ABSTRACT
This chapter is the third episode in a trilogy tracking the trajectory of Ancestral Human Remains at the Auckland War Memorial Museum (AWMM). It reflects on the author’s experiences as a curator (Rotorua Museum), museum ethnographer (Pitt Rivers Museum) and director Māori (Auckland Museum) from an engaged Māori tribal descendant perspective (Arawa and Tainui confederation of tribes). The trilogy documents 130-plus years of AWMM’s inappropriate collection, international trade, museum obfuscation and attempted repatriations. This chapter provides a detailed, reflexive account of how the museum’s five-year repatriation program came in to being. If not for the ethical fragility of mono-cultural museum governance which chose to ignore and then exclude the source community voice from its decision making leadership, the program would have set the benchmark for museums worldwide to aspire. This chapter provides museums with valuable signposts of where and where not to travel if the final goal is the development of meaningful cross-generational partnerships with source communities.
