2024-09-18
In this issue of the Memorias Disidentes Journal we seek to address the processes of patrimonialization, restitution, repatriation and return of ancestors to their territories to promote the staging of reflections, debates, experiences. We propose to make more complex the views and approaches on key concepts related to the topic such as bodies-territories, restitution, reburial, reparation, re-dignification and other associated concepts. At a global level and for several decades, different processes of return and reburial of ancestors' bodies to their territories have been generated in response to the demands promoted by various indigenous movements and activisms. In South America in particular, this issue has developed in a different way among the different countries, perhaps motivated by the preeminence, in some contexts, of colonial relations that inhibit and make invisible indigenous agencies and rights enshrined in international regulations. However, in recent decades this issue has begun to be activated in some countries while it has deepened in others, being central to some ethnopolitical agencies of different peoples that, faced with the collecting and patrimonialization of their ancestors and neo-extractivist practices on the territories, promote interpellations and challenges to these situations. These impacts are also reactivated through institutionalized and standardized practices that reconvert bodies into objects of collections, repositories and into matter susceptible to management and intervention. In this context, various indigenous organizations have developed proposals for their own research and seek collaborations with non-indigenous researchers to promote the return of ancestors and sacred objects in order to heal the territories of life. With this dossier we hope to be able to broaden the panorama of the subject with the contribution of new examples as well as to put into discussion the concurrence of other variables that intersect in the development of these processes. Guiding thematic axes: - examples of processes of restitution, repatriation and return of bodies of ancestors and/or associated material culture. - institutionalization, regulations and protocols - collecting and patrimonialization of bodies of ancestors and material culture. - conceptual and methodological discussions on restitution/repatriation. - archival studies and community work linked to repatriations, restitutions, returns and reburials. - legal and ethical demands and claims for reparation, re-dignification and territorial compensation. - epistemic, ontological and political debates and interpellations on excavation, exhibition, studies, intervention, management, restitution or return of bodies. - policies of self-management, control and indigenous management of ancestors in museums, repositories, landscapes. -the introduction of other ways of managing and carrying out repatriations and reburials.
