ABSTRACT
Museums, academic institutions, and government agencies around the world are stepping up their repatriation efforts with the recognition that each return brings them closer to building a more just and equitable world, but in this chapter, Dr. Cusack-McVeigh highlights the tensions that arise when these returns have been made toxic. Over three decades have passed since the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) became law. Under this federal act, Native American tribes reclaim their sacred items, funerary objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. It also ensures the return of ancestors who have been torn from their resting places. Repatriation is an important form of restorative justice in the wake of a colonial past, but how can these returns support social justice and equality when these very returns threaten the health and safety of the living descendant communities receiving this toxic heritage? This contamination is a form of violence that disrupts the reciprocal relationship Indigenous communities strive to maintain with the land, the water, and the spirit world. Are these returns really an act of decolonisation or do these toxic returns simply further the legacy of colonisation?
