Museums and Repatriations: Returning Ancestors - 21 September 2026
The Nineteenth International Conference on the Inclusive Museum is pleased to announce the special workshop “Museums and Repatriations: Returning Ancestors” taking place on Monday, 21 September 2026.
Museums and Repatriations: Returning Ancestors
Monday, 21 September | 5:00–6:00 PM
Nelson Meers Foundation Auditorium Chau Chak Wing Museum
Join us for a special event exploring the contemporary challenges and possibilities of repatriating Ancestral remains held in museums.
The event will feature two presentations followed by a Q&A session:
‘Why Ancestors Can’t Stay in Museums’
Leah Lui-Chivizhe Scientia Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities & Languages, Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture, UNSW
‘Engaging with Care: The Returning of Ancestral Remains’
Melissa Malu Head of Pasifika Collections & Engagement, Australian Museum
The consequences of colonisation across the Australian-Pacific region include the appropriation and removal of human remains from Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, and Pacific Islander communities. As museums increasingly consider what decolonisation might mean in practice, the confronting history of Ancestors held within museum collections for more than a century is prompting renewed work with descendant communities to explore culturally safe and respectful approaches to their return.
This special event brings together Dr Leah Lui-Chivizhe and Melissa Malu to consider contemporary issues surrounding the repatriation of Ancestral remains, examining what their return means for communities and museums, and the responsibilities of collecting institutions in this process.
Our Speakers
Leah Lui-Chivizhe is a cultural historian of the Torres Strait Islands and Scientia Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of New South Wales. Her current research focuses on working with nineteenth-century museum collections from the Torres Strait in ways that strengthen Islander connections to pre-colonial histories of human and more-than-human relations and contribute to decolonial praxis in collecting institutions. She is the author of Masked Histories: Turtle Shell Masks and Torres Strait Islander People (MUP, 2022), which was highly commended for Australian History in the 2023 NSW Premier’s History Awards.
Melissa Malu is Head of Pasifika Collections and Engagement at the Australian Museum, where she brings her Tongan and Fijian heritage to her transformative work in cultural preservation and community development. She is dedicated to integrating traditional Indigenous knowledge into contemporary frameworks and ensuring that these perspectives receive rightful recognition within mainstream institutions. Through her work, Melissa continues to amplify Pasifika voices, strengthen cultural heritage, and drive positive change across local and international networks. She was the lead curator for the Australian Museum’s Wansolmoana Gallery.
