Repatriation of Indigenous Human Remains

This article addresses the recent attempts to integrate evolutionary history in the US national narrative. Focusing on the cultural, legal, and scientific controversy over Kennewick Man, the ancient human remains discovered in Washington state in 1996, the article explores the narrative politics of American national belonging. Through a popular historical novel on Kennewick Man's life, the article further theorizes nostalgia as a narrative tool in imagining the evolutionary origins of the nation. The article argues that nostalgia produces a temporal dynamic that bridges the gap between national history and global prehistory, and that this dynamic is reinforced through cultural ideas of genetic knowledge. At the same time, prehistoric nostalgia renders problematic ideas of ethnic difference largely invisible.

The purpose of this chapter is to briefly discuss the implementation of NAGPRA in the state of Hawaii.  Where others might emphasize the successes of NAGPRA, it would be a dereliction of my duty as an academic and cultural practitioner to ignore the fact that in Hawaii, NAGPRA appears to be a source of cultural contention rather than the a repatriation remedy.

The specter of Kennewick Man has loomed large over North American archaeology. In his wake, a wide array of issues relating to tribal sovereignty, reburial, and repatriation have dominated the relationship between archaeologists and Native Americans for much of the last decade and also attracted the attention of the public more than virtually any other discovery. The Kennewick court case has not only challenged existing heritage legislation but also served as an important rallying point for many Indigenous peoples, and even an opportunity for peripheral interest groups, such as the Asatru Folk Assembly, to lay claim to him. Regardless of their personal views, it is safe to say that every archaeologist has been affected in some way by this controversy. Even after the court case has finally been concluded, the relationship archaeologists and Native Americans will remain tinged by unresolved issues. Largely lost in the continuing Kennewick controversy, however, are two important issues. The first is that the influence, and indeed knowledge, of the Kennewick case may be more limited in many Aboriginal communities in Canada (and likely elsewhere) than is commonly thought. While many communities are very concerned about the welfare of found ancestral human remains, this is most often focused on local instances and issues. he second issue is that other approaches to ancient human remains now being employed by some Aboriginal groups in Canada and the United States are significantly under-reported, which skews perceptions about the relationship between Indigenous peoples and archaeology. ...

The extensive analytical literature on human remains in museums has thus far been dominated by questions of repatriation and reburial. But how should those remains that are retained be treated? In this piece authors with different disciplinary perspectives explore the arguments for and against the display of human remains. We offer no definitive conclusion, but rather a respectful dissensus.

This book draws on over twenty years’ investigation of scientific archives in Europe, Australia, and other former British settler colonies.  It explains how and why skulls and other bodily structures of Indigenous Australians became the focus of scientific curiosity about the nature and origins of human diversity from the early years of colonisation in the late eighteenth century to Australia achieving nationhood at the turn of the twentieth century.  The last thirty years have seen the world's indigenous peoples seek the return of their ancestors' bodily remains from museums and medical schools throughout the western world. Turnbull reveals how the remains of the continent's first inhabitants were collected during the long nineteenth century by the plundering of their traditional burial places. He also explores the question of whether museums also acquired the bones of men and women who were killed in Australian frontier regions by military, armed police and settlers.&nbs

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This PowerPoint deals with sensitive issues related to the ethical treatment of the dead and repatriation of human remains and grave offerings. The ppt file is meant to be educational, especially to raise issues for discussion in classes and among non-specialist audiences. Do be warned that it shows dead bodies and human skeletons. Some viewers may be offended by viewing them. You may use this and modify it, but please be sensitive to your audiences and to the rights of the dead, however that might be defined.  The Design view of the ppt can be used to explore the Note fields at the bottom of most slides, which will provide additional remarks and information.

THIS IS THE LAST LESSON OF THE COURSE
Archaeology of Death E-learning

Dear Colleagues,
As the Covid-19 safety measures are limiting our communication, please use the following web link to download presentation of the Archaeology of Death course.
https://cuni.academia.edu/JanTurek/Teaching-Documents
Since the lesson 4, that we have already missed I include much more texts and references, so you can use it as e-learning material.
Let’s hope we are going to have chance to catch up with the lectures later the spring term.
Meanwhile stay safe
and
Good luck!

