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Paper short abstract:

In distinguishing between repatriation and restitution, this paper makes an argument for restitution to be understood not as events of return but as restitutive work, that empowers African claimants, and that proposes restitution as a social process of social recovery, & the basis of a new museology

Paper long abstract:

In the settler colonial societies of the Americas, Australia and New Zealand, the concept of repatriation has signaled a politics of sovereignty between the state and indigenous communities, with returns (as in the case of NAGPRA) to take place on a proactive basis. While repatriation and restitution are often held to be synonyms or signalling a difference between an international and a local return, this presentation argues that in the field of African restitution work, the notion of repatriation refers to the legal, administrative and logistical work done by European institutions in effecting returns, as an urgent means of cleaning their hands. Recent scholarship and activist research that have argued that restitution has experienced a process of gentrification have not understood the political distinction between repatriation and restitution. This presentation makes a case for restitution to be understood not as an event of return, but as a project of restitutive work, indeed of restitutive work as a new field of museum formation and transformation. Herein, restitution has to be embarked upon and understood as a project of local claims, local empowerment and local social restoration. Far from being a new dispossession, this era of restitution heralds the possibility of rethinking museum beyond governance and preservation, with a new concept of care rooted in restorative justice.