The Overseas Museum may return human remains from its collections to the State of Hawaii. The Senate decided on Tuesday. The decision was necessary because the city of Bremen, and not the museum, was considered the owner of the remains.
As early as August 2019, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs in Kona approached the Übersee-Museum on behalf of the State of Hawaii, which saw itself as the owner of up to eight human skulls, and asked for them to be returned. As a result, their origin was extensively researched by the museum with the help of the Senator for Culture and the German Center for the Loss of Cultural Assets.
Remaining would be inappropriate
For many, but not all of the remains, it has been possible to determine when and how they got into the museum. On the basis of the facts ascertained and for reasons of legal ethics, it was then classified as inappropriate for the skulls to remain in the museum – even if any claims by the presumed owner Hawaii were long statute-barred. The publication is therefore “a voluntary decision by the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen within the framework of recognized ethical assessments of such return requests,” according to the Senate in a statement. The basis for this is the cornerstones for dealing with collections from colonial contexts decided in 2019 by the culture ministers of the federal states, federal representatives and municipal umbrella organizations as well as various national and international ethical guidelines of the museums.
It is not the first time that the Overseas Museum has returned human remains to representatives of the countries of origin. In 2006 and 2017 Maori and Moriori remains were donated to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington, New Zealand. In 2018, two skulls from the inventory were returned to what is now Namibia.
The return of the human remains to Hawaii State officials is scheduled to take place at a ceremony at the Overseas Museum on February 8. Interested parties can follow the event via a live stream. The link should be announced in good time on the Übersee-Museum’s website.