Sincerely
Jan Turek
Center for Theoretical Study

Archaeology of Death

Syllabus by Jan Turek

The lecture provides a basic overview of the theory and methodology of the study of funerary areas, burial contexts and social and symbolic perception of death in prehistoric societies. Through the archaeological evidence of funerary rituals will be presented not only prehistoric people's attitudes toward death and the afterlife but also their culture, social organization, symbolic systems and cosmology. The focus on archaeology of personhood will be targeted mainly on the analysis of age and gender categories. Introductory topics summarize the methodology of field and laboratory research of funerary data in archaeology including application of scientific methods, spatial analysis of burial data and palaeodemography. In the interpretation section of the course an attention is also paid to the social and ritual significance of death and the transformation of human understanding of mortality. We are going to focus on case studies from different periods and locations throughout the world from Palaeolithic to the rise of historical societies. Case studies will further shed light on the social interpretation of burial data and their use in reconstructing social relationships, and will present significant discoveries. The end of the course is devoted to the ethics of the archaeological research of funerary and the political and ethical controversies surrounding human remains. This lecture is designed for audience among archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and others who have a professional interest in funerary evidence, or general curiosity about past death and burial.

1. Introduction to burial archaeology.
Forms of burial in prehistory, hierarchy of burial sites and monuments.
2. Human understanding of death and the beginnings of funerary practices.
Death and perception of time, regeneration, reincarnation, immortality. The earliest evidence of funerary behaviour. The question of cannibalism.
3. Basics of field methodology of burial contexts and funerary areas.
Survey and excavation methods. Taphonomy, geochemical and geophysical methods.
4. Scientific methods of analysis - Burial contexts and human remains.
Paleoanthropology and Palaeopathology.
4.2 Scientific methods of analysis - Burial contexts and human remains.
Palaeopathology and Paleoparasitology.
5. Population Processes, DNA and Demography
Population processes. Palaeodemography and methods of molecular biology
6. Stable Isotopes & Mobility Studies; Diet reconstruction
Methods used for reconstruction of individual mobility and diet.
7. GIS & Spatial analysis of funerary areas: An Introduction
8. Shamanism and burials in the Palaeolithic period.
9. Burial rites as the source for reconstruction of prehistoric society
Death at the beginning of agriculture. Genealogy, Power, wealth, Cult of Death; Feasting with ancestors.
10. Age and Gender reconstruction
Gender categories, children in pre-industrial societies.
11. Death and monuments in the landscape
Burial sites, burial monuments and settlement structure, What is a ritual landscape?
Death in the living space. Houses of dead – genesis of barrows. Human sacrifices and ancestral worship. Barrows….
12. Archaeology of violence, warfare, disease, magic and sacrifice
13. Mummies; preservation of soft tissue. Body decoration & face reconstruction
Eternity, mumification and natural environment.
14. Ethics of funerary archaeology
Political and ethical treatment issues of human remains and their analysis. Scientific sampling, exhibiting human remains, repatriation and reburial.

The changing history of skeletal remains is a large part of my autobiography. In 1984, I was the first biological anthropologist in Australia to argue publicly for Indigenous control over their heritage, including the bodies of their ancestors. Twenty-five years later I act as the sexton of my discipline: almost the only biological research I conduct within Australia ensures that unprovenanced Aboriginal ancestors are reburied in their own country. What follows is therefore inevitably a personal account.

Many Southern African countries, including Namibia, continue to wrestle with repatriation demands due to the lack of clear guidelines and policies on negotiations, handling and managing these returns. The development of these tools will establish an agreed framework and procedure for dealing with human remains in Namibia.

