Yet another return of human remains from a UK museum to an Australian aboriginal community. A sign that where there is a will to do so, Museums & other institutions are able to see the requirement to return artefacts to their original owners.

From:
Sydney Morning Herald

UK to return more Aboriginal remains
January 7, 2009 – 6:52PM

Another set of Aboriginal remains held at a British museum for almost a century are to be returned to Australia.

Two skulls and two thigh bones kept by the Booth Museum of Natural History, in Brighton, East Sussex, are expected to be repatriated within days.
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Another success for New Zealand in securing the return of Maoris artefacts that contain human remains. Museums are willing to acknowledge now that it is right for them to return artefacts that involve human remains – with other cases though, they are still very reluctant to step forward.

From:
New Zealand Herald

British to hand back Maori remains
4:00AM Friday Nov 14, 2008

A British museum will return a collection of Maori remains to New Zealand this month.

Manchester Museum said yesterday it would hand over the remains in its collection, including a Maori skull and a fish hook made from human bone, to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
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Kwame Opoku writes about the return of human remains to Africa from Germany & how the process is frustrated by the need for official requests to be made in the correct way.

From:
Modern Ghana

BONES DO NOT DIE: GERMANS TO RETURN NAMIBIAN SKULLS.
By Kwame Opoku, Dr.
Feature Article | Sun, 17 Aug 2008

“I, the great general of the German troops, send this letter to the Herero people… All Hereros must leave this land… Any Herero found within the German borders with or without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot. I shall no longer receive any women or children; I will drive them back to their people. I will shoot them. This is my decision for the Herero people.” (The German commander General von Trotha)

We have had the occasion to refer to the problem of the thousands of African human remains that are still in European museums many decades after independence and the duty to repatriate them on dignified terms and conditions. *

As indicated in the report below, the Germans have stated their willingness to return 47 Namibian skulls. However, the Germans are insisting on an official request from the Namibian government. The Namibian Prime Minister, Nahas Angula, has rightly responded that when the Germans were taking away those skulls they did not ask anybody for permission.
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More information on the request by Kenya for the return of numerous cultural artefacts from museums & institutions around the world.

From:
ArtInfo

Kenya Demands Return of Significant Artifacts
By ARTINFO
Published: August 6, 2008

NAIROBI—Kenya is asking for the return of artifacts of significant national importance that are currently owned by museums in the United States and England, the Independent reports. More than 2,000 artifacts housed in the British Museum and thousands more held by U.S. museums and in private collections are being compiled by Kenyan officials into a list of significant objects that the country wants repatriated.

In the past, attempts by Kenya to get artifacts returned were countered by arguments that the country did not have suitable facilities for them. But last month, the new National Museum, whose renovation was financed by the European Union, opened in Nairobi, and Kenyan heritage officials now insist that they can care for all types of objects.
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A commentary of Kenya’s request for the return of artefacts by Kwame Opoku.

From:
Afrikanet

Kenya demands once again the restitution of Artefacts
Written by Dr. Kwame Opoku
Wednesday, 06 August 2008

As we have often emphasized in our various articles, no one intends to empty the European museums of all the African objects but there must be a selection of those the European and American museums can keep and those the African owners want back home. As the Director-General of Kenya’s National Museums has stated in the report below, we want people in Europe and America to see our artefacts but the most important ones must return home to where they belong. Is this not fair enough? In these days when museum directors and others are talking about the “heritage of mankind”, should the producers of these artefacts also not have their own share of the “heritage of mankind”? Or does that heritage belong only to those who have acquired the artefacts under dubious circumstances?
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Washington’s Smithsonian Institution has become the first US institution to return human remains at the request of Australian aboriginal groups, following the lead set by various museums in the UK in recent years.

From:
The Australian

Bones return to Arnhem Land
Natasha Robinson | August 06, 2008

THE remains of 33 indigenous people taken by American researchers 60 years ago touched down in Australia yesterday to be repatriated to Arnhem Land.

A delegation of four traditional owners returned home after travelling to Washington DC to collect the remains from the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of Natural History.
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Kenya has issued a request for the return of over two thousand artefacts removed from the country during its colonial era. The artefacts are currently held in various institutions around the world, including the British Museum.The fact that such a request has been issued suggests that the previous agreements with the British Museum don’t go anywhere near far enough towards resolving the situation.

From:
The Independent

Kenya tells museums: give our history back
Smithsonian and British Museum among institutions facing Nairobi’s demand for repatriation of nationally important artefacts
By Steve Bloomfield in Nairobi
Sunday, 3 August 2008

Kenya is demanding the return of more than 2,000 historical artefacts currently on display in the British Museum, claiming they were taken during the country’s colonial period. Skulls, spears and fossils are among the items that it wants back.

Officials in Nairobi are beginning to compile lists of objects held abroad that are considered of significant national importance. Apart from those at the British Museum, they are tracking down thousands of other items held by US museums and in private collections around the world. As many as 10,000 could be earmarked for repatriation, according to Kenyan museum officials. Kenya’s President, Mwai Kibaki, said: “These are crucial aspects of our historical and cultural heritage, and every effort must be made to bring them back.”
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Following on from their successes in Scotland, the Ngarrindjeri have also collected skulls of their ancestors from Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum to be returned to Australia.

It is worth remembering again, that the current reunifications of Aboriginal artefacts only happened after a change in the law allowed many of the countries larger museums to over-rule the anti-deaccessioning clauses in their own charters & return these pieces. Once various key institutions had returned pieces, many smaller museums and galleries followed their example.

From:
BBC News

Page last updated at 09:48 GMT, Wednesday, 9 July 2008 10:48 UK
Aboriginal skulls returning home

Four Aboriginal skulls, which have formed part of a British museum’s collection for more than 100 years, are to be returned to Australia.

The 19th century human remains were donated to Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum by someone who claimed to have been given them.
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Despite setbacks along the way, after ten years of campaigning, the Ngarrindjeri tribe are accepting the return of a number of Aboriginal artefacts from institutions in Scotland. Like many other such repatriations made in recent years, this has only been made possible by a change in the law in the form of the Human Tissue Act 2004.

From:
The Times

From The Times
July 8, 2008
Scotland hands back Aborigine relics
Charlene Sweeney

With a simple but symbolic whorl of smoke, a group of Aborigines began the long-awaited process of repatriating their ancestors’ remains from a Scottish museum to their homeland.

The Ngarrindjeri, who have been campaigning for the return of the relics for ten years, sent a delegation to Edinburgh to accept ownership of six Aborigine skulls from the National Museums of Scotland, and a fragment of a woman’s skull from the University of Edinburgh.
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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 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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