In recent years, many museums and universities have begun to address past colonial injustices by critically examining their collections of human remains, often leading to their restitution to their assumed countries of origins. Such efforts are usually framed as acts of recognition, reconciliation, and repair. However, the diverse difficulties and frictions that accompany restitutions often escape public attention. This post introduces some of such difficulties that need to be taken into account to understand the complexity of restitution processes.
Between the middle of the eighteenth century and the end of the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of human remains were taken from colonial contexts and brought to universities and museums, mostly in Europe and North America. These human remains either formed new collections or were added to existing ones (composed primarily from the bodies of those living at or near hospitals and centers of medical education in Europe and North America). Such collections were embedded in broader structures of colonial and imperial oppression and were often amassed by grave robbing or by other unethical or dubious means involving violence, oppression, and exploitation. A primary motivation for these collections was “race science”, premised upon the classification of humans into racial types. This “science” was forcefully used to legitimize colonial order and slavery, crafting dangerous, erroneous, but nonetheless influential arguments for racial and ethnic superiority. Although such race science has long been refuted and discarded, its afterlife – including human remains collections, but also some conceptual continuities – lingers in contemporary institutions and scientific practices. In recent years, the most concrete and visible response to this history has been the development of specific policies regarding the restitution of human remains from institutional collections to the countries and communities from which they are believed to originate.
Within Europe, the German context offers one window into countries reckoning with their colonial histories. While demands for restitution of human remains from the colonial past are not new, in Germany they have become increasingly common. Between 2011-2014, Berlin’s Charité hospital undertook a series of restitutions of human remains to Namibia, Australia, and Paraguay, drawing heightened attention to institutional collections of human remains amassed via colonial networks. Since then, numerous provenance research projects and international restitutions have been announced. In 2021, the German Museums Association produced guidelines for the care of human remains. In 2023, in an apology for colonial violence in Tanzania, president Steinmeier stressed the need for repatriations of human remains stored in Germany. Films such as Measures of Men (Der Vermessene Mensch, 2023) or The Empty Grave (Das Leere Grab, 2024) have further spread awareness of the issue, asserting a moral imperative for changing practices, including restitution, for hundreds of thousands of human remains obtained in unknown, ethically dubious, or explicitly violent contexts. This situation points to a crucial question: what are restitutions of human remains in practice?
The authors of this post are engaged in a collective research project tracing the varied and rapidly evolving landscape of practices around institutional collections of human remains, particularly concerning matters of restitution. One aspect of this project concerns the practices through which connections between remains and present-day communities are constructed and contested. In this post we focus on the political and diplomatic dimensions of restitutions. Our purpose here is to briefly emphasize the variability of restitution practices and the specific local contexts, politics, and diverse frictions that influence whether and how remains in collections are returned to their communities of origin.
The Politics of Identity in International Restitutions
Discussions about human remains from colonial contexts in institutional collections are often framed around tensions, real or perceived, between museums on the one hand, and activists demanding the restitution of remains to descendants on the other. Usually, this framing emphasizes both the historical contexts of injustice that brought remains into museums and ethical arguments for restitution. In practice, other actors and considerations also significantly influence which remains are restituted and which ones remain, at least for now, in storage. As stated by the German Museums Association guidelines for human remains, “Particularly in cases of repatriations involving a colonial context, foreign policy issues will always arise.”
International restitutions of human remains can take many forms, depending both upon the entities sending and receiving remains. Either governments or specific institutions (like museums or universities) may send remains, and either governments or specific communities may receive them, entailing distinct political concerns. For example, government to government restitution presupposes diplomatic relations, prioritization of restitution between returning and receiving countries, and often primarily a national-identity understanding of the remains. Given the potential symbolic significance of restitutions to recognize and valorize specific national, ethnic or other political identity groupings, political tensions can make some restitutions difficult or intractable.
One example is the above mentioned restitution of human remains to Namibia, which later resulted in a domestic tension with regard to whether the remains should be seen primarily through a prism of national or ethnic identity. Whether remains were seen primarily as bodies of either former national or ethnic compatriots, different treatment and places of reburial were suggested, resulting in enduring domestic tensions. Another example, in which the tension is not limited to a domestic one, is that of West Papuans and members of the West Papuan diasporic community in the Netherlands who are interested in the restitution of hundreds of remains collected from West Papua in the early twentieth century, now in Dutch national museums. Many of these same West Papuans are also supporters of the West Papuan sovereignty movement, which has been seeking autonomy and criticising Indonesian rule since the end of Dutch colonial rule in 1962. In this context, at least for those West Papuans who support sovereignty, retention of the remains in Dutch museums for the time being may be preferable to restitution to the Indonesian government, which the present Dutch government-to-government restitution policy would entail. These two examples illustrate that ascribing and prioritising ethnic or a national identities onto given human remains, and the nation-state character of many restitutions, both shape the political meanings and outcomes of contemporary handling of human remains.
Symbolic Recognition and Reparation
Another aspect of political considerations surrounding restitutions concerns the forms of addressing past injustices. Restitution of human remains may offer some measure of solace to those who care about them. It may also offer symbolic recognition of wrongdoing, whether by institutions or governments, expressed in apologies for past injustices often prefacing or attending restitutions. While symbolic recognition and other forms of reparative justice are not mutually exclusive, significant resources dedicated to the former – such as in well-funded provenance and restitution academic research projects – alongside a reluctance to address the latter, is another point of friction.
As one of us has found through research on German restitutions to Tanzania – formerly part of colonial German East Africa – expensive European provenance research projects may sit uneasily with the economic realities of the places where restitutions occur. Interviews conducted with different stakeholders in Tanzania suggest that hopes for economic reparations also motivate the desire for the return of human remains from Germany. Interlocutors in rural areas of Tanzania, where poverty dominates local concerns, indicated that they would wish to receive both the remains and simultaneously improvements in local healthcare or education. Governmental interlocutors mentioned hopes of tying the issue of restitutions of human remains to the question of potential colonial economic reparations from Germany. Reactions to a conference concerning potential future restitutions of remains at Tanzania’s National Museum included criticisms like: “They [the Germans] are planning to return the skulls, why don’t they return the gold they took!” (an online comment under an article from TimesMajira, translated from Swahili).
German president Steinmeier apologized for German colonial-era crimes in Tanzania in late 2023. Diplomatic talks between the German and Tanzanian governments about Germany’s colonial legacy, including matters of restitution and reparation, have been ongoing, and their results remain to be seen. Previously, Germany returned remains of Herero and Nama people killed and collected by German forces in Namibia (former German South West Africa) before agreeing to pay over 1 billion Euros in upcoming decades in the form of developmental aid to Namibia. The framing of these payments as aid and not as “reparations” has been met with criticism. This process has stalled due to disagreements over its rectification in the Namibian parliament, part of which included a disagreement over prioritizing either ethnic or national perspectives.
Toward a View of Restitution in Practice
International restitutions are motivated by many concerns, interests and agendas. Many factors play a crucial role in determining which remains are demanded for return and which are not, by which actors, and how practices of restitution can proceed or falter. Understanding such diverse interests and points of friction, both in their specific and general contours, is crucial to understand how restitution practices figure into broader political movements and claims for symbolic recognition and reparation. Research upon and restitution of human remains ought to be understood as a complex process composed of many intertwining factors, ranging from generational trauma, spiritual beliefs, ethnic or national identities, to diverse political, economic and diplomatic interests.
Jonatan Kurzwelly
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Paul Wolff Mitchell
