Lübeck museums hand over mortal remains of a man from the indigenous Selk’nam community

The human remains of a man from the indigenous Selk’nam community were handed over to a delegation from Tierra del Fuego (Chile) at Lübeck Town Hall last Friday, 11 October. The man’s skull had been sent as a gift to Lübeck Ethnological Museum by a German emigrant who was in the city of Punta Arenas in 1914. The world cultural heritage collection Kulturen der Welt contains the mortal remains of 25 individuals whose provenance has been determined in connection with a research project funded by the German Lost Art Foundation since 2022. Most of the remains were taken to Lübeck during the colonial era without the consent of relatives, having been looted from graves, for example.

Sarah Fründt represented the German Lost Art Foundation at the handover. She emphasised the importance of the moment: “Ceremonies like this fulfil several functions. The most important is to commemorate the individuals whose mortal remains were taken to Germany in connection with colonial oppression and racist science – against their own will and that of their relatives and surviving dependants – and have been kept here in Lübeck for more than 100 years. This injustice cannot be undone – it should never have happened in the first place.”

At the beginning of the 20th century, the indigenous population of Tierra del Fuego was expelled and murdered on a massive scale because European emigrants wanted to use their territory as grazing land. In addition to the massacres perpetrated by professional manhunters, many Selk’nam deported to mission stations also died of epidemics imported from Europe.

At the same time – not least inspired by the writings of Charles Darwin – there was a growing scholarly interest in indigenous peoples, so their bones became sought-after study material in the field of physical anthropology. Despite massive protests on the part of survivors, graves were opened and skulls and bones were sent to museums all over the world. Indigenous people were also put on display at the infamous so-called “ethnological expositions” at German zoos. As the years passed, the Selk’nam were considered extinct, but in 2023 the Chilean government recognised the Selk’nam as an indigenous community once again.

Since 2022 the Lübeck museums have been in talks with the organisation “Hach Saye” which represents the Chilean Selk’nam community on Tierra del Fuego. The world cultural heritage collection Kulturen der Welt organised an exhibition entitled Hoffnung am Ende der Welt [Hope at the End of the World] in collaboration with members of the indigenous community in 2023. A Selk’nam delegation visited Lübeck in September 2023 and baptised the deceased Hoshkó so as to acknowledge the man’s personal identity and enable him to be referred to by name. From the outset it was the stated wish of the community to bury Hoshkó in native soil so as to ensure he could never be exhibited or examined again.

At the beginning of 2024, Lübeck’s municipal assembly officially authorised the Lübeck museums to repatriate mortal remains, and the first remains were returned to Peru in August. The Chilean government was also open to supporting repatriation by the Lübeck museums. Under Chilean law, mortal remains must be handed over to the local Ministry of Culture, which then issues a release for burial. The Selk’nam have reservations about this procedure, however, and are calling for the remains to be handed over directly by the Lübeck museums, without going through the Chilean authorities.

Two years after restitution negotiations began, the Selk’nam have now requested that their ancestor be buried in a Lübeck cemetery as a compromise. The Lübeck museums would like to comply with this request, though they emphasise that this burial does not rule out the possibility of Hoshkó being returned to his homeland at a later date. The funeral took place directly after the handover ceremony. This was the first time that the mortal remains of an ancestor from a colonial context of violence have been buried on German soil by the community of origin.

For further information, see https://vks.die-luebecker-museen.de

To the funded project Hanseatic Citizens as Headhunters? Human Remains in the Ethnographic Collection of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck