Historically, the role of museums has been the collection and display of objects of cultural, historical and religious importance.
They also served as a public place for education and enjoyment, a place where items could be preserved and research could be conducted by scholars.
The museum experience often provided people access to objects and artifacts from cultures around the world.
The curiosity and interests of the public fuelled the collection, purchase, donation and display of objects in museums.
Unfortunately, illegal collecting, theft and other unethical tactics were undertaken during the late 1800s and early- to mid-1900s, with some items, including human remains and grave objects, coming into museum collections.
While most museums did not place human remains on display, these remains were often stored in boxes, far removed from their original resting places.
In 1990, the United States passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
Repatriation is the return of objects, artifacts, skeletal remains or other aspects of cultural heritage to their place of origin or to the descent community of origin.
The act provides a process for museums and federal agencies to return cultural items such as human remains, funerary objects and sacred objects to lineal descendants and culturally affiliated tribes and native Hawaiian organizations.
One of the first steps museums and federal agencies had to undertake was the creation and maintenance of an inventory of cultural items in their collection.
These inventories provided the basis for repatriation requests from Indigenous groups within the United States to return skeletal remains, sacred objects and artifacts.
Another important component of the act is repatriation grants, which provide financial support to assist museums, tribes and native Hawaiian organizations in their request for repatriation of items.
The act has its limitations and has not completely achieved the goals of addressing the rights of descendant communities, but it was an important step to change the ways museums collected and stored human remains, funerary goods and sacred objects.
Many Canadian museums looked to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act as a way to change their practices, create inventories of collections and consider ways objects were displayed.
From 2016 to 2018, the Royal British Columbia Museum (RBCM) offered repatriation grants to BC First Nations and organizations to help in consultation, documentation and repatriation of cultural items, ancestral remains and burial items.
Recently, the RBCM and the First Peoples’ Cultural Council created the Indigenous Repatriation Manual, released this past June, to support communities and museums in the early stages of repatriation from local, national and international museums.
It is hoped this manual will assist museums and communities in the repatriation process and see ancestral remains and cultural items returned to their place of origin.
Nadine Gray is a Kamloops-based archeologist and an anthropology and archaeology Instructor at TRU.