Whether UK museums should repatriate human remains to source communities is again under discussion, after organisations in England, Guernsey and Ireland returned Maori remains to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in October.
The British Museum’s rejection of a claim to two Torres Strait Islander skulls from an indigenous inhabitant has also prompted debate.
Warrington and Guernsey museums were among the institutions that recently returned Maori heads (Toi moko) and ancestral remains (koiwi) to New Zealand.
The restitution is part of a trickle of successful repatriation requests. Institutions that have returned human remains in the past 10 years include Manchester Museum and Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History (see box).
In a controversial move, in 2008 the British Museum decided to return to New Zealand nine fragmentary Maori bones, while retaining seven tattooed heads claimed by the Te Papa Museum.
The British Museum is under fire again after a Torres Strait Islander, Lui Ned David, told The Australian newspaper about his “unbelievably painful” experience when he tried to claim two native skulls donated to the museum in 1889 by British researcher Alfred Haddon.
“The claim was rejected [last year] as the museum trustees could ‘not be clear that the process of the mortuary disposal of the skulls had been interrupted’,” says a British Museum spokeswoman, adding that many of the skulls were created for trade or exchange.
Public benefit
The trustees felt public benefit was better served by retaining the human remains, adds Jonathan Williams, the museum’s deputy director.
But Tristram Besterman, a former convener of the Museums Association’s (MA)ethics committee, is critical of the British Museum’s “defensively retentionist mindset”.
Most UK museums have formulated their own policies for the treatment of human remains in their collections. Crucially, the Human Tissue Act, which came into force in 2005, made it legal for nine national museums in England to deaccession human remains.
A 2003 report by the government-appointed Working Group on Human Remains was a precursor to the Human Tissue Act. But Besterman considers the Department for Culture, Media and Sport guidelines ineffectual, as they “water down” the working group’s recommendations.
Besterman says that the crux of the issue is consent: do western institutions retain remains, for instance, with the consent of their descendants? “The MA’s ethics committee should now take the lead as this is pre-eminently an ethical, rather than a legal, issue,” he says.
The last MA policy statement on repatriation was issued in 2006.
The British Museum’s rejection of a claim to two Torres Strait Islander skulls from an indigenous inhabitant has also prompted debate.
Warrington and Guernsey museums were among the institutions that recently returned Maori heads (Toi moko) and ancestral remains (koiwi) to New Zealand.
The restitution is part of a trickle of successful repatriation requests. Institutions that have returned human remains in the past 10 years include Manchester Museum and Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History (see box).
In a controversial move, in 2008 the British Museum decided to return to New Zealand nine fragmentary Maori bones, while retaining seven tattooed heads claimed by the Te Papa Museum.
The British Museum is under fire again after a Torres Strait Islander, Lui Ned David, told The Australian newspaper about his “unbelievably painful” experience when he tried to claim two native skulls donated to the museum in 1889 by British researcher Alfred Haddon.
“The claim was rejected [last year] as the museum trustees could ‘not be clear that the process of the mortuary disposal of the skulls had been interrupted’,” says a British Museum spokeswoman, adding that many of the skulls were created for trade or exchange.
Public benefit
The trustees felt public benefit was better served by retaining the human remains, adds Jonathan Williams, the museum’s deputy director.
But Tristram Besterman, a former convener of the Museums Association’s (MA)ethics committee, is critical of the British Museum’s “defensively retentionist mindset”.
Most UK museums have formulated their own policies for the treatment of human remains in their collections. Crucially, the Human Tissue Act, which came into force in 2005, made it legal for nine national museums in England to deaccession human remains.
A 2003 report by the government-appointed Working Group on Human Remains was a precursor to the Human Tissue Act. But Besterman considers the Department for Culture, Media and Sport guidelines ineffectual, as they “water down” the working group’s recommendations.
Besterman says that the crux of the issue is consent: do western institutions retain remains, for instance, with the consent of their descendants? “The MA’s ethics committee should now take the lead as this is pre-eminently an ethical, rather than a legal, issue,” he says.
The last MA policy statement on repatriation was issued in 2006.
Key claims
- In 2011, the Natural History Museum agreed to return 138 ancestral remains to the Torres Strait Islands. So far, 22 items have been returned.
- In 2008, the University of Oxford agreed to a request by the Australian government and the Ngarrindjeri Heritage Committee to return three sets of human remains.
- In 2003, Aboriginal elders took possession of four skulls from Manchester Museum, which were removed more than a century ago by explorers.