The remains of over one hundred of their ancestors have been returned to the Haida First Nations tribe in Canada by Chicago’s Field Museum.

From:
Times Colonist (Canada)

The Homecoming
Haida rejoice as ancestral bones return to rest
Jack Knox
Times Colonist

OLD MASSETT, Queen Charlotte Islands – They carried the 46 boxes of bones out of St. John’s Anglican church and drove them to the cemetery Saturday — past the totem poles towering out of the earth, past the hip and funky Haida Rose Cafe, past the weather-beaten homes with the red Haida Nation flags drooping in the rain.

Not a long drive, certainly not as long as the long haul to Chicago, from where the Haida just retrieved the remains of close to 150 ancestors snatched from their resting places in the name of science a century ago. The bones had spent the last 100 years packed away in the Field Museum of Natural History, where they had been taken after being scooped up by anthropologists.
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An Egyptian mummy taken from the country over 140 years ago, has been returned by the Michael Carlos Museum, after tests indicated that it was probably the body of Pharaoh Ramses I.

From:
BBC News

Last Updated: Sunday, 26 October, 2003, 14:44 GMT
Egypt’s ‘Ramses’ mummy returned

An ancient Egyptian mummy thought to be that of Pharaoh Ramses I has returned home after more than 140 years in North American museums.

The body was carried off the plane in Cairo in a box draped in Egypt’s flag.
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The Axum Obelisk was taken from Ethiopia by Mussolini’s forces in 1937, after they had conquered the country. Plans are now under-way to return it back to its original location.

From:
Globe & Mail (Canada)

Friday, Oct. 24, 2003
A monumental plunder:
Massive object was taken from Ethiopia by Mussolini, ALAN FREEMAN reports from Rome
By ALAN FREEMAN
From Friday’s Globe and Mail

The Aksum obelisk is finally about to go home to Ethiopia, if only a way can be found to get it there.After years of delays and prevarications, the Italian government has decided to return the 24-metre-high granite funeral stele — plundered by the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini in 1937 as booty from his newly conquered African empire.

Scaffolding already obscures the obelisk, which stands on the curbside of a busy piazza in central Rome.
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Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis has sparked a media furore after his comments to Tony Blair about the Parthenon Marbles were overheard.

From:
BBC News

Last Updated: Saturday, 18 October, 2003, 05:35 GMT 06:35 UK
Greek PM in Elgin marbles upset

Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis has sparked outrage among opposition parties after telling his British counterpart, Tony Blair, that returning the Elgin Marbles, could help his re-election bid.

The row broke out after Greek television stations aired a clip of Mr Simitis – apparently unaware of nearby cameras – talking to Mr Blair about the marbles at the sidelines of the European Union summit in Brussels on Thursday.
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News reports have suggested that there has been a deal on the table, for Britain to return the Parthenon Sculptures to Greece, in return for Greece supporting London’s Olympic bid. However, it appears that there are no hard facts to back up this story.

From:
Kathimerini (English Edition)

Tuesday October 7, 2003
London denies Marbles deal

LONDON (AFP) – Britain denied yesterday a tabloid report that it was to send the Elgin Marbles back to Greece in time for the 2004 Athens Olympics in return for Greek support of London’s own Olympic bid.

“The article isn’t true at all,” a culture department spokeswoman told AFP, referring to a report that Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell was ready to reopen talks with Athens over the fifth-century BC sculptures removed from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin between 1801-1811.
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A new exhibition about the benefits of reuniting the Parthenon Sculptures in Athens has gone on display at ICA in London.

From:
BBC News

Last Updated: Tuesday, 7 October, 2003, 12:07 GMT 13:07 UK
Marbles exhibition opens in London

A virtual exhibition, which shows how the Elgin Marbles would look if they were reunited, has opened in London.

Marbles Reunited shows those sculptures removed from Greece 200 years ago by Lord Elgin next to those which remained in Athens.
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A Canadian First Nations group has requested that the British Museum returns some masks that were taken from their ancestors, but the British Museum has declined to consider the case for returning them.

From:
New York Times

ALERT BAY JOURNAL
September 18, 2003
Reclaiming the Stolen Faces of Their Forefathers
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

ALERT BAY, British Columbia — A local newspaper column last year suggested that the Namgis, a small band of Native Canadians in British Columbia, ought to go to London and steal the Crown Jewels to get some bargaining leverage over the British Museum.

The half facetious idea came after the group had tried diplomacy for several years to get back a beloved wooden mask stolen from them 82 years ago that is now boxed up in a storage room of the museum.
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The Greek government has appointed the construction firm ALTE, for the works on the New Acropolis Museum, which are expected to proceed more rapidly now that this decision has been made.

