THE JOURNEY HOME
THE JOURNEY HOME
For the past decade, cultural property rights have been discussed in the UK and around the world in several different capacities. The return of historical artifacts to Indigenous communities, a process otherwise known as repatriation, has been one result of the evolving conversation. Updated ethical standards in the museums sector worldwide have made repatriation a more common process, however, not one that is easily understood. To assist museum workers and other cultural workers on how to begin the repatriation process, there are existing toolkits, newspaper articles, hashtags, books, and other sources dedicated to the process and its challenges.
Research Project
This particular research project seeks to support the already existing resources by providing the personal experiences of cultural workers, and highlighting the challenges they faced or are currently facing. By asking questions like: “what challenges are there?”, “what kind of funding is available?” and “do cultural workers feel supported?”, this project hopes to provide a better idea of the realities of repatriation. Through mixed method qualitative data collection through interviews and an online questionnaire, a report will be written to organize the data in the hopes that cultural workers, funders, researchers, and other people looking to learn more about the realities of the situation could find it useful.
Interviews have been conducted with cultural workers from the UK and Canada to better understand the international similarities and differences. As colonialism is a large component to the displacement of cultural property throughout history, this report is very similar to a market research report between two countries with deep, connected colonial heritage.
In addition to the report, this project also hopes to collate a number of useful resources such as toolkits for cultural workers to refer to. Researching repatriation can take significant time, so this project hopes to be a notable starting point that will propel anyone to their goals through our own report and by providing other useful tools that are publicly available. By gathering as many resources as possible in one place, it is our team's hope that the user will find what they need swiftly and effectively.
The Journey Home project aims to support the continued efforts of cultural workers all over the world with what we have available to us. As a team of volunteers passionate about social and heritage justice, we hope this project is able to aid the sector in the support of repatriation efforts in one way or another.
