{"id":2093,"date":"2026-02-12T18:52:05","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T18:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/?post_type=showcase&#038;p=2093"},"modified":"2026-02-13T16:13:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T16:13:41","slug":"season-6-episode-2-transcript","status":"publish","type":"showcase","link":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/showcase\/season-6-episode-2-transcript\/","title":{"rendered":"Season 6, Episode 2: Transcript"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Season 6, Episode 2: &quot;When They Come Back to Communities, You See Life:&quot; Reparations in Uganda\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/0snMm2d6v6c0n45bterdF8?si=fP5e8yQWSlmpa6VIjeLR_w&amp;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Nelson Abiti:<\/strong> the removal of those important cultural belongings \u2013 I don&#8217;t see them as objects \u2013 they got objectified when they reached museums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Derek Peterson:<\/strong> They&#8217;re answering the demands of our time for racial and social justice in a way that other world museums simply aren&#8217;t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jacob Katumusiime: <\/strong>However, I think this object still is a story of decolonization. It&#8217;s a statement, a decolonial statement, a reminder of the destruction that happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Talitha Pam: <\/strong>In the 2018 film <em>Black Panther<\/em>, directed by Ryan Coogler, a particularly striking scene occurs in the British Museum, where Erik Killmonger \u2013portrayed by Michael B. Jordan critiques the colonial acquisition of African artifacts. The scene begins with Killmonger studying an African artifact in the British museum\u2014a war axe\u2014as he engages the museum curator in a tense exchange. His pointed question, &#8220;How do you think your ancestors got this? Do you think they paid a fair price? Or did they take it, like they took everything else?&#8221;&nbsp; These questions resonate powerfully, encapsulating centuries of historical injustice and exploitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This scene ignited widespread discussions about the repatriation of African art and artifacts, particularly those held in Western museums. Repatriations \u2013 or the return of things to its homeland \u2013 has increasingly become a more familiar phrase outside of the museum community with the demands of the return of the Parthenon Marbles or Eljin Marbles depending on your perspective to Greece from the British Museum, or antiquities from Ancient Egypt. Many of the famous calls for repatriation items are for iconic and economically valuable materials, however many items that were bought, sold, extracted, stolen, and looted were invaluable for communities and cultures \u2013 and the removal extends far beyond artistic or economic value and impact the communities knowledge of themselves in the past, present, and envisioning a future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>&lt;<em>Reverb Effect\u2019s <\/em>theme music, lively and interrogative, plays behind the voice of a narrator, interspersed with historical clips of other voices&gt;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Narrator [a woman\u2019s voice]:<\/strong> How do past voices resonate in the present moment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Man A:<\/strong> \u2026hear the stories of your parent\u2019s\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Woman A:<\/strong> yeah<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Man A:<\/strong> \u2026and your grandparents\u2019 and stuff, so I\u2019m living through them or the stories they told.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Narrator: <\/strong>And how do we make sense of those voices?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Woman B: <\/strong>No, and that\u2019s the story of my life [echo]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Man B:<\/strong> And a case has been made!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Woman B: <\/strong>No, I am not trying to avoid the question, I am trying to clarify the position\u2026&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Narrator:<\/strong> What were they trying to say? And whose job is it to find out? This is <em>Reverb Effect.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>&lt;Intro theme slowly fades out&gt;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Narration:<\/strong> Welcome to Reverb Effect, the podcast exploring how past voices resonate in the present moment. In this episode, we will be investigating the path that vital cultural belongings were removed from their home in Uganda, placed on display in a museum in Britain, and then returned home. However, this goes beyond a story of movement and raises questions about what defines a community and who has power, who holds the authority to speak for it? What is lost when cultural items are forcibly removed from their place of meaning? And when, how, or even whether those losses can be recovered \u2013 legally, culturally, intellectually, and spiritually?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Talitha Pam:<\/strong> The scene in <em>Black Panther<\/em> contributed to ongoing debates surrounding the return of African cultural heritage to its countries of origin. For decades, scholars, activists, and governments have called for the repatriation of these artifacts, arguing that they belong to the communities from which they were taken. Uganda\u2019s cultural heritage offers a compelling example of how colonialism disrupted the narrative of African societies. During British rule, Uganda experienced significant cultural interruptions, including the removal of cultural artifacts, the suppression of indigenous governance systems, and the exploitation of natural resources. Traditional art, regalia, and ceremonial objects like the artifacts of the Buganda Kingdom, such as royal drums, spears, and ceremonial attire, were often looted during colonial conflicts or appropriated as trophies of conquest. These items, rich with historical and cultural significance, remain absent from Uganda, depriving current and future generations of access to their heritage. These were often taken by colonial officials or missionaries, ending up in private collections or European museums like the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Items from around the world are housed at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and in 1961, the MAA began returning objects home.