New Zealand has long fought to have indigenous remains held overseas returned – now it’s reckoning with its own colonial legacy
In 2009, Āwhina Twomey received a phone call from a friend and member of her Rangitāne o Wairau iwi (tribe), asking if she could be in the South Island by 4am the following Saturday. She baulked at the early start, but then she heard the reason: Canterbury Museum had agreed to repatriate her tūpuna (ancestors), or kōiwi tangata (ancestral remains) to her iwi.
It had taken the iwi 70 years of battling the museum, and now their ancestors were coming home.