From:
Kathimerini (English Edition)

Saturday September 6, 2003
New museum lurches forward

In a first tangible indication that plans to build a new Acropolis Museum under the ancient citadel are still alive, the government has awarded the 50-million-euro contract to Greek construction firm ALTE, a report said yesterday.

The Athens News Agency said ALTE had been declared “provisional” winner of the tender after bids were opened on Tuesday. The contract calls for completion of the project within two years, which confirms that the museum will not be ready in time for next summer’s Olympics, as Athens had initially maintained. However, the deal involves completion of the “external shell” of the building nine months after construction starts, according to ANA. This would seem to bear out government pledges that at least part of the museum will be standing in August 2004.

Availability of the museum during the Games is a basic tenet of Greece’s campaign for the return of the British Museum’s Elgin Collection of sculptures from the Parthenon, even as a loan. Originally, the building’s foundations were supposed to have been laid in the summer of 2002.

Recently, Greece has offered to loan Britain various artefacts – some never exhibited before – in exchange for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures.

From:
Sunday Herald

Greece offers relics for Marbles swap
Athens of the North to host a major exhibition of classical relics … if British Museum agrees to hand Elgin statues back to Olympic city
By Liam McDougall Arts Correspondent

EDINBURGH will be granted a major exhibition of priceless Greek treasures if Britain agrees to a controversial deal to allow the return of the Elgin Marbles to Athens.

Sources close to talks between the British and Greek governments have said the Scottish capital – dubbed the Athens of the North – has been earmarked by Greece as the host city for the event under new compromise proposals.
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The New Acropolis Museum represents the best possible location for reuniting the surviving Elgin Marbles, but has also stirred up a lot of controversy. It is worth noting though, that a lot of the issues are more politically motivated, rather than stemming from the actual project itself.

From:
BBC News

Last Updated: Monday, 18 August, 2003, 11:47 GMT 12:47 UK
Acropolis building site stirs up storm
By Richard Galpin
BBC, Athens

If visitors to the Acropolis in central Athens were to cast their eyes across the city to the south-east, they would soon spot a large gap in the densely populated neighbourhood of Markryianni, just a stone’s-throw away.

It is a building site for a controversial new Acropolis museum.
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The Haida Repatriation Committee has been fighting for the return of their ancestral bones from museums around the world. They have already had a lot of successes, but it has been a difficult struggle & there is still a lot further to go.

From:
Globe and Mail

POSTED AT 4:04 AM EDT Saturday, Aug. 16, 2003
Bones of contention
For decades the remains of B.C.’s Haida ancestors have been locked away in metal drawers as specimens in museums around the world. Now, the Haida are fighting to bring them home, ALEXANDRA GILL writes
By ALEXANDRA GILL
From Saturday’s Globe and Mail

SKIDEGATE, B.C. — Andy Wilson has spent the past seven years collecting some very special bones. Bones so precious they can’t be kept here, in the main cemetery, overlooking the tiny town of Skidegate on the Queen Charlotte Islands.

The bones are buried in a sacred grove, somewhere in the spruce forest behind us, explains Wilson, the soft-spoken man who co-chairs the local committee responsible for bringing the human remains of his Haida ancestors back home.
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As times change & projects such as the New Acropolis Museum are now so far underway, more & more people think that now is the time to reconsider the issue of the Elgin Marbles inside the British Museum.

From:
Boston Globe

Part of the Parthenon
8/15/2003

AFTER 200 years in British captivity, it is time for the gods and heroes looted from the Parthenon to return home. The dispute over whether the Seventh Earl of Elgin acted properly when he had the carved marble statues hacked off the temple “for their own protection” in 1801 has enlivened the worlds of arts and politics for decades. The pop star Melina Mercouri’s personal crusade to return the marbles defined her term as Greek minister of culture. Both Keats and Byron waxed poetic upon viewing them. Now, as Athens readies itself to host the 2004 Summer Olympics, the Elgin Marbles should be part of the pomp.

The British Museum, which holds 247 feet of carved frieze and 17 statues, insists it will not return the marbles to Greece, even for a loan. But the Greek government is forging ahead with a $100 million Acropolis museum to house them. As with all things related to the marbles, the museum construction itself is causing controversy, with critics claiming that the site excavation is disturbing other archeological treasures. But the new museum — assuming it is completed on time — should answer a chief claim of the British: that Greece cannot properly care for the marbles.
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