Page 10 - IB April 24

History History

Dr Vunidilo at a museum in Göttingen, Germany.

REVERSING THE TIDE OF COLONIAL

ANTHROPOLOGY

By Rowena Singh The seminar examined the issue of ownership and cultural
property rights relating to the appropriation of Pacific cultural
Doctor Tarisi Vunidilo has emerged as a leading voice in artefacts and human remains now housed in international
the growing movement across the Pacific in recent years to metropolitan museums.
repatriate Pacific treasures, as well as human remains from Fracesco Lattanzi from the University of Rome in Italy,
museums across Europe and other parts of the world. spoke about the remains of a Kanak chief being brought back
“Indigenous groups around the world [want] the to New Caledonia from France in 2014.
repatriation of their cultural objects, funerary materials and Ataï was beheaded in the 1878 uprising against French
human remains taken away with or without their ancestors’ colonial rule and for more than 100 years, his preserved head
consent, as a way of reasserting their cultural rights and in was either displayed or studied in several French museums,
rediscovery of their roots and identity,” she said. eventually arriving at the French National Museum of Natural
Vunidilo is a Fiji-born archaeologist and curator History. In 2014, France repatriated Ataï’s skull to New
who specialises in indigenous museology and heritage Caledonia, along with the remains of his companion, Andja,
management, and has been Assistant Professor of Archaeology in what has been described as “an act of great political and
at the University of Hawaii since 2018. cultural significance”.
In an online seminar for the Association of Social Lattanzi said that in 2015, after a year of mourning as
Anthropology in Oceania, Vunidilo and other speakers from required by the Kanak, the return of the two ancestors’
around the world discussed repatriation work they had been remains was celebrated by the grand chief of the Petit
involved in with their own indigenous communities. Couli tribe, Berger Kawa, initiator of the repatriation
process, to whom the relics had been delivered. Through
At conflict the method of ethnohistory (which combines the approaches
Vunidilo said that because museums are concerned with of history, cultural anthropology, and archaeology), and
acquiring artefacts and human remains for ethnographic thanks to ethnography (a branch of anthropology involving
and scientific research, and ensuring their preservation, the systematic study of individual cultures), it was possible
repatriation may appear to conflict with their founding to delve into the historical interpretations around Ataï, his
principles. return process, and the ties to French colonialism.
However, many anthropologists recognise the rights of The New Zealand government’s Karanga Aotearoa program
indigenous people over their cultural heritage. negotiates the repatriation of Māori and Moriori ancestral

10 Islands Business, April 2024