&nbsp; Like all objects, these Ugandan items tell a story. They tell many stories. I, Talitha Pam, a PhD candidate in the joint Anthropology and History program at the University of Michigan, Derek Peterson, the Ali Mazrui Collegiate Professor of History and African Studies, Nelson Abiti, the Curator and Principal Conservator at the Uganda National Museum, and Dr. Jacob Katumusiime, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Johannesburg\u2019s Center for Education Rights and Transformation, share the story of the forced removal of items as they made their way from their homeland to Cambridge and back again. This is a story of religion, colonization, control, power, and demonstrates the complexity and importance of objects as they become tools for power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>&lt;Music fades in&gt;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Derek Peterson:<\/strong> Apollo Kaggwa was a leader of the Protestant armies in the late 19th century that had successfully won a war of religion, fought between different religious factions: Catholics, Muslims, practitioners of traditional religion, and Protestants. Each of them allied with different missionary cliques, each of them pursuing different political interests, each of them holding out a different vision for what the Kenya Buganda should look like. So in the late 19th century, these wars of religion inspired by converts\u2019 attachments to different religious traditions, resolved with a Protestant victory, one with the assistance of British military force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kaggwa became the prime Minister, the Katikkiro of Buganda, the kingdom, and who his position was cemented in particular in 1900 when the British Crown and the rulers of Buganda, newly installed after their military victory, signed an agreement called the 1900 Agreement, which brought Buganda within the British Empire as a kind of dependent state. So Buganda was one of several states across colonial Africa and indeed in India (which was also part of the British empire) that were acknowledged as and sort of credited and empowered to govern their people on behalf of the British Crown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Talitha Pam:<\/strong> The involvement of Great Britain in African affairs was not unique. One colonization practice was to establish a protectorate where a nation would retain a degree of autonomy and self-government, but ultimately remained under British authority especially in matters of foreign policy, taxation, and economic extraction. This arrangement meant less colonial control compared to neighboring Kenya, which was turned into a full formal colony in 1920 and placed under far direct British control. As scholar Jacob Katumusiime mentions, Kaggwa\u2019s cooperation with the British was an intentional political choice to avoid this kind of control in Uganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jacob Katumusiime: <\/strong>The Christians in another neighboring kingdom of Uganda have caused the war. You know, the religious war in Uganda; no one understands all this. He knows that if these people are denied entry, they are going to destroy us the way these other kingdoms have been destroyed. The best way, then, is to do what many have called collaboration, to collaborate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Talitha Pam:<\/strong> Ruling and controlling a people revolves around more than just weapons and fear, but also includes manipulating culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jacob Katumusiime: <\/strong>one of the things that is happening is, Kaggwa is also consolidating this power. One of the ways to consolidate the power that has been installed, you know, given to it is to is to befriend the missionary, to befriend the colonial official, the British colonial official. And so this is how these items get into the hands of generals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Derek Peterson<\/strong>: So Kaggwa was Protestant, Uganda&#8217;s leading figure, the prime minister who in the early twentieth century set about building a Protestant kingdom in part by going to war against practitioners of other religious traditions within the kingdom. This meant among other things that he raided shrines and dispossessed shrine priests, diviners, and other practitioners of traditional religion, of the instruments of their profession. That is, he was trying to focus power around his own person. He was the regent of the kingdom because the new King at the time of his investiture was only three years old. So Kaggwa was trying to build up this Protestant kingdom around Christianity, around a centralized vision of what politics should be about, and he did so in part by collecting objects and dispossessing the practitioners of older religion, religious traditions of the objects that had once made them powerful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Collecting, for Kaggwa, was not simply an academic enterprise. He&#8217;s not simply an antiquarian. He was wrecking older religious institutions, older centers of power, trying to find ways ofdispossessing them of the instruments that had once made them influential and consequential in Buganda\u2019s public life. So for him, collecting was more like looting. It was a way of reorienting politics and turning people who had formerly been men and women of consequence into subjects of the Buganda Kingdom&#8217;s center of the prime minister and the king. Many of the objects were once consequential and powerful within