The ambitious UK Laying Ancestors to Rest policy brief from the UK Parliament's All-Party Parliamentary Group for Afrikan Reparations (APPG-AR) is characterised as addressing
the ethical and legal challenges surrounding the retention and public display of African ancestral remains in British museums, universities and other cultural institutions. It examines existing legislation, notably the Human Tissue Act 2004, and draws upon best practices from other countries as well as insights from legal experts, academics, community activists and museum professionals to provide actionable recommendations.
The goal is to facilitate the respectful repatriation of these remains to their countries and communities of origin, end their sale, public display and other non-consensual uses, which are increasingly viewed as a legacy of colonialism and cultural insensitivity.
Its recommendations aim to
to ensure the end of the public display and non-consensual uses of African ancestral remains and achieve their repatriation from UK institutions to their communities or countries of origin.
African is used in a broad sense, including remains from Pharaonic and Ptolemaic Egypt.
Government
1. All sales of human remains should be made illegal on the basis that they are not commercial objects but human beings.
2. The UK government should make these amendments to the Human Tissue Act 2004:
- The act should be amended to govern activities relating to all human remains, without exceptions for the remains of persons who died before the act came into force and more than 100 years have elapsed since their death, imported human remains as well as ‘existing holdings’.
- The act should be amended to expressly make an offence of the public display of human remains, except if appropriate consent is obtained or for religious or funerary purposes.
- The license requirement in Section 16 should apply to all human remains, without exceptions for activities relating to the body of a person, or material which has come from the body of a person, who died more than 100 years ago and before the section came into force. Museums and other institutions that hold ancestral remains older than 100 years will thus be required to obtain a license from the Human Tissue Authority for the storage of such remains.
3. The UK Culture, Media & Sport Committee should undertake an inquiry on restitution, including as a prominent subject the presence and uses of ancestral remains in British museums and cultural institutions. The inquiry’s call for evidence should request recommendations on the implementation of a programme to map the collections of ancestral remains in the UK’s national museums. - The inquiry should include a public consultation on the proposal to collectively bury and memorialise orphaned ancestors in the UK, or those ancestral remains whose identities were destroyed by colonial violence.
4. The UK government should ensure that the board of trustees of national museums include representatives from diasporic civil society organisations.
5. The UK Department for Culture, Media & Sport should establish a national, independent Human Remains Advisory Panel, following the model of the UK Spoliation Advisory Panel charged with resolving claims from people or their heirs who lost possession of cultural material during the Nazi era.
Museums and cultural and educational institutions
6. Museums and cultural and educational institutions should stop the public display of ancestral remains in their collections.
7. Museums should train individuals from UK civil society and community groups in museum cataloguing practices with the aim that representatives from the community can actively contribute to the management of museum collections of African ancestral remains.
8. Museums and cultural and educational institutions should revise their internal policies for the return of human remains, placing particular emphasis on:
- The removal of any distinctions between the return of human remains, modified human remains and cultural material. It should be up to source communities to determine what falls within the definition of ancestral remains.
- The removal of any requirements or recommendations that claims for return should be accompanied by evidence that the remains were originally subjected to a mortuary practice or were intended for such.
- The removal of any requirements or recommendations that claims for return should be made through a national government or government agency.
Funders
9. Funders should dedicate resources to research projects that intend to map the ancestral remains inventory of UK museums and other cultural institutions.
10. Funders should finance legal test cases for the return of ancestral remains to their communities or countries of origin.
Civil society and community groups
11. Civil society organisations should organise workshops that train individuals from the African diasporic community in museum and cultural institutional governance, to promote community participation in museum and other institutional boards.
12. The Black Studies Association with other stakeholders should advocate for a more comprehensive teaching of Britain’s colonial past in schools and the history of the acquisition of cultural material and ancestral remains in developing the collections of British cultural institutions.
13. Seminars should be organised that gather community, academic, legal and museum stakeholders to take forward conversations around the key issues that were raised throughout the first phase of AFFORD’s African Ancestral Remains Project.
14. African and African diasporic restitution organisations and movements should establish a common forum or informational hub in which best practices can be shared.
