Final Report: Cape Town Workshop
Written By: Dr. Jeremy Silvester, Museum Association of Namibia
Introduction
Museums in southern Africa are in the process of transformation. Many museums were established during the colonial period and reflected a colonial agenda in terms of their collections policy and practices. Museum workers in Namibia today are actively engaged in creating new community-based museums with a more inclusive approach to both governance and exhibition development. One of the most disturbing legacies that urgently needs to be addressed in the `decolonisation’ of museum collections is that many contain human remains.
Archaeologists argue that ancient human remains can provide important scientific information. However, there has also been widespread recognition that the acquisition of the remains of human corpses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by many museums was unacceptable. The collection of human remains was a process that `dehumanised’ the people whose remains were acquisitioned as `specimens’. The most obvious evidence of this is the fact that, even when the identity of the people must have been known, the individual bodies are, normally, nameless and described only as examples of an ethnic type with a number, not a name.
Two major criticisms have been made of the trade in human remains. The first is that the context within which `collecting’ took place was that museums were complicit in the development of racist, pseudo-scientific, theories which formed the foundations upon which white supremacist policies were built. The second is that the methods used to obtain bodies were totally unethical and could be simply described as `grave robbing’ with the absence of informed consent from the families or communities from which the bodies or skeletons were obtained. It is also widely believed in many communities in Namibia that the collection of the mortal remains of the dead was linked to the decapitation of leaders of anti-colonial resistance. These beliefs make the return of the, generally anonymous, human remains sensitive, but also central to the reconstruction of the pride and identity of many communities in Namibia.
IZIKO Museums are one of the two umbrella organisations that represent state controlled museums in South Africa. IZIKO covers 12 museums and historical houses in the Western Cape Province as well as a Planetarium and a Social History Centre. One of the museums in the network is the IZIKO South African Museum in Cape Town. The museum has identified human remains in its collection, the majority of which seem to have been obtained from Namibia in the early twentieth century. IZIKO would like to remove these human remains from its collection and return them to Namibia.
The prospect of the return of a large number of human remains from Namibia highlights the urgent need for the development of a Policy on Human Remains in Museums for Namibia. The National Museum of Namibia holds a collection of human remains which, in at the time of a report published shortly after independence, consisted of 55 individuals (Kovacs, 1991). Two additional sets of human remains have been returned from museums in Germany: 20 in 2011 and a further 35 in 2014 (with, apparently only 4 of these 55 ancestors being identified by
name). The two returns probably doubled the number of individual human remains in storage at the National Museum of Namibia. Further returns from Germany and from South Africa are extremely likely, but will be problematic unless a policy is developed which sets out an agreed procedure for dealing with human remains once they are held by the National Museum of Namibia.
The Director of IZIKO Museums, Ms Rooksana Omar is, currently, the President of the Commonwealth Association of Museums (CAM) and has been working in partnership with CAM to develop a project which will enable IZIKO to return the unethically collected human remains in their collection to neighbouring countries. IZIKO wants to see the `deaccessioning’ of these human remains as an opportunity to work with colleagues in Namibia and Botswana to facilitate public discussion on the issue of human remains in museum collections.
IZIKO and CAM convened an initial workshop in Cape Town in February, 2017 to present an overview of the human remains in its collection and initiate planning and dialogue. The initial focus was on South Africa, but colleagues from the National Museum of Botswana, National Museum of Namibia, Museums Association of Namibia and University of Namibia were also invited to attend. The invitations
requested participants to cover their own travel and accommodation costs, but I was able to obtain a refund of the cost of my flight. Unfortunately, only the Senior Curator of Ethnography at the National Museum of Botswana, Ms Winani Kgwatalala and myself (from MAN) were able to attend.
It was agreed that we would submit reports to other stakeholders at home upon our return. The Museums Association of Namibia was requested by IZIKO and CAM to facilitate a similar workshop (with other stakeholders) in Namibia in early 2018 and to develop a small mobile exhibition on the history of the process and the significance of the returns. It was emphasised that IZIKO should formally approach the National Heritage Council of Namibia to initiate the actual process of returning individual remains and to also involve the relevant Ministries that would be responsible for facilitating the process.
The process of developing a policy and guidelines on the treatment of human remains in existing collections and those being returned from overseas museums is not just about developing new forms of `collections management’, but the process of return is linked to the development of a new vision of the role of museums in society in Africa. The vision can be linked to the emergence of a more `democratic’ model for museums. In this model the relationship between the museum and the communities that they serve is central. The recent UNESCO Recommendation on Museums, endorsed by Namibia, has stressed the importance of this relationship.