older definitions of public culture, older formations of public culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Talitha Pam: <\/strong>Kaggwa found eager and willing partners in the removal of key objects: British collectors impatient to fill museums with pieces from their expanding empire, in particular John Roscoe and Sir John Frazier, at Cambridge University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Derek Peterson<\/strong>: Roscoe was an amateur ethnologist, a parish curate who went off to Uganda as a missionary of the Church Missionary Society, which was the Anglican Church&#8217;s mission in colonial Africa. He was [a] somewhat reluctant and ineffective missionary. He wasn&#8217;t very keen on missionary work. He was, by contrast, quite keen on collecting ethnographic objects, in part because he hoped to become attached to Trinity College Cambridge, which was and remains a very powerful and prestigious academic institution. So he was in close dialogue throughout his missionary career with Sir John Frazier, who was an armchair anthropologist based at the University of Cambridge, who was at Trinity for much of his career, and who urged Roscoe to get engaged with collecting as part of the project that eventually led to the publication of <em>The Golden Bough<\/em>, which was Frazier&#8217;s foundational work of comparative anthropology composed in the early twentieth century. So Roscoe was one of dozens of different missionary anthropologists who Frazier engaged in collecting material about primitive religions, as he called them, and that was kind of the impetus for Roscoe&#8217;s career as a collector. He sent off literary descriptions of religion in central Africa to Frazier and other academicians, and he also made anthropological collections with an interest in buttressing his own position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They were brought off to Cambridge because Kaggwa urgently wanted them out of the kingdom, and they were folded into the collections of the Cambridge Museum as ethnographic objects, as objects that reflected on traditional culture that British anthropologists regarded as evidence of primitive religion or of traditional life. British collectors, as they incorporated them into the ethnographic museum, dispossessed them of their meaning in a way that broadly paralleled what Kaggwa was trying to do and turning them into ethnographic objects. The British curators in museum, in the Cambridge Museum, like other curators around the world, it&#8217;s not so much that they misclassified them, it&#8217;s that they misunderstood the power that they had once possessed and relocated them within a kind of antiquarian framework that made them effectively into exhibits as opposed to actors in public life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So what does it reveal about the architecture of early colonial rule in central Africa? I suppose Kaggwa would be called, according to an older lexicon, a collaborator. He certainly in a narrow sense was collaborating with Roscoe with the goal of building up power at the center. But more broadly, Buganda\u2019s politics in these years were organized around a view of public life in which the Buganda aristocracy saw itself as emissaries of Christian civilization in a way that British missionaries recognized, supported, and encouraged. So Buganda was in colonial Uganda \u2013 the British colony and protectorate of Uganda \u2013 the Buganda Kingdom was the premier African political society. It&#8217;s Protestant and Catholic men and women were agents of colonial government throughout the whole of the colony and protectorate of Uganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They went out to other places around Uganda to govern on behalf of the British Crown and on behalf of the Buganda monarchy. In that sense, colonial government in central Africa was not so much about power and resistance; in Buganda, colonialism was a shared enterprise in which African aristocrats played the key role really in authoring a new, much more hierarchical public political culture that centered around Protestantism and Christianity, and that was multiracial in character. What colonialism was about in central Africa was Uganda is about Buganda\u2019s political interest, particularly the Bugandan aristocracy\u2019s interest in building up power at the expense of neighboring societies in the early twentieth century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>&lt;Music transitions&gt;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Talitha Pam:<\/strong> The journey of cultural belongings, like those taken and relocated to Cambridge by Apollo Kaggwa and John Roscoe, from their home in Central Africa to Cambridge, back to Uganda is a tangible example of the intentional undermining and stripping of power and self-determination of a community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Over 4,000 items were taken in the early 20th century, but only 39 have been returned, including drums, mayembe \u2013 which are power objects used in spiritual and political life \u2013an eddamula, which is a type of traditional musical instrument, and even a chief&#8217;s hat. Historian Derek Peterson, in collaboration with Curator and Principal Conservator at the Uganda National Museum, Nelson Abiti, with funding support from the Mellon Foundation and the University of Michigan, were successful in returning 39 objects from the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology to the Uganda National Museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But this was not a smooth and simple process of boxing up items, putting them on a plane, and displaying them in a museum. Instead, it is a process that requires community, reflection, and intentionality. Abiti describes how these are not just objects like knick-knacks on a shelf, but rather were, and are, deeply powerful and embedded in the cultural and political landscape in the past and today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Nelson Abiti: <\/strong>they were removed from, from their humanity, stripped of from