Abstract A group of students at University College London’s (UCL) Institute of Archaeology critically examined the Petrie Palestinian Collection (PPC) to explore colonial legacies embedded in Western institutions. This paper reflects on our student-led initiative to decolonize the PPC and foregrounds Palestinian experiences with the collection. Motivated by the ongoing destruction of Palestinian heritage, we sought to challenge exclusionary institutional practices. We argue institutions like UCL have a scholarly and ethical responsibility to move beyond tokenistic gestures and actively engage with source communities. Despite UCL’s rhetoric promoting decolonization, our project faced significant institutional resistance, revealing the limits of current approaches. We critique the hypocrisy of institutions that continue to benefit from colonial-era collections while avoiding accountability. This study therefore calls for a radical rethinking of practices to center Palestinians in the stewardship of their cultural heritage, demanding reparative action from Western institutions.
Abstract The rise of the internet, especially social media, has amplified international trafficking and driven demand for unique cultural heritage, including mummified humans and animals. However, these preserved remains pose health and biosecurity risks due to the toxicity of embalming methods and/or suboptimal storage that can promote microbial growth. This article investigates these risks by analyzing 128 online posts from Meta platforms, e-commerce sites, webstores, and auction houses. We reveal that mummified remains sold online exhibit signs of biodeterioration, yet sellers provide no safety guidance, suggesting limited awareness or deliberate disregard of hazards. Posts also reveal noncompliance with postal regulations, underscoring the need for clearer and consistently enforced shipping policies. Until more effective measures are implemented, the public should remain vigilant and report sales of mummified remains to relevant authorities and professional bodies. Improved oversight and education are therefore essential to safeguard public health and preserve archaeological remains.
This manuscript highlights the voices of Bundjalung elders in northeastern New South Wales, focusing on the impacts of colonization, such as the continued (un)raveling of cultural practices. The authors explore how colonialism perpetuates the exclusion of Indigenous worldviews and knowledge. Nonetheless, Indigenous peoples continue to strongly demand and advocate for meaningful recognition and protection of their cultural property and heritage, rooted in their own systems of law and lore. Through a project embedded in the Bundjalung nation, they examine the value of "cultural property and rights and question whether culture can be governed or regulated. The "Stories behind the fishing net: Sitting with the aunties" initiative at Gnibi College, Southern Cross University, recorded oral histories and traditional net-weaving techniques, fostering community connection and cultural governance. The project highlighted the important roles that cultural practice and objects play in building community and culture between and among Indigenous clans within the Bunjalung nation.
Recent years have witnessed increased interest in everyday forms of heritage and the emergence of alternative terms designating cultural goods, monuments, and sites on the margins of official heritage (e.g., mundane, ordinary, informal). This paper systematically compares these terminologies to explore how their marginality challenges official discourses, offering insights into epistemic shifts within the Anglophone and Eurocentric heritage domain. Through a systematic literature review (SLR), we examined academic literature on heritage categories that fall outside official vocabularies, lists, and traditional preservation measures. Two questions guided this analysis: (1) How is each heritage term defined? (2) What values do authors attribute to these alternative designations? The research highlights tensions between traditional heritage frameworks and contemporary demands for adaptive, locally relevant approaches. In response to these emerging dynamics, and to facilitate future reflections on the issues raised by our SLR, we use the notion of liminality as a conceptual lens to reclaim the marginal status of these heritages while simultaneously emphasizing their capacity to serve as a fertile ground for critical and future-oriented heritage imaginaries. The study concludes by opening a reflection on how liminal heritage practices can inform more inclusive policymaking by challenging rigid age thresholds, reinterpreting continuity through adaptation, and expanding authenticity to include transformation.
In an era of intensifying global interconnection and mounting pressure for historical reckoning, repatriation 1 has emerged as a critical arena where museums navigate the fraught intersections of cultural diplomacy and sovereignty. 2 Once framed primarily as a legal or ethical imperative, the restitution of cultural property now functions as a strategic site of negotiation 3 that compels museums to redefine their roles within transnational networks of cultural governance. As institutions historically tasked with the stewardship of contested objects, museums today operate as diplomatic actors engaged in processes that transcend national boundaries 4 and implicate broader structures of international cooperation and historical accountability, an evolution that mirrors ongoing efforts to redefine the very role of museums within global institutions such as the International Council of Museums (ICOM). 5 This paper situates repatriation as a distinctly political practice, one shaped by transnational pressures, contested sovereignties, and shifting institutional roles. 6 As Neil MacGregor has noted in A History of the World in 100 Objects , museums use objects to tell stories about human civilization, power, and identity; the possession and narration of those objects, then, becomes central to how institutions assert authority and interpret the nation. 7
This article explores the intersection of Indigenous cultural heritage and international intellectual property (IP) law. Drawing on personal narrative, community memory, and institutional experience, it traces how, despite colonial legacies embedded within global IP regimes, Indigenous Peoples have carved out space for agency and influence through diplomatic engagement in international forums such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The article narrates and examines the evolution of Indigenous participation within WIPO's Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge, and Folklore (IGC), culminating in the landmark adoption of the 2024 WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources, and Associated Traditional Knowledge. Through the lens of "Indigenous diplomacy," it argues that Indigenous advocates have not only contested exclusion but also reshaped aspects of legal norms, contributing to a broader decolonial movement that seeks justice, recognition, and the right to control and benefit from their intellectual and cultural heritage.
