ABSTRACT
It is well documented that museums and universities world-wide still have unethically acquired ancestral remains in their collections. This is particularly true when it comes to the remains of Khoesan individuals collected from South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. Remains of Khoesan and other Indigenous African people were collected by southern African institutions, including museums, in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries to support race-based and pseudo-scientific study, often through illicit trade, exhumation, and grave-robbing. These remains were collected without the consent of the deceased or their families and were treated as commodities by the museums and researchers who acquired and studied them. Starting in 2017, Iziko Museums of South Africa, the Commonwealth Association of Museums, The Museum Association of Namibia, and National Museums Botswana launched a three-year collaborative Project to address unethically obtained ancestral remains held at various institutions, develop policy related to the management of these remains, and begin the process of repatriating individuals. This paper discusses the challenges faced by Iziko Museums of South Africa as it approaches the issue of repatriation and restitution and reports on the first year of the Southern African Human Remains Management Project (SAHRMP).
