Facing a growing number of claims for repatriation, Glasgow took the crucial but unusual decision for a City Council in 1998 to set up a cross-party working group to help the city develop a more strategic approach to returning contested artefacts. Since then, Glasgow has claimed it’s leading the UK in the repatriation of stolen or sacred items.

The city made Scotland’s first ever recorded repatriation in 1990, when the City Council agreed to return a collection of human skulls removed from North Queensland, Australia. After this event, claims on Glasgow to return artefacts from other communities in different parts of the world began to mount up. 

The most prominent were appeals made over several years to return a sacred Lakota Ghost Dance shirt, thought to have been worn at the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890 (see here for more details). The historical significance of this shirt, which had been on exhibition at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum since 1960, was first identified by a visitor to the museum in 1992. Six years after the first appeal was launched to return this shirt, the Council’s Arts and Culture Committee decided it was time to initiate a formal process to resolve this along with other restitution claims.

After extensive consultations and based on the advice of the newly formed working group, the Council approved the working group’s recommendation to return the sacred Ghost Dance shirt to the Lakota Sioux Indians of South Dakota. In 1999, the shirt was handed back at the site of the Wounded Knee massacre.

Although the working group lost its momentum after 2007, it was reinstated with a new vigour in August 2021 after Nigeria approached the city to repatriate several Benin artefacts held in Glasgow collections. Explaining the Council’s reason for re-establishing the Working Group for Repatriation and Spoliation, Cllr David McDonald said the initiative would again provide the city’s collections with “an informed civic forum” through which recommendations for repatriation can be channelled.

A total of 29 Benin artefacts are held in Glasgow collections, of which 17 are understood to be directly connected to the looting that took place at Benin City in 1897. The provenance of the other Benin items is less clear (see here for more details). 

Once again, in April 2022 the Council’s City Administration Committee agreed to accept the recommendation of the working group to repatriate 17 of these Benin objects, suggesting the cost to Glasgow of returning them would be around £30,000. However, there’s still no confirmation when these objects are likely to be heading home. A delegation from Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) visited Glasgow in June 2022 to discuss the transfer of ownership. However, it later became clear the objects will remain in Glasgow as "loans" or “until such time as transit is requested by NCMM or becomes practicable”.

At the same April 2022 Committee meeting, approval was also given for the repatriation of seven antiquities to India, together with 25 further objects to the Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux tribes of South Dakota.

The seven Indian items - the first ever repatriation by a UK museums service to India - include an 11th century carved stone door jamb forcibly removed from a Hindu temple in Kanpur and a ceremonial Indo-Persian tulwar (sword) which may date back to the 14th century. All seven objects had been donated to Glasgow’s civic museum collections. A transfer of ownership ceremony took place at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in August 2022 and their formal transfer into the hands of the Archaeological Survey of India was completed in January 2023. This time, the Indian government agreed to meet the full costs of repatriation.

There are several key elements to Glasgow’s ongoing restitution process. The first is the importance given to the need for wider consultation, instead of relying exclusively on their own museum boards and executives. This has involved reaching out and being open to the views of other museum officials, arts bodies and independent experts. The decisions of the working group have also been encouraged by the support they’ve received following media coverage of the major restitution claims. The support from the general public following media coverage of the Ghost Dance shirt played a key part in their decision to repatriate.

A commitment to maintain relationships with communities or origin is a second key element in Glasgow’s chosen process. The city’s ongoing relationship with the South Dakota Heritage Center, to which the Ghost Dance shirt had been returned 23 years earlier, was a factor in Glasgow’s willingness to repatriate a further 25 Lakota and Octet Sakowin ancestor and cultural items in 2022, items which Glasgow City museums had held in their collections since 1892. The cost of these repatriations is estimated at around £40,000.

Photo: A carved stele representing Surya, the Hindu deity of the sun

Courtesy of Glasgow Museums Collection