Museum collaboration with source and descendant communities has been a big part of decolonization efforts and processes, as well as an active challenging of preconceived notions of what a museum is and how its roles and relationships with the public and source/descendant communities have shifted. Institutional grapplings with the “dark inheritances” of museums and their collections as legacies of imperial violence, are discussed by Alice Procter in her work The Whole Picture: The Colonial Story of the Art in Our Museums & Why We Need to Talk About It, adding that “…there is a real, urgent appetite for these stories – and an interest in learning how to deconstruct a museum’s narrative…” (Procter 2020, 11). She identifies the current discourse surrounding issues of decolonization, restitution, and repatriation as perceived challenges to and anxieties of national identity and nationalism – in challenging who maintains ownership of objects, ideas of who is allowed to wield certain kinds of power are challenged as well. 

Many institutions across Europe and the United States remain fearful of the shift museology and museum anthropology have undertaken in the past few decades; German broadcaster Deutsche Well succinctly described: institutions fear that the shift towards the repatriation of foreign cultural goods will “eventually empty museums and galleries in Western countries” (Colwell 2019). Reacting to this threat, many institutions have reframed their justifications for holding onto foreign cultural materials—no longer as symbols of imperial pride and power but is instead supposed to be a testament to diversity in the collections in an effort to separate themselves from the colonial history of the institution without giving up the cultural material obtained as direct results of such history. These notions have been repeatedly challenged by source/descendant communities who seek active institutional engagement with Procter’s “dark inheritances” that shape and inform the museums and world around them today.

The physical and academic facets of decolonization methodologies and practices are not by any means separate, existing independently of one another, and the physical return of cultural materials whether they are domestic or abroad still carries their own complicated legacies. There exists a debate surrounding the terminology involved in the deliverance of cultural materials from museum collections, prompting engagement with the ongoing relational implications as cultural materials change hands. “There is a huge diversity of terms used in the discourses of object return, all of which address the undoing of some past deed through use of the common prefix ‘re’: repatriation, recover, reparation, restoration, reinstatement, re-emplacement, reunification, reconstitution, revitalization, recapture, rehabilitation, relief…Obviously, the terms invoke various factors in the process – the original context of removal, the nature of social relations, the context for return…(Glass 2004, 118).”

Repatriation is thus not the lone solution but rather a point of departure for the much greater task of redressing the problem of colonial representation and the process of holistic decolonization, and even then, there will always be metaphorically visible “cracks” as we collaborate to attempt to mend relationships. For the purposes of this paper, I will continue to use the word “repatriate,” as the desired reparations continue to go unattached when materials are returned and the repatriation-ideology of the process, the movement for physical and theoretical decolonization, has not yet lined up with the physicality of lone return.

Repatriation as a Tool? The Effectiveness of Repatriation Practices Domestic and Abroad

In October 2019 it was announced that Finland would be repatriating over 600 cultural materials and ancestral remains back to Indigenous peoples in Colorado, specifically in what is now the Mesa Verde National Park. Taken overseas almost 130 years ago in 1891 by a Swedish researcher, the materials eventually wound up in the National Museum of Finland. The museum had been cooperating with the 26 total tribes in question to identify and the objects and attribute them to the correct group. Among the 600 items being repatriated include the remains of 20 individuals and 28 funerary objects; details concerning the identifications of other materials has not been released. The materials were successfully returned on September 17, 2020 just under a year later (U.S. Embassy Finland, 2021).

But repatriation, especially if international, has never been easy and does not have precedence. Concerning the future of international repatriation and the ongoing legacies of colonial extraction, Navajo Nation President Jonathan Naz stated that “A few years ago, the Navajo Nation was successful in recovering a number of sacred artifacts from an auction house in Paris. If it has happened to the Navajo Nation, then I’m certain it is happening all across Indian Country (Mantas 2019).” Hopi Tribal Council Chairman Timothy Nuvangyaoma also stated that the Hopi tribe has been relentlessly fighting to recover cultural materials currently located in Paris and anywhere else out of Hopi possession. International repatriation has no legal precedent and thus no method of enforcement, resulting in many sacred artifacts remaining locked away from their communities of origin.  