El deseo patrimonializador continúa el legado de la historiografía nacionalista del siglo XIX que apropió a los tehuelches como “indios argentinos” y consideró a los mapuches como foráneos invasores. A comienzos del siglo XXI, se fue consolidando un proceso de reemergencia del pueblo tehuelche en Santa Cruz (provincia localizada en el extremo sur de Argentina), considerado extinto por los dispositivos hegemónicos. Entre dichos dispositivos se encuentra el deseo de “poner en valor” prácticas y conocimientos indígenas, sin que se contemplen mecanismos de consulta ni participación. A partir de reflexiones surgidas en el marco de una investigación comprometida con los tehuelches de dos comunidades (Camusu Aike y Kopolke), me interrogo sobre el rol de la antropología frente a la actual legislación patrimonial, que parecería ser inmune a la agencia indígena.

Schoolbook on the importance of cultural heritage for civic education.
Among the topics: the importance of cultural diversity; cultural heritage in wartime, looting and destruction; opportunities and risks of reconstruction; cultural heritage and terrorism; clandestine excavation; the debate on museums' definition and role; ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums; restitutions and repatriation of ritual objects and human remains.

John Henry Merryman’s influential 1989 article “The Public Interest in Cultural Property” proposed that all decisions about the fate of cultural artifacts should be based on consideration of a property triad of core values: preservation, truth, and access. This article uses a series of case studies of cultural artifacts to argue for a rejection of Merryman’s values, arguing that they are not universal values but instead prioritize a Western experience of art over the needs and rights of source countries, particularly indigenous cultures.

Alongside research concerning the provenance of human remains and ethical issues, a scientific discourse about repatriation must also take into account political questions. Remains of the dead have always been effective political symbols and will continue to fulfill this role in the future. Restitution of human remains does not take place in a vacuum but can frequently be linked to particular socio-political developments. Repatriation may serve as a means to affirm cultural and national identity. In this paper I will talk about four Austrian repatriations of indigenous human remains. First, I will address the two earlier restitutions, which took place in 1985 and 2009. In 1985 a mummy collected by nineteenth-century Austrian taxidermist Andreas Reischek was returned to New Zealand. In 2009, 17 human remains from various collections acquired between 1858 and 1935 were returned to Australia. The main part of the paper discusses the two most recent Austrian restitutions conducted in 2011 and 2012. In 2011, 31 remains were repatriated to Australia, in 2012 two individuals, the Pienaars, were reburied in South Africa. In both instances the human remains derive from a collection made by Austrian anthropologist Rudolf Pöch at beginning of the twentieth century. I will compare these two restitutions with each other with regard to place, time and order of the ceremony, packaging and transport, media response and political significance of the remains. This comparison not only illustrates varying ways how to repatriate human remains but also directly reflects Australia’s and South Africa’s diverging identity politics.

摘　要
1992年聯合國教科文組織（United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization，下稱UNESCO）成立了世界記憶計畫，所謂的「世界記憶」指的是人類所記錄下來的集體記憶，即其文獻遺產，代表世界文化遺產的一大部分，UNESCO認為該計畫主要的目的在以最適當的技術促成世界文獻遺產的保存、普及、利用，並提升全世界對文獻遺產存在與重要性之意識（Edmondson，2002）。通常一份文獻遺產要列入世界記憶國際名錄，須具備全球重要性及影響力，否則僅能列入區域或國家名錄，截至2016年底為止，亞太地區已有84項文獻遺產列入國際名錄，其中包含了紐西蘭於1997年登錄的《懷唐伊條約》。
該文獻今日被紐西蘭稱之為「立國文獻」，現保存於國家圖書館，正本共有九份，其中7份是紙質、2份是羊皮紙。該文獻最初於1840年2月6日在群島灣由威廉．哈布森艦長與幾位英國移居者和大約45位毛利酋長共同簽署，經過九個月的巡迴，最後總計有超過500位酋長簽署了《懷唐伊條約》。雖然紐西蘭是唯一建立在原住民族與殖民母國簽署條約而成立的現代國家，但《懷唐伊條約》簽署後，並未納入紐西蘭的法律架構之下，導致1840年後，毛利族在漫長的一個多世紀裡，在英國殖民統治下漸漸失去土地、漁場、森林及財產。1975年毛利族酋長Dame Whina Cooper發起徒步長征（Hikoi），群眾自北島最北端逐漸聚集，形成龐大的抗爭隊伍，步行到北島最南端的首都威靈頓的國會大樓前，抗議的主題包含了履行《懷唐伊條約》、還我土地、毛利語、毛利文化以及民族主義等。終於迫使工黨政府改革原住民政策，通過「1975年懷唐伊條約法案（Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975）」，並據此成立懷唐伊法庭（Waitangi Tribunal） 調查皇室（Crown）及國家級機構違反條約的行為，就違法事實對政府提出建言。一但法庭調查屬實，毛利部落可要求與皇室簽定和解契約，包含恢復傳統領域及提出文化、商業等賠償。《懷唐伊條約》影響了紐西蘭文化、政治、社會超過170年，這段期間也是全球人類社會變動最為劇烈的年代，《懷唐伊條約》雖然只有短短三條，卻深深地影響著毛利族，甚至全世界的原住民社群。
本文將以《懷唐伊條約》為例，分析該項文獻遺產在不同的歷史發展進程中對今日紐西蘭所產生的影響，解讀毛利族與皇室及白人移居者在百餘年間如何詮釋該條約，探討UNESCO「世界記憶」計畫如何以二十一世紀的視角將國家及區域以文獻為基礎的集體記憶提升為全人類的世界記憶。