In 2022, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals decided the case Oglala Sioux Tribe v. United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Like similar cases, the plaintiffs, the Oglala Sioux, challenged a US federal agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, over their granting of a permit to an industrial project, in this case a uranium mining project. The Oglala Sioux argued that the agency's environmental impact statement (EIS) was incomplete and inadequate. The court rejected the Oglala Sioux's arguments, decided that the EIS was sufficient, and ruled in favor of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Critically, even though the agency did not follow EIS procedures completely, the court applied several exemptions allowing the EIS to stand. As in other EIS cases in recent years, Oglala Sioux highlights the limitations of environmental law in the protection of US communities' local environments and cultural heritage.
In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the colonial legacies that shape Western cultural institutions. Such public engagement, however, risks falling prey to oversimplification and becoming empty. Museums, in particular, have faced a deep crisis of legitimacy in connection to the growth of the public awareness over past lootings and other cultural misappropriations. If this popular momentum runs ashore in its pars destruens , however, it will lose its potential to inspire profound societal change. Against this backdrop, the present case note offers an in-depth analysis of the experience of the Mus & eacute;e d'ethnographie de Gen & egrave;ve (MEG), which has recently reopened its doors to the public with a new mission of decolonization. This case note investigates how a museum-especially one with a problematic past, such as an ethnographic institution-can critically confront its colonial heritage while keeping the public informed and actively involved in the process.
Conditional return is a potential outcome in claims for the return of cultural property of which the rightful owners were previously illegitimately dispossessed. Conditions might include a prohibition on an object's sale or the repayment of compensation. Despite its use, there is a noticeable lack of critical discussion on the appropriateness of conditional return in these claims. Imposing conditions on the rightful owner of cultural property is impractical, ignorant of the context, and ultimately at odds with ownership and its associated rights. Drawing on examples from Nazi-era claims and Native American claims, I show that the use of conditional return is inappropriate and ultimately unhelpful in achieving the goals of restitution and fair and just solutions. This article further reveals the covert and malignant forms of conditional return that hide under power structures and assumptions of authority and expertise. Both overt and covert conditional return ought to be prohibited given their inappropriateness and impracticality in these contexts.
In January 2025, a symposium convened by Japan's National Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) adopted the Gunma Declaration on Heritage Ecosystems, a new World Heritage framework that, for the first time, explicitly references Indigenous Peoples and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) as part of the World Heritage system's "authenticity" criterion. This commentary offers a critical and reflexive analysis of the declaration's development, drawing on the author's experience as a symposium participant. It examines the tension between the declaration's transformative potential - particularly its alignment with Indigenous understandings of the inseparability of nature and culture - and the structural exclusion, silencing, and erasure of Indigenous voices witnessed during its drafting. The analysis highlights how colonial narratives of "contaminated" Indigenous cultures, "purity," and "authenticity" continue to determine Indigenous legitimacy in practice. This commentary argues that the Gunma Declaration's advances risk becoming forms of symbolic recognition and illusory inclusion unless translated into enforceable state practice. Ultimately, this commentary is offered as an act of Indigenous resurgence, urging that the future of heritage governance be grounded not in institutional rhetoric but in Indigenous self-determination and the courage to imagine the World Heritage system otherwise.
Australian government herbariums and museums are repositories of flora and fauna specimens collected from across Australia. This has occurred since before Australia was colonized and to the present time, often by explorers and researchers using Indigenous people's traditional knowledge to identify and locate culturally significant species. The colonial legacy of Australia is embedded in ex situ collections of biological specimens and related data, which mostly predate international treaties promoting benefit-sharing with Indigenous peoples for using their traditional knowledge. Collections of culturally significant biological specimens and associated data should be recognized as cultural property and managed according to Indigenous data sovereignty principles including for attribution and nomenclature. This article presents an example of Australian native tobacco biodiscovery in Australia and pathways for integrating principles of Indigenous data sovereignty for decolonization of ex situ collections and for promoting a rights-based approach.
S & aacute;mi reindeer herders employ a snow taxonomy that challenges intellectual property law's foundational distinction between natural phenomena and cultural creation. Terms like sea & eng;& aacute;& scaron; (granulated depth hoar, density 267 kg/m3, formed through constructive metamorphism) and & ccaron;earga (wind-packed snow, density 250-450 kg/m3, creating impenetrable grazing barriers) represent systematic organization of environmental knowledge that extends beyond linguistic classification to describe snow conditions actively created through traditional herding practices. This article argues that traditional snow taxonomies deserve intellectual property protection as cultural artifacts created through sustained human-environment interaction. Analysis of S & aacute;mi terminology reveals systematic coordination of physical properties, temporal patterns, spatial distribution, and functional implications for reindeer herding-intellectual achievement that transforms continuous environmental variation into discrete cultural categories embedding sustainability ethics and practical wisdom. Three doctrinal extensions provide protection: database copyright for systematic knowledge organization under Feist Publications' creativity standard; collective trademark protection for terminology functioning as cultural identifiers; and geographical indication protection for snow conditions created through traditional landscape management. Climate change strengthens these arguments by blurring natural-artificial distinctions as human activities increasingly influence Arctic conditions.
Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) contemplate the world through an interconnected lens, reflecting the integrated way life is lived and the symbiotic relationship between humans and their immediate tangible and intangible environment. Through our work at Open Restitution Africa, we have begun to see how the invocation of an IKS lens shifts the means and desired ends of restitutionary work around African artefacts (belongings) and human remains (human ancestors). In this paper we outline and demonstrate the ways in which an IKS lens frames the holistic extent of harm and loss that communities and societies of origin have experienced through the destruction and removal of cultural heritage, from their perspectives. We then bring into focus the holistic restitutionary work that needs to be undertaken to realize meaningful reconciliation, reconnection, repair, and restoration. We conclude with the lesson that communities and societies of origin regain agency by turning toward their own systems and contexts, assessing what needs to be restored there, how and with/through whom, and charting their path to meaningful restitution from that vantage point. We invite further research around how framework developers can leverage IKS to evolve their approaches to restitution to meet them on that path.
This article discusses the legal and jurisdictional challenges to safeguarding Indigenous cultural property, understood as bioculture, and the extent to which colonialism influences the law, arguing that the current, arguing that the current legal system is inherently a colonial technology formed during the 1491 encounters era in the Americas and metastasized into contemporary society. The starting proposition is that a lack of safeguards is not the challenge, given the of institutionalization of the Rights of Nature framework, adopted and adapted by the Ecuadorian Constitution since 2008 (reaffirmed November 2025). The challenge is its implementation. The article attributes this operationalizing problem to the clash that arises when a Rights of Nature framework is adapted within a Western legal paradigm that upholds Western notions of "property" on Indigenous economy functionality of biocultural assets. We examine the Ecuador v. Tagaeri and Taromenane case, decided by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2025, to illustrate this tension. Because, in its material and abstract expressions, the understanding production of property echoes the colonial legacy of Indigenous dispossession, the article suggests that a critical view of "property" is necessary to complement the Rights of Nature framework to address implementation issues.
Since the beginning of Israel's war on Gaza in October 2023, a rich body of legal scholarship has tackled various legal issues arising from Israel's overall military conduct. One issue that has received very little attention is Israel's destruction of Palestinian cultural heritage. In this article, I demonstrate how Israel's systematic destruction of Gaza's cultural heritage has been facilitated through reliance on sources and language of law. Considering this unprecedented level of destruction, I examine the role of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in applying protection and accountability measures in response to the ongoing destruction of Palestinian heritage. I suggest that these three organizations provide the State of Palestine with an entry point to demand recognition, protection, and accountability for the destruction of this heritage. Rather than approaching each organization as an end in itself, I propose engaging with the three organizations simultaneously as tools to be utilized.
This paper examines the underrepresentation of underwater cultural heritage (UCH) within the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 1972 World Heritage Convention. Although the 2001 Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage provides a dedicated framework, submerged heritage remains inconsistently recognized in World Heritage processes. The paper traces the historical development of UCH recognition, outlines challenges in classification and protection, and considers the potential of sites to be evaluated as possessing Outstanding Universal Value (OUV). It highlights the cultural-natural interconnections of UCH, the risks posed by climate change and human activities, and the need to consider sites in international waters. The authors argue for clearer criteria, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the systematic integration of UCH into nomination dossiers and management plans. This work seeks to inspire stakeholders to prioritize UCH within heritage management systems, ensuring its preservation for future generations and thereby ensuring a balanced representation of human history in the World Heritage List.
