The preservation and conservation of anthropological heritage at the national museum of Namibia: An evaluation of preparedness for caring for repatriated objects

Abstract

Over the past years, the calling on European museums to return cultural objects believed to have been looted, and collected from African countries during colonial times has been gaining momentum or has become a burning topic among African nations (Sebuliba et al ,2021). It has also been found that many of Namibian cultural materials or belongings were also trafficked out of the country to European countries by Missionaries and former colonizers (Silvester & Shiweda, 2020). It is against this background that Namibia has also joined other African countries in the call of restitution and repatriation of colonial objects and cultural belongings from European countries especially Germany and Finland. Although, this is a challenging process to undertake, seven repatriations process of colonial and cultural materials including human remains have so far taken place in Namibian and these materials were received from Germany and Finland respectively. This paper presents the findings and analysis of the National Museum of Namibia’s (NMN) preparedness towards the preservation and conservation of twenty-three repatriated cultural materials from the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin of Germany. The study considered a total population of seven participants from three Namibian institutions which played a major role in the repatriation of the twenty-three cultural materials. These institutions were the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture (MEAC), the Museum Association of Namibia (MAN) and the National Museum of Namibia (NMN), out of the seven participants from these three institutions each institution was represented by one participant, who was purposively sampled as they had directly worked with the repatriation of the cultural materials. The questionnaires were sent to the participants via emails and face to face interviews were conducted. A participant observation was also conducted at the ethnographic section of the NMN where the repatriated materials are kept. Data gathered was analyzed and compared to one another so that a common interpretation could be drawn. The results revealed that proper preservation and conservation of repatriated materials are being carried out however; there is insufficient space at the ethnographic collection section. Finally, this study recommends that the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture may allocate an appropriate storage and display building for repatriated materials with adequate space.