A major investigation into the provenance of human remains in museum collections will be carried out in Belgium. The Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS) will map out what is in which museums. These include skulls collected in colonial times.
The historical, scientific and ethical context of the collections is examined, says KNIB. But the researchers are also looking at the legal options for returning human remains to families, institutions or countries.
“In recent decades, France, Germany and Switzerland, among others, have returned human remains at the request of family members or states,” says project leader Patrick Semal.
Village chief murdered
For example, France gave body parts of Saartjie Baartman to South Africa. She was kept as a slave and exhibited as a human attraction in Europe in the nineteenth century. French museums also returned Maori heads to New Zealand.
Belgium has a fraught colonial past in Africa. Many Belgian museums contain stolen goods and human remains, including probably hundreds of Congolese skulls.
One of these belongs to the Congolese village chief Lusinga Iwa Ng’ombe, who was murdered in 1884 by order of a senior Belgian soldier. The victim’s belongings were stolen and ended up in the AfricaMuseum in Tervuren.