In Western museum lingo, the return of cultural property is called “repatriation.” It’s a signed agreement, a logistical operation, a deal between governments, a transaction. In that frame, the focus is on the legal process, the paperwork and the political, dyplomatic value of material culture.But for many Indigenous communities the return is much more than that. While visiting a conference at Haus der Kultur der Welt I was introduced to the concept of rematriation. 

Rematriation restores spiritual balance and also creating a cultural context for the object, while being in the process of returning cultural property to its rightful owners. Or in its own terms, returning the property to its sacred to the mother. It recognizes that there must be ritual, ceremony, and a safe passage for these material to travel home. It centers repair, healing, community and yes, joy.

This is where The Museum of Black Futures stands. We align with rematriation because it pushes decolonial action away from European systems and logic, and towards worldviews that hold space for the spiritual, the ceremonial, and the relational. For us, this is also where the concept of spiritual reparations comes in, a term coined by our friend and collaborator, artist and poet Femi Dawkins.

Spiritual reparations is about healing what cannot be repaid in money or goods. It is restoration on the level of memory, soul, and community. Much of our heritage, our rituals, our stories, our objects, has been displaced, colonized, or erased. Spiritual reparations means reconnecting and reimagining those ties: creating new rituals, restoring old ones, and reweaving our communities. It is the spiritual preparation for the material return and repair. Clearing the way for actual reparations, systemic change, and the restitution of stolen African heritage.

Spiritual reparations work forward as well as backward. Part of it is that future generations don’t just know where they come from, but they feel rooted in something greater than themselves. They inherit a new state of being, one that reshapes their relationship to institutions, resources, nations and citizenship itself.

In this episode, we explore how rematriation and spiritual reparations intersect — and how they can shape a museum that is not only a repository of history, but a sanctuary for the future.

Sound design and production: Marcellino van Callias of La Fam Productions

Music by Oshunmare

Trumpet by Peter Somuah

Visuals by Illest Preacha