There are United Nations-sponsored international guidelines aimed at protecting the rights of Indigenous peoples around the world. The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was passed in 2007 and covers many topics of Indigenous interest, including international repatriation. This statement was the first of its kind – Indigenous rights had never before been formally and internationally recognized. According to Article 12 of UNDRIP,

1. Indigenous Peoples have the right to manifest, practise, develop, and teach their spiritual and religious traditions, customs and ceremonies; the rights to maintain, protect, and have access in privacy to their religious and cultural sites; the right to the use and control of their ceremonial objects; and the right to the repatriation of their human remains. 
2. States shall seek to enable the access and/or repatriation of ceremonial objects and human remains in their possession through fair, transparent and effective mechanisms developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples concerned (UN General Assembly 2007, bolded selections by author). 

UNDRIP is clear concerning the rights of Indigenous peoples to their ceremonial objects and ancestral remains and has served as a landmark in dealing with international repatriation. However, the situation on the ground is still less than ideal for Indigenous groups attempting to have their cultural materials repatriated from abroad. UNDRIP is only a recommendation from the United Nations and does not come with a legal framework to regulate and ensure international repatriation to Indigenous groups.

While the Finnish case offers a model for international repatriation, in many ways it stands out as an exception—revealing how much remains to be done in practice. Many institutions around the world have their own laws in place, be they federal or at the discretion of individual museums, concerning the deaccessioning and removal of objects from museums functioning as roadblocks to restitutive justice and decolonizing processes. Procter’s prime example of the British Museum highlights the Museum’s policy to defer to its trustees when deciding whether or not to release an item from its collections, as well as the item release guidance that ranks the value of materials based on their idea of an objects fitness to be retained. Materials are “released” by the museum’s standards of “usefulness” and definitions of “unfit to be retained” (Procter 2020, 135-136). French Heritage Code prohibits museums from removing anything without explicit government permission and national legislation to be passed for each individual repatriation case, a major roadblock to the repatriation of materials accessioned in French museums regardless of how eager an institution may be to repatriate (Knowles 2018). Laws such as these make repatriation even more complicated and lengthy processes that work against the interests of the groups asking for repatriated materials while skirting around UNDRIP’s recommendations.

The United States has its own repatriation law. Established in 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) required the return of cultural items from any federal organization or institute receiving federal funding to the federally-recognized tribes from whence they came. The act made the trafficking of Indigenous cultural items and human remains without right of possession a criminal offense. NAGPRA also saw the establishment of regulation insisting agencies and institutions receiving federal funding must prepare inventories and summaries of cultural materials in their possession. Should repatriation be requested through the appropriate channels with the institution, the act requires that the institution “shall expeditiously return such objects” (GovTrack.us. 2019).

NAGPRA’s use of the term “cultural items” include associated funerary items, unassociated funerary items, sacred objects, and cultural patrimony. The first three listed fall under UNDRIP’s designation of ceremonial objects and human remains, but cultural patrimony is notably excluded from UNDRIP. In fact, the word “patrimony” never appears and a related word “heritage” appears three times, once regarding “the common heritage of mankind” and the other two in reference to Indigenous peoples being allowed to practice and develop their cultural heritage in peace (UN General Assembly 2007). NAGPRA defines cultural patrimony as below:

(D) “cultural patrimony” which shall mean an object having ongoing historical, traditional, or cultural importance central to the Native American group or culture itself, rather than property owned by an individual Native American, and which, therefore, cannot be alienated, appropriated, or conveyed by any individual regardless of whether or not the individual is a member of the Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization and such object shall have been considered inalienable by such Native American group at the time the object was separated from such group (GovTrack.us. 2019).