humanity, and they became objectified and made to look as things that do not matter. So that was a process of breaking the structural powers as people are crying, being weakened of the loss of their belongings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s unethical, all throughout the process, some of the cultural belongings, things meant to be handled by women. And now being handled by men who are curators, photographing an ethical, sharing the images, it&#8217;s unethical, lifting these things from one place to another, freezing them, cutting it, removing some of the things inside the objects, like drums. So there&#8217;s a lot of things that are unethical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Talitha Pam:<\/strong> Dr. Jacob Katumusiime, from the University of Johannesburg\u2019s Center for Education Rights and Transformation, has worked closely with communities and the objects themselves to understand their histories and cultural significance that is often lost as Christian colonialism took hold \u2013 erasing the meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jacob Katumusiime:<\/strong> Then these particular objects that were taken from a political class, which, partly due to its desire to rule, was always invented and not inventing, always mobilizing, symbols of power. So Christianity later became a symbol of power. Then you had to move away from these symbols that signified power during that time. So, the cross, for example, becomes a symbol of power. The Bible becomes a symbol of power. About [] which is like the the land of Asham is translated as the land. But to the land would mean like a lawyer. But in that time, it meant those who read the Bible and it was a particular class. So the symbol that these objects will be interpreted according to the political projects we shall be having in Uganda at the time they become very public. Yes, in a way, they all belong to the community, to the societies. The difference is that for particular objects, the political class always had much more power over them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Talitha<\/strong> <strong>Pam:<\/strong> So what kind of objects were removed? While the collection represents a wide range of objects, Katumsuiime is working closely with one item in particular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jacob Katumusiime:<\/strong> it&#8217;s a headband called [] in the local language. It&#8217;s called [], but it&#8217;s a headband that was or is one. So we could talk about perhaps that headband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think one, I must say that for that with the research of met, these artifacts held different spiritual, significances within the lives of the people. So if you look at the []. Oh, the headband that I have, it was worn by two different, people within the society. One was the bride, and it was meant to cover the bride&#8217;s face during the giveaway ceremony. And so the wedding, that the traditional wedding ceremony. So it was meant to signify the purity of this bride, like, the beauty is not yet revealed. So it&#8217;s the beauty still hidden. It&#8217;s it&#8217;s it was meant to cover the face the way. Today we have, on wedding days, but modern wedding days where you have the bride cover the face with a mate and they have to remove it. So even this was such to cover the face. So you see that this served not very much a spiritual role as that of a social role of perhaps the spiritual is the purity, the idea of the purity of the bride, not yet seen just being uncovered.But then it was worn by also the diviners. And so the diviners, whenever they were going to do, divination practice, they would put on that []. And so you would not see who is behind the divination, so that the diviner was not to be seen during those divination practices. So they would put on that [] and then they could do the different divination practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve met also people who say that, during dances, the [] would be used to recognize those who are the best dancers. So if someone does so well doing a traditional dance, they would get that [] and wrap it around them as a mark of of. But they would not wrap it on the head. Someone would wrap it on the head attempted, but others in the waist to show them as a mark of of honor to their dancing skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Talitha Pam:<\/strong> These objects have specific roles and power in Ugandan society, that raise ethical questions about when, if,&nbsp; how or with whom to integrate them back home. As curator Abiti outlines, its not just a matter of placing items on display. Curators like Abiti and scholars like Katumusiime work closely with communities or custodians to ensure the proper reintegration of these cultural objects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Nelson Abiti:<\/strong> These power objects that manage our society during that time were removed in order to disempower our people so that our social structure is destroyed. They didn&#8217;t know objects that were held by the chiefs were the objects that supported the kingship. And so that was the same exactly of violence that occurred with the society that must be listened to. This narratives, unless we go to the communities, you&#8217;ll not know what happened because they were hidden from people. People were meant to study the textbooks from Europe for long time. The histories were taught like that. So people were meant to believe things were okay. But now we are coming to learn with this small culture, cultural belongings, we have brought, it&#8217;s opening our minds what happened, exactly what kind of violence is, so the element of reparations, of course, we have brought the, the cultural belongings back home, and the restrictional processes has to begin. What does it mean by returning of objects? We need to get the voices of the community. What happened when they removed, what pains they caused?