Abstract
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) established the World Memory Project in 1992. The name of project "Memory of the World" refers to the collective memory recorded by mankind; the documentary heritage represents a part of the world's cultural heritage. UNESCO believes that the main purpose of the project is to promote the preservation, popularization and utilization of the world's documentary heritage with the most appropriate technology and to raise awareness of the existence and importance of documentary heritage around the world (Edmondson, 2002). Usually a documentary heritage registered by International Memory of the World which must have global importance and influence. Otherwise, it can only list to regional or national directory. As of the end of 2016, there are 84 documentary heritages in the Asia-Pacific region registered in the international directory. It includes the Treaty of Waitangi, which New Zealand government entered in 1997.
Nowadays, The Treaty of Waitangi is in its position of New Zealand’s founding document, and is now kept in the National Library. There are nine originals, seven of which are paper and two of which are parchment. The first document was originally signed on February 6, 1840 in the Bay of Islands by Captain William Habson and 45 Māori chiefs. After nine months of island-wide tour, a total of more than 500 chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi in different copies.  Although New Zealand was the only modern country established by the signing of a treaty between the indigenous and the colonial mother country, it was not included in the legal framework of New Zealand after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.  After 1840, the Māori people gradually lost their land, fisheries, forests and property under British colonial rule for more than a century. In 1975, the Māori chieftain Dame Whina Cooper launched the Hikoi, a protest march or parade, and the masses gathered from the northernmost part of the North Island to form a huge resistance team.  They walked to the Congress building in Wellington, the southernmost of the North Island as well as the capital of New Zealand.  The theme of the protest included The Treaty of Waitangi, returning my land, te reo Māori (Māori Language), Māori taonga, and nationalism.  Finally, the Labor government was forced to reform the indigenous policy.  In 1975, the “1975 Treaty of Waitangi Act” was passed, and the Waitangi Tribunal was established to investigate the treaty violation of the Crown and state agencies.  The acts of the Waitangi Tribunal make suggestions to the government based on the facts of violations. Once the court investigation is true, the iwi (Māori tribe) can request a settlement agreement with the Crown, including the restoration of traditional fields and the submission of cultural and commercial compensation.  The Treaty of Waitangi has influenced New Zealand's culture, politics, and society for more than 170 years.  This period is also the era of the most dramatic changes in the human society.  Although the Treaty of Waitangi is only three articles, it has a profound impact to the Māori, and even the indigenous community of the world.
This paper will take the Treaty of Waitangi as an example to analyze the impact of the documentary heritage on today’s New Zealand over different historical developments, and how the treaty was interpreted by the Māori, Crown agent and settlers government over the past 100 years. How are they interpreted to explore how UNESCO's “Memory of the World" program promotes the national and regional literature-based collective memory to the world's memory of all mankind from the perspective of the 21st century?