However, the shortcomings of NAGPRA mirror some of those of UNDRIP: NAGPRA’s regulations and enforcements does not apply to private property. Moreover, the burden of proof of a relationship with the cultural items rests solely on the tribe that wishes to lay claim to them. To negotiate repatriation from a private entity non-subject to NAGPRA regulation, a tribe is often required to utilize publicity, legal arguments, and a moral line of reasoning, as there is no legal precedent for return (Ray 2016). Also of note, UNDRIP does not set an international precedent for the repatriation of items that are not human remains or of ceremonial nature, nor does it have the ability to enforce its agreement like NAGPRA can regarding U.S. federally funded institutions. While UNDRIP has no bite of its own to speak of, NAGPRA’s enforcement is limited to the realm of the federally funded.

France provides yet another example of these issues: French law does not prohibit the private ownership and sales of sacred objects (Ray 2016). Loopholes such as these which can be found in both NAGPRA and French law contribute to a problem the Hopi and other Indigenous groups in the United States have been trying to work with regarding the auctioning of their sacred objects. UNDRIP does not establish any international precedent for the repatriation of collections in private hands when they are deemed to have been obtained “legally” (as if most of these sacred objects were obtained legally in the first place, when the truth of the matter is most of them were stolen or acquired in deals made in bad faith with people unauthorized to sell the objects in the first place [Ray 2016]).

Inasmuch as UNDRIP has no enforcement mechanism for managing international repatriation, the return of Indigenous cultural materials from abroad is very shaky, lengthy, and not always a success. For example, from 2008 to 2014, Mijikenda villages in Kenya collaborated with the Kenyan government and successfully had sacred totems known as vigango repatriated from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Curators at the DMNS learned in 2008 of the stolen nature of the 30 vigango in their collections and reached out to Kenyan officials to get started on repatriating the sacred objects. Thanks to willing, engaged cooperation and a prolonged effort to reach out and right the wrongs of the past on behalf of the DMNS and Kenyan government, the repatriation of the DMNS’s vigango collections was a success.

But while this specific case has a fairly happy ending, there is still more to the larger picture. The curators acknowledged that there was no legal precedent compelling them to return the vigango but that the process was ultimately a voluntary one driven by their own sense of ethics. Ultimately, the Mijikenda communities had to rely on the ethics and voluntary compliance of others because they had no legal tools that would empower them to retrieve the rest of the vigango held in the United States and Europe. The limits of relying on voluntary repatriation are quite evident inasmuch as it is known that as of 2014, there are still over 400 vigango held in at least 21 different museums in the United States alone while only several dozen have been repatriated (Denver CBS4 2014).

Even if an item is considered sacred and meets the criteria provided by UNDRP’s guidelines, it is easy and legal for a state and institution to ignore repatriation requests from Indigenous peoples abroad. Notably, in the United States, it is only NAGPRA that carries the power to enforce domestic repatriation. It has no power over Native American and Native Hawaiian materials abroad. Nor does it have enforcement power over the repatriation of non-Native American and Hawaiian materials to their countries of origin.

International repatriation requests have tended to rely upon and be treated as a matter of international diplomacy conducted between states rather than a matter of adjudication under international law. Pressure from a foreign nation is much more compelling on the global stage than that of individual tribes and thus many international repatriation claims are done by the state on behalf of the tribe. Just as DMNS officials reached out to the Kenyan government to repatriate the vigango, the repatriation of Mesa Verde cultural materials from Finland was ultimately an agreement negotiated between Finnish and US government diplomats to repatriate the items to the proper tribes. While the tribes still worked closely with Finnish officials and with the National Museum of Finland, the repatriation itself was still a nation-to-nation diplomatic agreement done on behalf of the tribes involved (U.S. Department of the Interior 2019). Indigenous groups in the United States often work with the US Department of Justice and the State. This is an example of how Indigenous groups in the United States have learned to work with the US Dept of Justice and the State Department in hopes of garnering assistance in making international repatriation requests in a nation-to-nation diplomatic interaction (Knowles 2018).

