OHA delegation travels to Germany to bring ancestral remains back to Hawaii

BERLIN >> The body overseeing Berlin’s museums this week began the process of handing over Hawaiian ancestral remains collected by a German naturalist in the 19th century to authorities in Hawaii.

Officials with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs are in Germany to repatriate a total of 58 iwi kupuna from four institutions in Germany and one in Austria.

OHA said in a news release Tuesday that the repatriation of the iwi kupuna is the culmination of years of research and coordination between OHA and European museums, anthropological and academic institutions.

“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,” OHA Board Chair Carmen “Hulu” Lindsey said in the news release.

The remains were part of collections that the heritage foundation took over from Berlin’s Charite hospital in 2011. The foundation said the bones were acquired by collector and naturalist Hermann Otto Finsch around 1880 during a voyage to the South Pacific and were sent to Berlin.

The ancestral remains were collected from Kauai, Molokai, Maui and Hawaii island, according to OHA.

The repatriations began Tuesday as the OHA delegation received eight iwi po‘o (skulls) from Ubersee Museum. By Monday, the delegation is scheduled to also receive iwi kupuna from two German universities and another museum, and from a Vienna museum.

“Human remains from colonial contexts have no place in our museums and universities,” Germany’s culture minister, Claudia Roth, said a statement. “Their return must be a priority.”

Discussions about repatriating the remains had been ongoing since 2017.

The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation has said it will return human remains from “colonial contexts” if the countries and groups they come from are known and their return is desired.

In addition to the human remains, the Berlin foundation plans to return to Hawaii this year funerary items that were removed from burial caves around 1885.

“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,” Edward Halealoha Ayau, a member of the OHA delegation, said in the news release. “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.”