Download the entire report here:
Written By: Dr. Jeremy Silvester, Museum Association of Namibia
Introduction
Museums in southern Africa are in the process of transformation. Many museums were established during the colonial period and reflected a colonial agenda in terms of their collections policy and practices. Museum workers in Namibia today are actively engaged in creating new community-based museums with a more inclusive approach to both governance and exhibition development. One of the most disturbing legacies that urgently needs to be addressed in the `decolonisation’ of museum collections is that many contain human remains.
Archaeologists argue that ancient human remains can provide important scientific information. However, there has also been widespread recognition that the acquisition of the remains of human corpses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by many museums was unacceptable. The collection of human remains was a process that `dehumanised’ the people whose remains were acquisitioned as `specimens’. The most obvious evidence of this is the fact that, even when the identity of the people must have been known, the individual bodies are, normally, nameless and described only as examples of an ethnic type with a number, not a name.
Two major criticisms have been made of the trade in human remains. The first is that the context within which `collecting’ took place was that museums were complicit in the development of racist, pseudo-scientific, theories which formed the foundations upon which white supremacist policies were built. The second is that the methods used to obtain bodies were totally unethical and could be simply described as `grave robbing’ with the absence of informed consent from the families or communities from which the bodies or skeletons were obtained. It is also widely believed in many communities in Namibia that the collection of the mortal remains of the dead was linked to the decapitation of leaders of anti-colonial resistance. These beliefs make the return of the, generally anonymous, human remains sensitive, but also central to the reconstruction of the pride and identity of many communities in Namibia.
IZIKO Museums are one of the two umbrella organisations that represent state controlled museums in South Africa. IZIKO covers 12 museums and historical houses in the Western Cape Province as well as a Planetarium and a Social History Centre. One of the museums in the network is the IZIKO South African Museum in Cape Town. The museum has identified human remains in its collection, the majority of which seem to have been obtained from Namibia in the early twentieth century. IZIKO would like to remove these human remains from its collection and return them to Namibia.
The prospect of the return of a large number of human remains from Namibia highlights the urgent need for the development of a Policy on Human Remains in Museums for Namibia. The National Museum of Namibia holds a collection of human remains which, in at the time of a report published shortly after independence, consisted of 55 individuals (Kovacs, 1991). Two additional sets of human remains have been returned from museums in Germany: 20 in 2011 and a further 35 in 2014 (with, apparently only 4 of these 55 ancestors being identified by
name). The two returns probably doubled the number of individual human remains in storage at the National Museum of Namibia. Further returns from Germany and from South Africa are extremely likely, but will be problematic unless a policy is developed which sets out an agreed procedure for dealing with human remains once they are held by the National Museum of Namibia.
The Director of IZIKO Museums, Ms Rooksana Omar is, currently, the President of the Commonwealth Association of Museums (CAM) and has been working in partnership with CAM to develop a project which will enable IZIKO to return the unethically collected human remains in their collection to neighbouring countries. IZIKO wants to see the `deaccessioning’ of these human remains as an opportunity to work with colleagues in Namibia and Botswana to facilitate public discussion on the issue of human remains in museum collections.
IZIKO and CAM convened an initial workshop in Cape Town in February, 2017 to present an overview of the human remains in its collection and initiate planning and dialogue. The initial focus was on South Africa, but colleagues from the National Museum of Botswana, National Museum of Namibia, Museums Association of Namibia and University of Namibia were also invited to attend. The invitations
requested participants to cover their own travel and accommodation costs, but I was able to obtain a refund of the cost of my flight. Unfortunately, only the Senior Curator of Ethnography at the National Museum of Botswana, Ms Winani Kgwatalala and myself (from MAN) were able to attend.
It was agreed that we would submit reports to other stakeholders at home upon our return. The Museums Association of Namibia was requested by IZIKO and CAM to facilitate a similar workshop (with other stakeholders) in Namibia in early 2018 and to develop a small mobile exhibition on the history of the process and the significance of the returns. It was emphasised that IZIKO should formally approach the National Heritage Council of Namibia to initiate the actual process of returning individual remains and to also involve the relevant Ministries that would be responsible for facilitating the process.
The process of developing a policy and guidelines on the treatment of human remains in existing collections and those being returned from overseas museums is not just about developing new forms of `collections management’, but the process of return is linked to the development of a new vision of the role of museums in society in Africa. The vision can be linked to the emergence of a more `democratic’ model for museums. In this model the relationship between the museum and the communities that they serve is central. The recent UNESCO Recommendation on Museums, endorsed by Namibia, has stressed the importance of this relationship.
Download the entire report here:
