The University has a long history of repatriating remains and items from its collection. We are committed to addressing contemporary and historic inequalities and address its past associations with the Transatlantic slave trade, colonialism and other aspects of race and racism.The University works with communities around the world to engage with our collections and facilitate the return of ancestral remains and artefacts and have had a formal policy in place to support this since 1990.The first repatriation from the University was to Ceylon (present day Sri Lanka) in 1947, which is one of the earliest recorded repatriations of human remains from a western European university.More recently, we repatriated ancestral remains to the Vedda tribespeople of Sri Lanka in 2019, and, in 2023, we returned remains of four tribal warriors to Taiwan. Our history of repatriationYearAncestral remains in the University’s collectionsReturned to1947Skull of a named individual: Keppetipola DisaweCeylon (Present day Sri Lanka)1991Aboriginal Tasmanian ancestral remainsTasmanian Aboriginal Centre1992Aboriginal Australian ancestral remainsNational Museum of Australia1997Aboriginal Tasmanian ancestral remains: hair samplesTasmanian Aboriginal Centre1988 - 2005Various returns of Maori/Moriori ancestral remainsMuseum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa2000Hawai’in ancestral remains 2000Aboriginal Australian ancestral remainsNational Museum of Australia / Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission2008Ngarrindjeri ancestral remains: Ear boneNgarrindjeri People, Australia2019Vedda ancestral remains: 9 skullsWanniyalaeto elders, Sri Lanka2023Paiwan ancestral remains: 4 skullsNational Museum of Prehistory with consultation from Mudan community2023K’omoks First Nation ancestral remains: 2 skulls K’omoks First Nation representatives, present day Canada Please note that this is not an exhaustive list of all repatriations from the University of Edinburgh.Our Policy on the Repatriation of Human Remains:"The University's policy is to return human remains, when so requested, to appropriate representatives of cultures in which such had particular significance, subject to appropriate safeguards."For further information on the University’s management of its collections, please read our collections policy. The University of Edinburgh collections management policy This article was published on 2024-10-02
