Council for Museum Anthropology: Routes to Return. “Routes to Return is a new web resource providing information to aid those interested in understanding pathways for international repatriations from European museums.”
Deutsche Welle: Tanzanians demand return of ancestral skulls. “In a major research project, scientists from Berlin’s Museum of Prehistory and Early History, together with colleagues from Rwanda, investigated the origin of around 1,100 human skulls from Germany’s former colonies in East Africa. Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, told DW that it was ‘a small miracle’ to find living relatives for three skulls through DNA analysis and that it was like finding a needle in a haystack.”
The Guardian: Manchester Museum hands back 174 objects to Indigenous Australian islanders. “Manchester Museum’s return of the objects is significant because repatriation projects normally revolve around sacred or ceremonial items…. In this case, Manchester is returning everyday objects with a more mundane backstory. They include dolls made from shells, baskets, fishing spears, boomerangs, armbands and a map made from turtle shells, all being sent back to the Anindilyakwa community, who live on an archipelago in the Gulf of Carpentaria, off the northern coast of Australia.”
Washington Post: Revealing The Smithsonian’s ‘Racial Brain Collection’. “The vast majority of the remains appear to have been gathered without consent from the individuals or their families, by researchers preying on people who were hospitalized, poor, or lacked immediate relatives to identify or bury them. In other cases, collectors, anthropologists and scientists dug up burial grounds and looted graves. The Natural History Museum has lagged in its efforts to return the vast majority of the remains in its possession to descendants or cultural heirs, The Post’s investigation found. Of at least 268 brains collected by the museum, officials have repatriated only four.”
ProPublica: We Carry the Burden of Repatriating Our Ancestors. Here’s What It’s Like to Report on the Process as an Indigenous Journalist.. “Mary Hudetz describes the financial cost and emotional distress that tribal communities face as they continue to wait for the return of the remains of their ancestors, thousands of which are held in museums across the country.”
US Department of Justice: United States Returns Manuscript Signed by Conquistador Hernando Cortés in 1527 to Mexico’s National Archives . “A nearly 500-year-old manuscript signed by Conquistador Hernando Cortés in 1527 has been returned to the Archivo General de la Nación de México – Mexico’s national archives located in Mexico City. On July 19, 2023, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts, along with representatives from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, participated in a formal repatriation ceremony at Mexico’s national archives, where the manuscript is believed to have been unlawfully removed from sometime before 1993.”
San Francisco Standard: Diaries of Taiwan’s First President To Be Returned After Legal Battle With Stanford. “For nearly 18 years, 51 boxes of documents from former Taiwanese Presidents Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo have been stashed at Stanford University. The documents include diary entries revealing personal and diplomatic insights into some of the most notable global political events of the last century. But the question of who owns the historically valuable musings has been at the center of a decadelong legal battle involving the Taiwanese government, Chiang family members and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.”
New-to-me, from The Guardian: Meet the ‘headstrong historian’ bringing Africa’s past to life – for Africans. “[Chao] Tayiana is also co-founder of Open Restitution Africa, an initiative that maps data on the return of African treasures that were seized or stolen by former colonial powers, and documents the demands for these artefacts.”
Associated Press: Cornell Univ. returns Native American remains dug up in 1964. “Cornell University has returned ancestral remains to the Oneida Indian Nation that were inadvertently dug up in 1964 and stored for decades in a school archive…. The remains, possibly more than 300 years old, were unearthed by people digging a ditch for a water line on an upstate New York farm east of Binghamton in August 1964.”
Smithsonian: National Museum of Asian Art Announces Historic Partnership With Republic of Yemen Government as U.S. Government Repatriates 77 Cultural Objects to Yemen. “The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art announces it has entered a partnership with the Republic of Yemen Government to provide safe storage and care for 77 objects that the United States government is repatriating to the Republic of Yemen.”
Artnet: Dispelling Rumors, Greece Has Rejected the British Museum’s Offer to Return the Parthenon Marbles as a Long-Term Loan. “Greece has rejected the prospect of a ‘long-term loan’ of the Parthenon marbles from the British Museum in London, despite reports just last week that the two sides were nearing an agreement.”
New York Times: A Paris Museum Has 18,000 Skulls. It’s Reluctant to Say Whose.. “While France has led the way in Europe in investigating and returning colonial-era collections of artifacts — cultural objects, made by human hands — it has lagged behind its neighbors when it comes to remains.”
US Government Accountability Office: Efforts to Protect and Repatriate Native American Cultural Items and Human Remains. “Despite federal legislation calling for their protection and repatriation, cultural items located on federal and Indian lands remain vulnerable to theft, vandalism, and destruction. Moreover, a 2020 report estimated that there are more than 116,000 Native American human remains still in museums and other collections. For Native American Heritage Month (November), today’s WatchBlog post looks at our recent work on federal efforts to protect Native American cultural items.”
The Guardian: Museums in England and Wales to gain powers to dispose of objects on moral grounds. “Museums and galleries in England and Wales will be given unprecedented powers to dispose of objects in their collections if there is a compelling moral obligation to do so, under a new law.”
NBC News: Search for missing Native artifacts led to the discovery of bodies stored in ‘the most inhumane way possible’. “Since the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990, federal law has required institutions that receive federal funding to catalog their collections with the National Parks Service and work toward returning them to the tribal nations they were taken from. But the University of North Dakota has no entries in the federal inventory, even though its administrators acknowledge it has possessed Indigenous artifacts since its inception in 1883.”