In most cases of international repatriation, the interests of Indigenous groups are thus represented by the state. It is only in some countries that the role of the state in securing the repatriation of Indigenous heritage is legally formalized. For example, New Zealand’s Protected Objects Act of 1975 works to “regulate the export of protected New Zealand objects, provide for the return of unlawfully exported or stolen protected foreign items, and record the ownership and control the sales of ngä taonga tüturu, a term that refers to items relating to Mäori culture, history, or society (Knowles 2018).” In contrast with NAGPRA in the USA (which can only be enforced concerning Native American or Native Hawaiian cultural material that still resides within the boundaries of the country) the Protected Objects Act mandates that the government of New Zealand should actively seek out illegally exported Mäori cultural material and secure its return on behalf of their respective Indigenous groups. 

The government of New Zealand has also involved itself in a repatriation program through The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa Act of 1992, an act that created a museum designed to protect and revitalize Indigenous cultures in New Zealand. The Karanga Aotearoa Repatriation Programme was implemented through the museum and receives funding and authority to assist in making international repatriation claims. Together, the New Zealand government and Te Papa have compelled over 40 museums around the world to repatriate Mäori human remains (Knowles 2018).

The reliance on international diplomacy for most international repatriation provides for far from a flawless system. The effectiveness of any system that depends on international diplomacy ultimately hinges in the first instance on the nature of the state its relationship with the Indigenous populations whose cultural heritage claims it can potentially represent. In contrast to New Zealand or the US, Mexico, for example, has a national law that places the ownership of all cultural artifacts into state hands. The 1972 Federal Law on Archaeological, Artistic and Historic Monuments and Areas declared state ownership over all pre-Columbian artifacts as a measure to protect against the looting and smuggling of cultural materials. Article 27 makes state ownership abundantly clear: “Archaeological monuments, both movable and immovable, are the inalienable and imprescriptible property of the nation (UNESCO 1972).” While enacted with the intention of protecting pre-Columbian artifacts, the law has also effectively precluded modern Indigenous groups in Mexico from any claims to heritage pre-Columbian cultural material. 

While this legal framework may protect heritage from foreign looting and theft—and enrolls the state in efforts to retrieve heritage that has been removed from Mexico—it does this on behalf of the country rather than for Indigenous groups. Thus, repatriated material once retrieved is sent to the museums in Mexico City, and as a result these remain out of Indigenous hands. Lacking a law like NAGPRA, and operating under a political system that has a long history of marginalizing and discriminating against Indigenous groups and has only provided minimal forms of recognition to them very recently (Comparative Constitutions Project 2015), Indigenous groups have little recourse for demanding domestic repatriation within the country – leading to a very tense and complex relationship between the Mexican government and the Indigenous populace when it comes to questions of cultural heritage repatriation. In contrast to the case in New Zealand, Mexico’s stated objective to recovering all pre-Columbian artifacts is ultimately not made on behalf of its Indigenous population — and paradoxically can result in repatriation that reproduces and may even amplify the marginalization of Indigenous groups and further alienate their heritage.

Well aware that many of their institutions have long depended on foreign cultural material, many museums in the global North fear that the removal of this material will result in the widespread demise of museums. For many if not most, their views of repatriation and the policies they are willing to contemplate are driven by this fear—a fear that overrides their rhetorical acknowledgement of Indigenous rights to heritage. Tongva tribe member and archaeologist Desiree Martinez’s statement for The Bristol News sums up the Indigenous perspective on the repatriation controversy in museums: “As Native Americans, we are in a constant state of mourning, knowing that our ancestors’ graves have been disturbed and their remains and burial goods removed to sit on museum shelves, all over the world (Colwell 2019).” Ultimately in practice, however, any feelings of loss that Indigenous communities may have felt since the items were stolen and retained by museums tend to be subordinated to the fear of what losing those objects means for institutional survival.

The world of museology has undoubtedly been forced to confront questions about repatriation as this issue has gained growing traction in domestic and international discussions about heritage. However, the museum world is reacting to this shift in very different ways that are shaped in no small part by the lack of any overarching international legal framework and by a highly variable patchwork of national ones. Thus in the United States, many museums see NAGPRA as a threat, and because of this legislation, they tend to be more open to repatriation and cooperation with Native American Indigenous groups, while notably being far less consistent in how they respond to claims made by groups from abroad. European museums in particular are struck by fear at the thought of repatriating collections that are largely the product of their respective histories of colonialism. UNDRIP remains little more than a “gentlemen’s agreement” that does little to prevent individual institutions from effectively resisting international repatriation claims.