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the condition is the cultural belongings that we said they were sacred, that one were agreed. Uh, it was an agreement both from the custodians with the curators at Uganda National Museum. And we informed Cambridge that the six sacred objects will not be put to the public on display. They will be brought through the process. And they returned back to the Uganda Kingdom, to the community and be cared for them. We will not put those words. And we agreed we&#8217;ll be working together. We have been working together to go and see if those objects are still okay with the communities. There&#8217;s no other problem. So that one, we agreed, and for the others, we agreed together we&#8217;ll bring them. And by the way, we have taken even some of them to the communities. The communities have said right now, they don&#8217;t, they cannot keep them, but at the museum, they can, we can keep them and our children can come and see them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So when the artifacts came, we received them as a museum. We could not open. We allowed the custodians to come in the opening process, and they received these things at the museum, by performing the initiation ceremonies inside the museum, what they told us, don&#8217;t rush to bring the things to the shrine where they were kept because they were being adulterated for long. We need to perform certain ceremonies as we were building a certain house for which we&#8217;ll put them and the medium will sleep with them and talk with them. After getting all the process, they will now be integrated with others when they, they have been humanized from being objectified. So this can see what does it mean to have ethical process of returning cultural belongings. Now, this is a special cultural belonging which were in the process of the object, find them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Talitha Pam: <\/strong>However, just as these objects were once created and used to confer and legitimize social power within their communities, the narratives constructed around them today continue to shape and distribute power. The question of <em>whose<\/em> story these objects will tell remains central and, as scholar and activist Jacob Katumusiime reminds us, this is far from a neutral process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I think one of the things we might want to ask is the question of, can these objects speak or show these objects on written, be able to speak, and if they are to speak, what language will they speak? I think this is a question we might need to reflect on, because one, we will have received them. We are going to give them their first language. And the political contexts of our time shall also enable them speak either the language we want them to speak or even a different language. So the political dynamics I are going to determine what language they speak. Right now one of the questions we are negotiating is where do these objects get to go? If they go to the National Museum, they are going to speak a different language. Definitely. If they go to the communities, the kingdoms that we from which they came, they are going to speak a different language. When you go into the society, these objects meant different spiritual things. These objects were also objects of power for some people. If, let&#8217;s see, what was had this much spiritual power, if the pot was a mark of political class, of a particular class, it means that if it goes back to the society, it might hold that same significance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>&lt;Music transitions&gt;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Talithia Pam: <\/strong>Beyond the cultural and ethical ramifications of returning objects strict legal guidelines govern museums and nations adding barriers and complications to repatriations. Each item returned to its place of origin passes through a unique series of benchmarks. In the case of these 39 objects, as historian Derek Peterson and curator Nelson Abiti describe, had to navigate through a series of legal measures \u2013 some governed by international law and some by accepted museum standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Derek Peterson: <\/strong>As it turns out, British law around the export of ivory, the skins of endangered animals and other such questions are other such things are extremely forbidding and navigating the maze of legislation and administrative rules around how to get these material objects out of England to Uganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Talitha<\/strong> <strong>Pam: <\/strong>One solution to the legal complications of deaccessioning an item from a museum and returning it is through a long- term loan. However, the term \u201cloan\u201d raises other ethical questions. Why should these objects be on loan to the people they rightfully belong to? This is not the first time that objects have been returned via a loan agreement to Uganda. In the 1960s the very same Cambridge Museum of Archeology and Anthropology returned other items&nbsp; through a long term loan agreement. Abiti speaks to this tension of using the terminology of a loan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Derek Peterson: <\/strong>So the 39 objects we brought back from the Cambridge Museum to the Uganda Museum last year were loaned on a long-term renewable loan to the Uganda Museum as an inter university arrangement between the University of Cambridge and the Uganda Museum. The British government wasn&#8217;t involved in the repatriation project deliberately because to transfer title of the objects from Cambridge to the Uganda Museum would&#8217;ve involved a lengthy process of legal negotiation that would&#8217;ve had uncertain results and would&#8217;ve likely obliged us to pay the British government and its charities commission the commercial value of these objects in order to secure their transfer of title. The relevant British law about museum&#8217;s, deaccessioning objects of this kind, requires the institution to offset the value of the objects so that the charity that&#8217;s handing these objects back to their original owners is not commercially or financially encumbered