Legislation expected to be passed next week aims to streamline the process for museums in France to return human remains stored in public collections to their communities.
Among 30,000 biological specimens at Musée de l’Homme, an anthropology museum in Paris, over a third are skulls and skeletons.
They include the remains of Kali’na – indigenous people from French Guiana – brought to France in 1892 and displayed in a human zoo at Paris’s Jardin d’Acclimatation.
Corinne Toka-Devilliers located their skeletons while researching her great-grandmother, one of 33 Kali’na brought to Paris – several of whom died here.
“We discovered a list of files concerning the eight deaths with how they died. We now know that they were buried at the Levallois-Perret cemetery and five years later were exhumed to be brought to the Musée de l’Homme,” Toka-Devilliers told RFI.
It was a discovery that “allowed us to retrace their entire history”.
The legislation underway in France provides pathways to request restitution of remains, supporting descendants and community members like Toka-Devilliers.
More on this subject on the Spotlight on France podcast:
Act of reconciliation
France, which has returned looted art and artefacts taken during the colonial era, lags behind other nations in restituting human remains.
Current laws guard French ownership of items in public collections, which can only be broken up by passing special legislation case by case.
In 2012, lawmakers voted to return over 20 mummified Maori heads to New Zealand. A decade earlier France returned the body of Saartje Baartman, who was put on display in Europe in the early 19th century, to South Africa.
The new legislation aims to facilitate the restitution process.
“This bill responds to a real expectation expressed by several foreign states that have asked for the return of human remains – some for many years,” said MP Christophe Marion when he presented the bill to France's lower house of parliament in November.
“This is an act of reconciliation, a memorial act, that also recognises a scientific or colonial history that was marked by forms of violence, both symbolic and real.”
A version of the bill is expected to pass next week.
Requirements for restitution
The new legislation specifies that human remains can be returned only if they have been identified.
Only about a quarter of remains in the Musée de l’Homme are currently identified.
“We have very little information about these acquisitions. We do not know if some of the bones could have been stolen,” explained Wanda Zinger, director of anthropological biological collections at the Musée de l’Homme.
“We probably have some in the collections.”
The legislation will apply to the remains of people who died after 1500 and were acquired in conditions that “harmed the principle of human dignity”.
It excludes the return of Egyptian mummies, therefore, but includes remains acquired during the colonial era.
The remains must also connect with a living group of people, and can only be used for for burials and funerals.
“It seems a bit problematic to demand conditions for the restitutions,” said historian Klara Boyer-Rossol, who has spent years attempting to gain access to human remains in French public institutions for research purposes.
But she says the wording prevents remains from being sold or displayed elsewhere, with the phrase “funerary ends” serving to “leave open the possibilities for communities and countries of origin to use their ancestors’ remains as they wish, and above all, to be able to carry out appropriate ancestral rites”.
Returning to French territories
There are plans to apply the new law to three pending requests from Australia, Argentina and Madagascar.
However, people in French territories hoping to retrieve their ancestors may face a longer wait.
“Everything having to do with foreign countries will be resolved by this law,” says Senator Catherine Morin de Sailly, who has worked to highlight the question of returning human remains for over two decades.
“As for overseas territories, the law will require the government to provide a solution within a year.”
Tocca-Devilliers hopes the six skeletal remains with ancestral connections to her community will be returned to French Guiana.
“We have a very close and symbiotic relationship with mourning,” she said, describing the celebration that would welcome them home. “There will be a shamanic ceremony to appease the souls… There will be songs. It will really be a party.”
Additional reporting by Tiziana Marone. For more on this subject, listen to the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 104.
