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.

CAG on museums: Working at the British Museum

The British Museum

As a California girl who has always dreamed of working at the British Museum, once I was there it did not disappoint. While working at with the Department of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, I worked with some of the finest collections and some of the best minds in the museum world. Most days something very exciting happens like a special visitor comes to view the collection, or there is news of an exhibition that is about to be put on. This is exciting if you work in a museum at least. Other days, there is a bit more manual labour involved- but at least it’s in a storeroom that looks like the last scene in Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Me putting away a tiny tiny object

There are lots of visitors to the storerooms and the department, and especially visitors from the Pacific and Australia. The Pacific is my area of anthropological interest. The Pacific and Australian collections are a particularly well-used resource at the British Museum. We have many individuals, indigenous researchers, and groups who come to see a specific part of the collection within a week. Thinking through anthropology, issues of politics in the museum, and collections care on behalf of the public, means that though the Museum is an academic institution, a lot of the work must also benefit the source communities from whom collections originate to create access for wider audiences.

Torres Strait Island dance objects laid out for a visit

Last year when a dance group from the Torres Strait Islands came to our storage site to see dance related collections of masks, ornaments, drums and other related objects, many people in the group had varying responses to the objects that they saw.

Dance performance and acknowledgement of ancestors

After the group saw the objects, they asked to give an acknowledgment of the ancestors and give a dance performance. These kinds of interactions between living communities and their ancestors’ historic objects highlights the importance of access to collections in the museum, and continue to make objects important on a daily basis.