APRIL 17, 2024, 7:00 PM EST
Collier County Museum at Government Center

GIVING BACK - A REPATRIATION STORY
Theresa Schober

In January 2024, following decades of institutional complacency and Indigenous advocacy, the Department of the Interior adopted new regulations for the return, protection, and exhibition of Native American Ancestral remains, funerary belongings, sacred items, and objects of cultural patrimony housed at institutions across the United States. Major museums such as Chicago’s Field Museum and the American Museum of Natural History in New York closed galleries, and universities are hiring specialized staff to meet the regulations' timelines. Drawing on her experiences repatriating Ancestral remains and significant cultural belongings back to their communities of origin in the United States and abroad, archaeologist Theresa Schober explores what these new regulations mean in practice and how US legislation dovetails with conversations about the return of cultural belongings and decolonizing practices in museums globally.

Theresa Schober collaborates with Indigenous communities to facilitate sharing, understanding, and preservation of their history and culture. She supports repatriation and rematriation of Ancestral remains and cultural belongings to First Nations through curatorial practice. Her experience includes serving as Director and Curator of Hli Goothl Wilp-Adokshl Nisga’a | Nisga’a Museum for the Nisga’a Nation in British Columbia, Canada where she accompanied only the second totem pole to return from Europe to its community, as well as holding leadership positions in the archaeological and museum communities in Florida, including Associate Curator in Anthropology at Florida State University.