Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 38, Number 12, 1 Kekemapa 2021 — Five International Repatriations from England [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Five International Repatriations from England

V I MANA I KA 'OIWI < > EMPOWERED BY OUR ANCESTRY *

By Edward Halealoha Ayau From 2010 to 2014, repatriations were conducted from five institutions located in the United Kingdom (England). During that same time period, there was one repatriation from a U.S. institution and one repatriation from a private U.S. citizen.

The first British case occurred in August 2010 and involved the Maidstone Museum in Kent whieh returned two iwi po'o (skulls) and two moepū (funerary possessions) for reburial. The iwi were carefully prepared and ceremonially reburied on Hawai'i Island. The second case involved the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in September 2011 and involved one iwi po'o whose provenance \j vv 110 jv |/ie/vuiiuiiv.v.

was unknown. These are always the most difhcult cases in terms of reburial. The third British repatriation case, in August 2013, was the most significant. It featured the Natural History Museum in South Kensington where 144 iwi po'o and one post-cranial from Moloka'i, O'ahu, and Hawai'i Island were housed. The case began with the Bishop Museum repatriation to Moloka'i in 1991. I was informed that the skull from Mo'omomi was no longer available for repatriation because it was sent to the Cranmore Ethnographic Museum in 1924, that this museum had since closed, and its Beasley Collection was disposed of after the mu-

seum was severely damaged by bombing during World War II. This started an effort to inquire with several museums and institutions in England. At one point, my then 8-year-old daughter, Hattie, read me an inventory of Hawaiian skeletal remains held at the Natural History Museum while I typed the data into a relational database. "Collection: Beasley. Bone Type: Skull. Plaee: Mumumi; Island: Malakai," she read. "I think they mean Moloka'i, Dad!" And just like that we found her, the woman from Mo'omomi whose skull had been sent to England. In searching for her, we found 143 additional kūpuna and were able to get them returned home. This case

was the last international repatriation by Hui Mālama i Nā Kūputia o Hawai'i Nei, as the 3rganization was dis5olved in January 2015. The fourth case inrolved a single iwi po'o repatriated from the 5cience Museum/Well:ome Trust in August 2013. The fifth British :ase in 2014 involved an iwi po'o repatriated from the Oxford Museum of Natural History and a brain preserved in spirit, whieh was ehal-

lenging to resolve. In the continental United States, two repatriations took plaee during this same period. The first was in April 2012 from a private citizen who onee lived in Hawai'i and whose family collected iwi from O'ahu. The second was in December 2014 from the Yale Peabody Museum involving iwi from Kōloa, Kaua'i, whieh were ceremonially reburied. ■ Edward Halealoha Ayau is theformer executive director ofHui Mālama I Nā Kūpuna O Hawai'i Nei, a group that has repatriated and reinterred thousands of ancestral Native Hawaiian remains and funerary objects.

■ Ayau prepares 144 iwi kūpuna ] for repatriation from the Natural History Museum in London. ; - Photo: Couttesy <