The skull was discovered on June 17th 1921 in a cave of the largest mine in the country at Kabwe situated 650 miles north of Bulawayo, the industrial centre and second-largest city in Zambia. During the survey of the outcrop of an open quarry, the miners intersected a long passage leading to a cave with hominid remains, including the skull of late Middle Pleistocene age about 125, 000 years old.

Museums have increasingly been exploring inclusion and diversity work and engaging in “decolonizing” educational programming. Complicating this undertaking are the fraught and violent histories that live within many museum collections. The Indigenous peoples of Canada continue to suffer from systemic cultural genocide, as they have for hundreds of years through treaties signed under false pretenses, the pillaging and theft of sacred objects and human remains, and the ongoing trauma from the devastating “Sixties Scoop” and Residential School system. In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released a report with ninety-four calls to action that address the crimes committed against Indigenous populations. This article will argue that the repatriation of Indigenous sacred objects and human remains is essential toward reconciliation efforts in Canada and that it is the obligation of the Canadian museums to work with Indigenous and government partners to further the TRC recommendations through repatriation.

State practice in both International and National Fields, as outlined in this study, show substantial agreement on the principle of return of expatriated cultural heritage. This norm is nowadays sufficiently well established to amount to an emerging customary rule of international law. In 1989 it was already stated that “the principle of the physical return of cultural property is becoming, through increasing state and institutional practice, a custom of international law”. This norm applies much more today after many decades of constant practice of the States and the recent expansion in repatriations.
States worldwide have used all possible legal instruments and diplomacy to show their belief that cultural treasures must be returned to their countries and peoples of origin who created them and consider them as a part of their proper identity. As expounded in this study, the relevant State practice on the cultural property repatriation, including that of States whose interests are specially affected, has been both extensive and virtually uniform, in such a way as to show a general recognition that a rule of law or legal obligation is involved. State practice of the last decades, crystallized during recent years, reflects the belief that the return of Cultural Treasures to their Countries and Peoples of origin is rendered obligatory by the existence of a rule of law requiring it. This practice refers especially to the U.S.A., but also to France, U.K., Switzerland and Germany, are the most important art importing States, with some of the biggest Museums and Art Collections worldwide, as much as to Italy, Hellas, Egypt, Turkey, Peru, Mexico, China etc., which are the most important art exporting States.
The State practice on the Repatriation of Cultural Treasures is evident from the number of International and Bilateral Conventions and Protocols adopted, as completed by soft law rules and guidelines, the administrative acts or attitudes, in particular in the diplomatic field, the national legislations and the judicial acts. This practice, already stable and uniform, is confirmed by the explosion of the repatriation of antiquities during the last years, as exposed in the relevant chapters.
The great number of relevant resolutions and recommendations adopted by the organs of the international organizations, especially by the UN Security Council, mainly on the situation in Syria and Iraq, (the Resolutions of which, acting under Chapter VII of the Charter, are considered binding, in accordance with Article 25 of the Charter), strengthens the argument that a rule of customary international law on the repatriation of cultural property is already formed.
The most famous and still pending case before the UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin or its Restitution in case of Illicit Appropriation (ICPRCP) concerns the Hellenic Government’s demand for the return by the United Kingdom of the Parthenon Sculptures.
Humanity is conscious that the cultural heritage is an indispensable element of people’s identity and self-knowledge to the ultimate scope of the salvage and the evolution of Human Civilization. Thus the Norm of Repatriation of Cultural Treasures to their people and country of origin is well established as a Rule of International Customary Law.

