Haunted Restitutions: Restless Ancestors and the Ghosts of Colonialism in Repatriation Policy

Affiliation

Central Piedmont Community College, Charlotte, North Carolina

Presented at

American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting, Session 8688, Sheraton New Orleans, New Orleans, LA

Abstract

This installation confronts visitors with the haunting presence of unrepatriated ancestors and the colonialism built into how museums collect and hold Native American human remains and cultural items. It uses mixed media to put people inside the spiritual, emotional, and political weight of repatriation policy, rather than let them observe it from a safe intellectual distance. Repatriation, in this work, is not paperwork. It is a spiritual and political act of restoration.

Introduction

Haunting is the right frame for the repatriation crisis. Across Native American communities, unrepatriated ancestors are not abstractions or museum specimens. They are relatives whose spirits remain unsettled, held in institutional custody as an ongoing act of colonial violence. Legal and policy language rarely conveys that harm. The vocabulary of ghosts does. This installation moves that understanding out of the page and into physical space, so visitors encounter it in the body, not just the intellect.

Research Framework

The installation combines mixed media into a multi-sensory experience that carries the weight of repatriation policy without flattening it into a chart or a talking point. It draws on research into NAGPRA legislation, institutional collection histories, and published accounts of repatriation from both tribal and institutional perspectives. Every design choice was tested against one question: does this honor the gravity of the subject while still giving visitors room to reflect, talk, and change their minds?

Key Findings

The installation stood in the Grand Ballroom Foyer of the Sheraton New Orleans throughout the AAA Annual Meeting. It pulled in attendees from across disciplines and started conversations that connected scholarly practice, institutional responsibility, and Indigenous rights. Viewers engaged with the work at length. Many told me the experiential format reached parts of the repatriation issue that a conference paper cannot touch. Arts-based research does work in policy discourse that a slide deck cannot do.

Significance & Implications

Arts-based and experiential methods matter for issues this heavy because they close a distance that academic writing usually keeps open. This installation puts visitors inside institutional colonialism and the urgency of repatriation, and it refuses the detachment that often shows up in scholarly treatment of Indigenous rights. It makes its case through experience rather than through argument. Repatriation is not a compliance checkbox. It is justice, healing, and restoration, done or left undone.

References Cited