and each repatriation is considered on a case by case basis. For some items like tattooed mokomokai Maori heads, their open display has long been deemed inappropriate in museums in the US and UK and museums have returned these Maori ancestral remains relatively consistently.

Hoa Hakananai'a in transit

Other items of cultural heritage with associated political histories have a much harder time of being accepted into mainstream museum repatriation schemes. For example, Rapa Nuians (Easter Islanders) have asked for the repatriation of the famous moai Hoa Haka from the British Museum, but have not been successful with their request. Other famous cases have also been denied, and in general cultural patrimony will continue to be a difficult subject of negotiation for repatriation efforts in museums due to the fact that many situations of collection involved a set of power relations that do not reflect the present-day state of affairs. 

Parthenon Marble

If we were to account for all of these different power structures in the world retrospectively, the ownership of most museum collections would need to come under question. Of course, perhaps that is what needs to be considered in a postcolonial, postmodern world. Then again, I'm pretty sure I remember the V&A putting on an exhibition that said postmodernism ended in 1990 (http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/postmodernism/), but at least the acceptance of a case by case review is helpful to the repatriation cause.