International  repatriations  of  colonial  human  remains  have  generated  numerous  questions regarding  the  status  of  indigenous  communities,  the  responsibility  of  museums,  and  the importance  of  retrieving  the  histories  of  those  ancestors  whose  bodies  have  been  dug  up, displaced and objectified as token of racial difference. This work proposes to move away from the traditional oppositions that have structured repatriation claims for decades and advocate collaboration between the current legal owners of those anthropological collections and the repatriation claimants so that indigenous communities can regain authority on the history of their oppression thanks to a process of postcolonial remembrance. To achieve this aim, the consequences  of  repatriation  in  the  cultural  and  collective  memory  of  colonialism  will  be studied.  Moreover,  anthropological  considerations  of  the  body  will  be  accordingly  pushed further in order to relocate the debates about repatriation around the central position of the dead ancestors.

In  den  letzten  dreißig  Jahren  haben  die  zahlreichen  Repatriierungen  von  Schädeln  und Gebeinen aus der Kolonialzeit (Human Remains) Museen gezwungen, bezüglich ihrer eigenen Sammlungen  Stellung  zu  beziehen.  Indigene  Völker  haben  dadurch  in  begrenztem  Maße Autorität über ihre eigene Geschichte und Anerkennung als selbstständige kulturelle Akteure zurück  erhalten.  Die  vorliegende  Arbeit  fordert  eine  Neukonzeption  im  Feld  der anthropologischen  Restitutionen,  für  die  Zusammenarbeit  mit  Herkunftsgesellschaften  als notwendiges  Element  der  Provenienzforschung  und  Erinnerung  zentral  ist.  In  diesem
Zusammenhang  wird  gezeigt,  wie  westliche  Institutionen  es  versäumt  haben,  die  von  ihnen gesammelten  Schädel  als  menschliche  Individuen  zu  betrachten.  Dem  gegenüber konzentrieren sich indigene Forscher, Nachfahren und Projekte auf die Re-Individualisierung und  ethische  Behandlung  der  menschlichen  Überreste.  Damit  könnte  die  Rückführung  der Schädel  letztlich  sowohl  bei  den  ehemaligen  Kolonialmächten  als  auch  bei  den Herkunftsgemeinschaften  zur  tiefergehenden  Erinnerung  und  Aufarbeitung  der  kolonialen Rassenanthropologie beitragen.

Kaleikini v. Thielen is one of several recent cases that illustrate the difficulty in balancing “Hawaiian cultural and religious beliefs as well as the legal rights and interests of private landowners.” It highlights the ongoing tension between Western property rights and Native Hawaiian customs and traditions. Most importantly, this case reveals critical flaws in the efficacy of Hawai‘i’s burial laws.

This paper examines Kaleikini in the context of Hawai‘i’s state burial laws to identify problem areas and offer amendments to the State Department of Land and Natural Resources (“DLNR”), island burial councils (“IBC”), and the general public.

A detailed analysis of Kaleikini is necessary to craft specific revisions to the law’s limitations and ambiguity regarding “prehistoric and historic” burials.

By identifying obstacles and offering potential solutions, this paper strives to protect the State from similar lawsuits, while also assisting the department in fulfilling its legal mandates. Most importantly, this paper seeks to preserve the integrity of nā iwi kūpuna (the ancestral bones).

Patrimonio es un concepto que, en los últimos años, ha sido ampliamente debatido; se lo ha discutido en el campo de las ciencias sociales y las humanidades y en el ámbito de la gestión y administración pública, se lo ha vinculado con el desarrollo turístico, aparece frecuentemente mencionado en los medios de comunicación y es disputado por grupos subordinados que empiezan a adquirir visibilidad y expresión propia. Ahora bien, ¿qué se entiende por patrimonio? Sin caer en una definición precisa y exhaustiva del término, se podría decir que son elementos (materiales o inmateriales), considerados bienes, que están relacionados con la identidad de un colectivo determinado, con su cultura, sus tradiciones e historia. Este libro aborda el tema de la relación entre patrimonio y pueblos originarios en lo que hoy es Argentina. A diferencia de otros trabajos publicados sobre la temática, en este volumen se presenta la voz originaria en primera persona. En efecto, a lo largo de los distintos capítulos el lector podrá interiorizarse, a través de la vocería de referentes, delegados, autoridades y colectivos indígenas, sobre qué consideran patrimonio los pueblos originarios y cuál es el vínculo que se establece con estos elementos.

