When the anatomist Georg Thilenius excavated a number of skulls and skeletons on the island of Maui in 1897, he violated the prevailing Hawaiian laws that prohibited the removal of human remains from burial sites. Nevertheless, the stolen iwi kūpuna (ancestral Hawaiian skeletal remains) reached the University of Göttingen via the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology in 1953. On February 9 of this year, 13 iwi kūpuna were returned to their descendants from Hawaiʻi during a ceremonial event.
“With this return, we express our deep respect for and solidarity with the Hawaiian culture,” said the President of the University of Göttingen, Professor Metin Tolan. The iwi kūpuna were identified by scholars working on the Volkswagen Foundation-funded research project “Sensitive provenances: human remains from colonial contexts in the collections of the University of Göttingen.” The focus was on the Blumenbach Collection and the Anthropological Collection.
“Our investigations enabled us to determine where at least some of the remains came from and how they ended up in the two collections,” said Dr. Marie Luisa Allemeyer from the Centre for Collection Development of the University of Göttingen.
For example, in the mid-19th century, a ship’s doctor sent four iwi kūpuna to the Institute for Anatomy and Surgery in Braunschweig. Via the founding director of the State Natural History Museum in Braunschweig, they finally came into the hands of a Göttingen medical student, who gave them to the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Göttingen in 1934.
Iwi kūpuna: Hawaiian skeletal remains return to the islands
“We acknowledge the anguish experienced by our ancestors, and take responsibility for their well-being (and thereby our own), by transporting them home for reburial,” said Edward Halealoha Ayau, a representative of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), who has been campaigning for the repatriation of the iwi kūpuna for years. “In doing this important work, we also acknowledge and celebrate our respective humanity, Germans and Hawaiians together in aloha, as we write a new chapter in our historic relationship as human beings.”
Ayau along with cultural practitioners Mana and Kalehua Caceres were the members of the Hawaiian delegation representing OHA. On this trip, they will travel not only to Göttingen, but also to Bremen, Jena, Berlin, and Vienna to repatriate a total of 58 iwi kūpuna.
“There has been much change in the last decade amongst museum professionals and anthropological scholars that demonstrates a better understanding of Indigenous peoples and the past injustices committed against us. We certainly acknowledge this and applaud the re-humanization of these individuals and institutions,” said OHA Board Chair Carmen “Hulu” Lindsey. “Today, these actions allow us to heal, not only as individuals but as a lāhui (Hawaiian nation).”
The OHA delegationʻs journey continued after the ceremony at Göttingen University with the repatriation of three iwi kūpuna from Friedrich Schiller University Jena. More information about this “hand over” ceremony is here.
Further information on the research project “Sensitive Provenances” and a recording of the ceremonial event at the University of Göttingen can be found via the University’s YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/ghgZECfEicw
