ABSTRACT
Can objects forgive? Do museums and heritage sites have a right to ask Indigenous objects for their forgiveness? Why does repatriation of Indigenous objects focus on human remains and “secret/sacred” objects and not on those considered mundane or every day? And how can museological repatriation practices become enactments of care, respect, and mutual engagement? This piece will focus on the over 3,397 Indigenous stone tools that were collected (“salvaged”) for the Western Australian Museum over 44 years ago, and Steve Brown’s process of seeking their forgiveness for having been removed from the traditional country (or territories) of their Indigenous custodians. This piece will share methods in auto-ethnography, auto-hermeneutics, phenomenology, videography, contemplation, and practices linked to affect and emotion studies, to extend ideas of “return” to all Indigenous objects, especially those typically categorized as “archaeological.” The collection of stone tools will be explored as facilitators and mediators of “soft diplomacy” and human encounter, to enable conversations/dialogs between museums and Indigenous owners/custodians which can support the building of civil societies, including communities of peoples and objects.
