UK museum returns 39 colonial-era artifacts to Uganda

At least 39 artifacts from the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge, United Kingdom have been returned to Uganda. The items will be placed at the Uganda Museum in Kampala.

The artifacts include a drum and meat dish container from Bunyoro that was brought to Cambridge in 1920 according to Prof. Derek R Peterson from the University of Michigan, USA.

Peterson said that another item includes a collection of sacred twins (balongo) that had important ritual purposes in Buganda.

The sacred twins artifacts are planned to be taken to the Buganda Kingdom’s royal tombs from which they were taken.

A headdress made of human hair from Lango was brought to England in 1937

Peterson said that many of these artifacts were taken away in the early 20th Century by the missionary anthropologist John Roscoe who was closely tied to Cambridge.

The majority of the artifacts Roscoe collected are held in storage in Cambridge. Most have not been displayed. In 1961, the MAA returned a set of sacred artifacts to the Uganda Museum.

They include a headdress made of human hair from Lango, brought to England in 1937.

The return of these objects is supported by Mellon Foundation, New York-based private foundation with five core areas of focus and endowed with wealth accumulated by Andrew Mellon of the Mellon family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

They focus on museums, art conservation, performing arts, conservation and the environment. They are keen on higher education concentrating on humanities, scholarly communication, information technology and libraries.

The drum was one of the artifacts returned to Uganda.

Peterson serves as principal investigator for the Mellon Foundation-backed project for returning the objects to Uganda. The project is dubbed: ‘Repositioning the Uganda Museum’.

He is working with a team of colleagues to repatriate objects.

The items were returned to Uganda through the Entebbe International Airport on Saturday, June 8, 2024. The items were received by the state minister for tourism Martin Bahinduka Mugarra Martin the commissioner of the Uganda Museums Jackie Nyirachiza Besigye and the director general of the Uganda Civil Aviation Authority Fred Bamwesigye.

The Uganda National Museum said that the much anticipated cultural heritage artifacts from Cambridge University had arrived at Entebbe International Airport.

The museum expects to hold next year, a special exhibition where the returned objects' stories will be told. The project to return the items was awarded a $100,000 (sh382m) grant from the Mellon Foundation.

The project team will select a set of artifacts from the Cambridge Museum, repatriate them to Uganda, conduct research on their history and provenance, and exhibit them in the Uganda Museum, East Africa’s oldest museum.

Makerere University graduate students will assist with research. The project is seen as one small step in the larger campaign to undo the legacy of collecting in the colonial era.

“We want to put these objects back into the hands of people who made them meaningful. We want them to live again, not only as museum pieces but as part of Uganda’s public culture,” Peterson said.

He said they would repatriate many artifacts, a small subset of the hundreds of thousands of objects taken from Africa in the colonial era. He noted that the project’s biggest legacy might be establishing a set of recommendations that will guide future repatriation efforts, including research and provenance, exhibition, storage, training, and programming.

The idea is to create a sustainable model that other African museums might adopt.

“These objects have been dislocated both in space and in time,” said Peterson.

"Colonial-era collectors took them out of Ugandans’ hands and made them into specimens of ethnic identity. We want to put them back into the hands of the people who made them meaningful, to open up dialogues about the onward course of families, clans, and professions,” Peterson explained.

“Uganda is looking forward to this project, the first of its kind towards restitution,” Rose Mwanja Nkaale, Uganda’s commissioner for museums and monuments said.

“Bringing these items back and attracting those from around the diaspora to see them on the continent will also help people come to terms with their own collective memory, celebrate their rich histories and identities, and be able to pass this on to future generations,” Nkaale added.