by their loss. So first of all, it would&#8217;ve been expensive to transfer the title. Second, it would&#8217;ve taken a lot of negotiation and time to make it happen. The transfer of title is not off the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Nelson Abiti: <\/strong>Because people say, when are you bringing our things back? And if alternatives, they&#8217;re not there, we must shallow our pride. This is now me who works as a Ugandan, we accept the, the, the term may be demeaning to us, but consciously, when I know, uh, it comes, it has a positive impact. Uh, the, the one we returned in the early years, 1960, it came as a loan. And, uh, it has served its purpose. And we also accept that it comes as a loan. So until maybe the laws in future will change, and the, the structures of museum framework globally, when they change everywhere, everything that leaves the museum, they go in the name of loaning matches, when they reach at the airport, the term, the word restitution, politically repatriation. But for us, we made it openly. It&#8217;s a loan. Most times in other countries, they&#8217;ll say it is a restitution. But ideally, the museum agreements is a learning long-term loaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Nelson Abiti:<\/strong> That&#8217;s the reality, which we need to understand how the museums operate. For me, we took it as in a good faith, uh, that it builds our relationship to get these things back in future. I&#8217;m working as a community person, and I work also as a curator. So here now, I have to use curatorial skills in order to support the community, to access their cultural belongings. Otherwise, at the end of it, they&#8217;ll never access it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Nelson Abiti:<\/strong> And the example is that the Uganda Museum had received through the loaning process of the objects in 1962, and have been well cared for. And communities are able to access and some moments on Sundays or Saturdays, specific people are allowed to perform in session ceremonies, which they want. And so it is important for us to bring these others back in the same framework of learning that as we have worked with Cambridge University Museum, it is historical for us. We were not born, we didn&#8217;t know, but we got it through them. And we were given an opportunity through the archives to look through. And we agreed, this is the only way, because the UK government, the law does not allow things to leave the museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><strong>&lt;Music transitions&gt;<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Narration: <\/strong>On the homepage of the University of Cambridge\u2019s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology website is a link to their approach to the return of artifacts. The statement outlines the process for returning items as a case-by-case structure, but welcomes researchers and claims on the collection. Indeed, the museum explicitly acknowledges that many \u201ccollections have reached the museum in many different ways. Some artifacts, in common with those in similar museums, were acquired in a manner that was not considered legitimate or appropriate at the time, or would not be considered legitimate or appropriate today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Museums from the large scale like the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the British Museum to smaller institutions like the Kelsey Museum of Archeology at the University of Michigan all have policies and statements concerning the repatriation of items. But as historian Derek Peterson is quick to point out,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Derek Peterson: <\/strong>It&#8217;s greatly to the credit of the Cambridge Museum that they&#8217;ve answered these ethical critiques by saying, right, these objects should really go back to Uganda where they can be meaningful in a way that they will never be meaningful in this museum. I think that the Cambridge project, which is really the first of its kind, it&#8217;s the first time that I know of that ethnographic objects of this kind that are not commercially consequential have been deaccessioned or at least sent off to an institution like the Uganda Museum where they can live again and have meanings and activate histories in a way that they can never act in such a way in Britain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Talitha Pam: <\/strong>While items of cultural belonging have been returned to Uganda, the physical return is not where the story ends, but rather speaks to a new chapter in the lives of the objects as they transition from object to living cultural importance again \u2013 with the help of community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Derek Peterson: <\/strong>Myself and colleagues at Makeda University in Kampala are currently looking for people who were descendants of those who had once made these objects meaningful. Those who had once possessed these objects, people who had once used them as instruments of power we&#8217;re trying to find their descendants with the goal of understanding what happened to powerful people who were dispossessed of the instruments that had once made them people of consequence. So we&#8217;re looking for professionals, we&#8217;re looking for descendants, we&#8217;re looking for folks who can help us see what happened to powerful people, to professions, to religious traditions, to ritual centers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In other words, the conversations that John Roscoe and Apollo Kaggwa initiated in the early twentieth century about what upheld or what upholds religious traditions, in what way do ritual centers rely on objects to make places sacred and consequential? These are questions that Ugandan people had to confront at the dawn of colonial government and that we&#8217;re trying to reopen through this research project to understand what happens to epistemic traditions once the material substance that makes them meaningful is in many ways rendered out of reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Talitha Pam: <\/strong>The collection of objects returned to Uganda offer a tangible example of the histories of the colonization, extraction, and erasure of cultural connections and communities while shining a light on the power dynamics of the past and the present. The repatriation is both a radical decolonial act and a reminder of social power and class throughout Urganda\u2019s history and its contemporary world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jacob Katumusiime: <\/strong>Because the museum will be targeting different, audiences. And that determines what story gets to be told. There are objects in the Ugandan museum that are not on display for, for example, because of the contested histories around them. So even these objects are going to receive that they are going to be contested. A bit of our histories about these objects, and it should determine how much, writing history, is known of them. I would insist that that the political trajectory, that the political context of Uganda at the time should determine. So, for example, we are in a moment of transition in Uganda, political transition, where we are negotiating, who is going to be our next leader, president. And it shall be clear that the people who shall be running to look at these objects is those who used to be part of the ruling class, of the political class area. So they will also determine now with social media what stories. So we are yet to see what story gets to be told of these objects. As as historians, we shall be try we should try to be as objective in giving out the stories we have been given about these objects from the societies where they come.So we cannot, predict what how they are going to be received, and especially if they go to the museum, because when they go to the museum, it&#8217;s also a particular class that visits the museum. My mother in the village is not interested in the museum at all. It&#8217;s the particular elite class that goes to the museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><strong>&lt;Music transitions&gt;<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Talitha Pam: <\/strong>Ultimately, the reintegration of these cultural objects lay at the feet of the Ugandan people. These items are no longer static and their value is intangible, but as curator and proud Ugandan Nelson Abiti Abedo argues, you feel proud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Nelson Abiti: <\/strong>What do you feel? You feel proud. You feel your identity. You feel you are loved, and so that&#8217;s what we are looking at as a museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><strong>&lt;Music transitions&gt;<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Narrator: <\/strong>Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Talitha Pam, who envisioned, organized, and conducted interviews for this episode. And to our guests, Derek Peterson, Nelson Abiti Abedo, and Jacob Katumusiime for sharing their insights, research, and time. To learn more about the project please visit the Uganda National Museum and the Cambridge Museum of Archeology and Anthropology website. Joseph Ho is our executive producer. This is <em>Reverb Effect<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nelson Abiti: the removal of those important cultural belongings \u2013 I don&#8217;t see them as objects \u2013 they got objectified when they reached museums. Derek Peterson: They&#8217;re answering the demands of our time for racial and social justice in a way that other world museums simply aren&#8217;t. Jacob Katumusiime: However, I think this object still&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/showcase\/season-6-episode-2-transcript\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Season 6, Episode 2: Transcript<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","format":[],"categories":[84],"tags":[],"contributor":[522,306],"authors":[497],"department_or_unit":[5],"funding_sources":[],"project_date":[527],"support_partners":[],"class_list":["post-2093","showcase","type-showcase","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reverb-effect-transcripts","contributor-cheyenne-pettit","contributor-talitha-pam","authors-talitha-pam","department_or_unit-history","project_date-527","entry"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"jwho","author_link":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/author\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Nelson Abiti: the removal of those important cultural belongings \u2013 I don&#8217;t see them as objects \u2013 they got objectified when they reached museums. Derek Peterson: They&#8217;re answering the demands of our time for racial and social justice in a way that other world museums simply aren&#8217;t. Jacob Katumusiime: However, I think this object still&hellip;&hellip;","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/showcase\/2093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/showcase"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/showcase"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/showcase\/2093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2103,"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/showcase\/2093\/revisions\/2103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2093"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=2093"},{"taxonomy":"authors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/authors?post=2093"},{"taxonomy":"department_or_unit","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/department_or_unit?post=2093"},{"taxonomy":"format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/format?post=2093"},{"taxonomy":"funding_sources","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/funding_sources?post=2093"},{"taxonomy":"project_date","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project_date?post=2093"},{"taxonomy":"support_partners","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.umich.edu\/lsa-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/support_partners?post=2093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}