Since African nation-states began to gain their independence in the midtwentieth century, they have fought for the repatriation of cultural artifacts and human remains as an integral part of continental processes of decolonization. Using the concept of the "afterlife of genocide" as a method for understanding transformed but still ongoing processes of genocidal dispossession, this paper engages the relationship between the organizing colonial logics of the 1904-1908 German genocide of Ovaherero and Nama people in South West Africa and the continued presence of Ovaherero and Nama skulls in Euroamerican museum institutions.

This article explores the role that the worldwide movement of repatriation of human remains and cultural heritage from museums and other institutions to minorities and indigenous populations plays in contemporary identity politics.
Beyond the obvious positive outcomes of this process, including a significant democratization of the field of archaeology, the repatriation movement poses challenges, mainly because it relies on concepts such as past-present continuity that are sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly, problematic for legitimizing
group identities and group claims to cultural heritage and human remains. It is argued that while archaeologists and anthropologists must continue to support the idea of increasing democratization of interpreting the past, they must also maintain the right to remain critical to all claims of the past by any particular group.

In Deutschland wurden im späten 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert Sammlungen menschlicher Überreste außereuropäischer Herkunft angelegt, die auch heute noch Teil der Bestände von Museen, Universitäten und anderen wissenschaftlichen Einrichtungen sind. Einige solcher Einrichtungen haben bereits menschliche Überreste an Herkunftsgesellschaften repatriiert oder Projekte zur Provenienzklärung gefördert. Rückgabeforderungen werden von indigenen Gesellschaften, von Ursprungsstaaten, aber auch von Privatpersonen gestellt. Rückgabeforderungen von Vertretern der Herero und Nama an die Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin wurden im Rahmen des DFG-geförderten Charité Human Remains Project (CHRP) exemplarisch bearbeitet und führten im September 2011 zur Rückgabe von 20 Schädeln an Namibia. Die turbulenten Ereignisse der offiziellen Rückgabe und die bis heute nachwirkenden Folgen wurden in zahlreichen wissenschaftlichen Artikeln reflektiert, kontextualisiert oder als Vergleichsreferenzen für ähnliche Fälle herangezogen. Es wurden bis dato allerdings immer nur einzelne Aspekte beleuchtet und eine synthetisierende Darstellung ist bisher ausgeblieben. Wenn jedoch andere Einrichtungen, insbesondere solche deren Bestände menschliche Überreste von Angehörigen der Herero und Nama beinhalten, von den Erfahrungen des CHRP profitieren sollen, ist der schnelle Zugriff auf eine umfassendere Darstellung wünschenswert. Herero und Nama werden die Erfahrungen die sie 2011 in Deutschland gesammelt haben auch in zukünftigen Rückgabeprozessen erinnern. Umso wichtiger ist es, dass an solchen Prozessen beteiligte Wissenschaftler, Politiker und andere Akteure sich schnell und umfassend informieren können.

This article explores the current debates around repatriation and argues that Germany is poised at an opportune time to expand the 'coming to terms with the past' discourse to more fully embrace its own colonial past. It explores how 2019 is a watershed year owing to the centennial of the Treaty of Versailles signing, the construction of the Berlin Forum museum, and the debates formed from these.

The article argues that although the application of NAGPRA in Hawaii is problematic, it is imperative that Native Hawaiians include the care of ancestral remains and cultural objects as integral components of their cultural and political assertion of sovereignty.

(MA Thesis) The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 sought to empower Native communities to reattain their ancestral human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. Issues both in theory and in practice have arisen in regard to the law and have made implementation difficult and controversial. This paper seeks to analyze the power provided by the legislation and how it applied in the practice of compliance. This power dynamic is then reconciled within the repatriation ethic of the United States as well as internationally. As the scope broadens, an international repatriation ethic emerges that establishes repatriation of culturally affiliatable human remains and sacred objects as a basic human right for indigenous peoples.