Helping museums lead repatriation

While most museum repatriations begin with an external request, a new international research project, led by Faculty of Information Professor Cara Krmpotich, will examine how museums can instead take the initiative in returning cultural belongings and ancestral remains. 

Krmpotich has received a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant to lead the three-year project with co-director Dr. John Harries, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Bringing together researchers, First Nations and Inuit partners in Canada, as well as museum professionals in Scotland, the project will investigate how museums can move from reacting to repatriation requests to proactively fulfilling their responsibilities. 

It will explore what an “active” approach to repatriation looks like and what information, resources, professional guidance and institutional practices museums need to make proactive repatriation possible. It will also examine how such approaches could shape museum policies, professional standards and broader understandings of repatriation. 

The research builds on an earlier collaboration between Krmpotich and Harries that piloted a proactive repatriation model at the University of Edinburgh’s Anatomical Museum. That work facilitated the repatriation of ancestral remains to one Indigenous nation while also bringing together leaders from Scottish museums, the University of Edinburgh and representatives of three Indigenous nations. The project demonstrated both the potential of proactive repatriation and the need for practical frameworks that could be adapted by museums with different collections, histories and levels of experience. 

The new partnership will investigate how proactive repatriation can work across a range of museum contexts, including institutions that have already embraced active approaches, those that have relied on more traditional, reactive models, and museums with no previous experience of repatriation. Researchers will develop practical models and recommendations that recognize Indigenous sovereignty while accounting for the varying capacities and realities of museums and their partners. The project also aims to strengthen public and scholarly discussions by integrating principles of cultural pluralism and cultural diplomacy into repatriation practice. 

The partnership includes co-applicants Alan Corbiere (York University), Alison Brown (University of Aberdeen), Heidi Bohaker (University of Toronto), Kirsten Greer (Nipissing University), Lucy Bell (Simon Fraser University) and Neil Curtis (University of Aberdeen). Institutional partners are the University of Toronto, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Aberdeen. 

The research, which will get underway in September, follows a 2025 commitment by the Canadian Museums Association to develop a national framework for repatriation.