ABSTRACT
In 1999, the Lakota Sioux Ghost Dance shirt, held in the Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow, was repatriated to tribal elders in South Dakota. It was associated with the Battle of Wounded Knee and considered sacred to the Lakota Sioux. As with skeletons and body parts, objects in museum collections have been requested and their care problematized by indigenous groups, academics and professionals, partly through a motif of ‘making amends’ for colonization, and a case has been made regarding the therapeutic impact of the repatriation of such material. Indeed, the Native American Graves Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) included funerary artefacts, objects of cultural patrimony and sacred objects, as well as human remains.