Mexico’s protective federal ownership of all pre-Columbian artifacts as a method of preventing looting and black-market sales has stripped its unrecognized Indigenous groups of their access to any internationally repatriated cultural materials. While UNDRIP is a groundbreaking declaration defending Indigenous rights and protections, it is unenforceable and hinges upon nations making the choice to cooperate. International repatriation will always remain anemic without international legal precedent and enforcement. As Chip Colwell expertly put, “The ability of Indigenous people to reclaim cultural property shouldn’t depend on borders” (Colwell 2017). Arguably, until enforceable international laws exist, international repatriation will be conducted as a matter of political negotiation—with states and institutions exercising far more power than Indigenous communities.

If repatriation has come to dominate much of the current discussion about what the decolonization of museums and heritage should involve, it is important to recognize critics who have noted that it should address more than just the return of objects but also needs to address imbalances of power in representation itself. An important path into this emergent discussion focuses on other types of collection that include intangible heritage and documentation. The ethnographic collections of many museums include digital files, such as images and recordings, of Indigenous peoples and knowledges—all of which have been framed within Western knowledge systems and remain under museum control. Jim Enote, Director of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center at Zuni, stated at the 2012 After the Return: Digital Repatriation and the Circulation of Indigenous Knowledge workshop at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, “We are not talking about ownership really if we are just getting a copy. That is not the same thing. If it is truly repatriation we get the ownership of it. Do we have to say this was a gift from the museum or now that we have this image or recording do we have to say courtesy of? No, unless we own it then it is not truly repatriation” (Enote 2012, quoted from Bell, Christen, & Turin 2013, 8).

From this perspective repatriation also should involve ceding reproductive power and authority back to source communities. In the view of many critics merely sharing digital copies is insufficient if the museum still maintains a degree of ownership and control. Jennifer Kramer’s statement on physical repatriation should thus equally apply to digital representations: “Physical repatriation is assumed to be a restorative and beneficial solution to the historical problem of cultural objects having been removed from native communities and native possession…but ownership shifts and is contested (Kramer 2004, 169).” Ownership reflects and influences relationality, the transfer of power through contested ownership, and how these discourses tie into understandings of collective agency and relational power.

Short-Comings and Moving Forward in Decolonization Methodologies

Ultimately even broader questions may be at stake in arguments over repatriation – in ways that critically highlight what the term “decolonization” has meant in museological practice. In her work “Resisting Extraction Politics: Afro-Belgian Claims, Women’s Activism, and the Royal Museum for Central Africa” Sarah Demart has thus documented how Afro-Belgian communities have sought to grapple more expansively with the legacies of Belgian imperialism in the Royal Museum for Central African in Brussels. She notes widespread feeling of invisibility stemming from long-term institutional erasure of the Central African diaspora in Belgium. Belgian institutions have thus been highly reluctant to the efforts by this community to challenge their ultimate representational authority. What is at stake here is more than merely the transfer of control over collections but in fact the control over representation. Belgian museums have thus been willing to take largely temporary inclusionary measures within specific exhibits; however, they ultimately remain unwilling to address the ongoing dispossession experienced by those of Congolese descent residing in the former colonial power. Museums may well engage with quantitative “diversity” policies in an effort to appear more inclusive, but the truth is that such measures fall short of effecting any structurally transformative measures in how the museum addresses source communities and their representation. More a form of “rhetorical decolonization” than anything else, such limited measures leave intact the postcolonial legacies inherent in the institution, failing to address how institutional power to represent remains an enduring legacy of the same imperialism that produced collections in the first place. 

Giblin et al find a similar phenomenon taking place at the British Museum – a superficial “decolonial” mission manifesting through temporary exhibits with paid admission, in contrast to the free permanent exhibits that routinely draw in visitors both domestic and international.  “…while museum decolonization remains dominated by temporary projects, as exemplified by the case studies in this issue,” Giblin et al state, “decolonial projects will fall short” (Giblin et al. 2019, 483).

