Search results
. Conservely, their manufacturing concerns stood to gain if the prices of raw materials fell. Investment in Scotland was not, however, driven only by the pursuit of profit. While the Williams thesis lays emphasis on the impact of money on industry and land, little attention has hitherto been paid to the social consequences of the repatriation of wealth and capital from the Caribbean. But it is clear that
Repatriation, as a process and as a practice, has become increasingly familiar in recent decades, both as a general topic of discussion in the media and as an academic research area. In the United Kingdom, for instance, among the aspects which have become prominent have been the complex of problems – practical, financial, ethical – surrounding refugees and displaced populations; the situation of illegal and/or clandestine migrants; calls for the repatriation of ancestral human remains (but also artefacts) from, for example, museum collections
2 Reception, internment and repatriation, 1939–40 The Spanish republicans had their own name for the mass exodus of 1939: ‘la retirada’. Literally translated as ‘the retreat’, it refers to the Republican army’s rearguard action and the civilians’ flight from Catalonia. The term ‘retreat’ offers a different perspective to defeat. It embodies a transitory quality and the absence of conclusion: la retirada signalled an intention to return. In effect, both the refugees and French authorities perceived la retirada as the start of an intervening and temporary phase
This edited transcript of conversations between an Apache cultural heritage professional, Vernelda Grant, and researcher Bridget Conley explores the knowledge that should guide the repatriation of human remains in the colonial context of repatriating Apache sacred, cultural and patrimonial items – including human remains – from museum collections in the United States. Grant provides a historical overview of the how Apache elders first grappled with this problem, following the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990) in the US Congress. She explains how and why community leaders made decisions about what items they would prioritise for repatriation. Central to her discussion is an Apache knowledge ecology grounded in recognition that the meaning of discrete items cannot be divorced from the larger religious and cultural context from which they come.
In October 2011, twenty skulls of the Herero and Nama people were repatriated from Germany to Namibia. So far, fifty-five skulls and two human skeletons have been repatriated to Namibia and preparations for the return of more skulls from Germany were at an advanced stage at the time of writing this article. Nonetheless, the skulls and skeletons that were returned from Germany in the past have been disappointingly laden with complexities and politics, to such an extent that they have not yet been handed over to their respective communities for mourning and burials. In this context, this article seeks to investigate the practice of ‘anonymising’ the presence of human remains in society by exploring the art and politics of the Namibian state’s memory production and sanctioning in enforcing restrictions on the affected communities not to perform, as they wish, their cultural and ritual practices for the remains of their ancestors.
Debates on the relevance of repatriation of indigenous human remains are water under the bridge today. Yet, a genuine will for dialogue to work through colonial violence is found lacking in the European public sphere. Looking at local remembrance of the Majimaji War (1905–7) in the south of Tanzania and a German–Tanzanian theatre production, it seems that the spectre of colonial headhunting stands at the heart of claims for repatriation and acknowledgement of this anti-colonial movement. The missing head of Ngoni leader Songea Mbano haunts the future of German–Tanzanian relations in heritage and culture. By staging the act of post-mortem dismemberment and foregrounding the perspective of descendants, the theatre production Maji Maji Flava offers an honest proposal for dealing with stories of sheer colonial violence in transnational memory.
Mercenaries are fighters who operate under special conditions. Their presence, as shadow combatants, often tends to exacerbate the violence of their enemies. That’s why the analysis focuses on the singularity of the relationship to death and ‘procedures’ concerning the corpses of their fallen comrades. As a fighter identified and engaged in landlocked areas, the mercenary’s corpse is treated according to material constraints pertaining in the 1960s. After violence on their body, and evolution towards the secret war, mercenaries favour the repatriation of the body or its disappearance. These new, painful conditions for comrades and families give birth to a collective memory fostered by commemorations.
In the aftermath of conflict and gross human rights violations, victims have a right to know what happened to their loved ones. Such a right is compromised if mass graves are not adequately protected to preserve evidence, facilitate identification and repatriation of the dead and enable a full and effective investigation to be conducted. Despite guidelines for investigations of the missing, and legal obligations under international law, it is not expressly clear how these mass graves are best legally protected and by whom. This article asks why, to date, there are no unified mass-grave protection guidelines that could serve as a model for states, authorities or international bodies when faced with gross human rights violations or armed conflicts resulting in mass graves. The paper suggests a practical agenda for working towards a more comprehensive set of legal guidelines to protect mass graves.
This article explores the history of the Alexander Ecker Collection and situates it within the larger trajectory of global collecting of human remains during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This is then linked to the specific context of the genocide in then German South West Africa (1904–8), with the central figure of Eugen Fischer. The later trajectory of the collection leads up to the current issues of restitution. The Freiburg case is instructive since it raises issues about the possibilities and limitations of provenance research. At the same time, the actual restitution of fourteen human remains in 2014 occurred in a way that sparked serious conflict in Namibia which is still on-going four years later. In closing, exigencies as well as pressing needs in connection with the repatriation and (where possible) rehumanisation of human remains are discussed.
notion is ambiguous on both the intended objectives and the exact nature of the access constraints the corridor is supposed to circumvent. The two functions of a corridor, whether it be to transit aid or civilians, can co-exist at the same time. In the latter case, the corridor may be used both for the repatriation of a population (as was the case in Turkey-Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991–96 and in Zaire-Rwanda in 1996) and for its evacuation, which remains the most common case. The evacuation can be general and massive or selective, depending on who is deemed to be under