This calls into question the usefulness of repatriation as a tool of decolonization and its implementation in different contextual frameworks. It becomes clear how repatriation as part of a decolonial framework can function more effectively in some contexts, as seen in United States NAGPRA legislation and New Zealand’s federal involvement in restoring Indigenous ownership to cultural materials both domestic and abroad, but can also instead reinforce colonial frameworks in places like Mexico which see holistic national ownership of Indigenous cultural materials repatriated to the state. The usefulness of repatriation as a tool of decolonization methodology is highly contingent on the specifics of its implementation and the ensuring of an actual manifest transfer of authority and power to Indigenous groups as wards of their own cultural materials. While indigeneity is inherently a metaphysical reflection of relationality between Indigenous peoples and the colonial state, the authority of the powers at play can be found in questions of control and authority over cultural materials, highlighting the need to center Indigenous empowerment and authority over cultural materials when using repatriation as a tool of decolonization.

As its forms of discourse become more and more mainstream in the public eye and museums, the question of decolonization is realized as highly complex, as the reaches of settler colonialism run wide and deep. But decolonization goes further beyond the material and outwardly violent. Linda Tuhiwai Smith looks at the relationships between knowledge and imperialism through her citation of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s “colonization of the mind,” in which she describes as “…show[ing] the relationship between knowledge, research and imperialism, and then discuss[ing] the ways in which it has come to structure our own ways of knowing…The knowledge gained through our colonization has been used, in turn, to colonize us…”(Smith 1999, 68). The introduction of decolonization frameworks has the potential to bring forward and center Indigenous resurgence and active resistance, cultural revitalization, and an approach to settler colonialism that examines the holistic impacts of imperialism on Indigenous populations via ongoing violence and dispossession, both material and immaterial.

The Necessity of Collaboration Over Blind Decolonization Attempts

Engaging in decolonization processes and extending the olive branches of collaboration are poor ideas for museums as these institutions move forward into the future with the legacies of the past. On the contrary, despite documented shortcomings in decolonization processes undertaken by institutions with colonial and imperial legacies, the urgency in continued engagement with collaborative practices and decolonizing processes is only more apparent through the mixed bag of successes, failures, and the experiences in between. To forgo attempts to improve current conditions and engage with transfers of power from institution to community simply because the processes are not perfect would be to continue downplaying and even ignoring the legacies with which institutions are beginning to publicly contend. Decolonization is far from a single process, but is instead a series of processes to be undertaken on a case-by-case basis with some common threads including repatriation/restitution, Indigenous voices in museums via collaborative projects, holistic reassessments of permanent exhibits and collections, and an examination of the role of temporary versus permanent exhibitionary practices.

The decolonization of museums involves deep reassessments of the museum as institution and its power relationship with its audiences, source communities, and the state. This urgency can be found in the need to address institutional fear and reluctance to engage in decolonization, bureaucratic roadblocks preventing the return of cultural materials, and the institutional failures in undertaking decolonization projects born from the museum’s concept of its role, and the role of source communities, in the institution. The complexities of the processes highlight the interconnectedness between the material and immaterial aspects of decolonization and the necessity to engage with both, ensuring the true repatriation of cultural material, the long-lasting intellectual shifts in power between institution and community, and how settler colonialism, imperialism, and Indigeneity are conceptualized within and outside of academic spaces.

Repatriation as an act and process is highly contextually-specific, especially on the international stage where the laws and regulations surrounding Indigenous populations and institutional ownership can wildly vary from nation to nation. Its effectiveness as a tool of decolonization processes remains on a case-by-case basis through an assessment of whether the power imbalance between institution and community of origin is addressed and confronted. The act of repatriation can empower source communities through the relinquishing of institutional ownership, or it can reaffirm the colonial power via the assertion of the custodial state in managing Indigenous affairs. These complexities make repatriation as an act of decolonization far from a blanket solution but something to be handled with a high degree of situational awareness in order to be a useful tool of decolonization processes and not a further affirmation of colonial power and influence.

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Originally written 26 January 2022, posted 09 May 2024.