Human Remains in Asian Museums and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

The work concerns the restitution of museum remains as a special cultural asset found in archaeological museums. The research problem concerns reverence towards human remains constituting museum exhibits on the example of Singapore museums. This type of museum inventory has become the subject of intensified restitution activities on the part of tribal minorities, indigenous peoples, who claim the right to them based on the right to worship after their deceased ancestors, the right to protect cultural, religious, and traditional heritage. Such law is based particularly on the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The research objective focuses, first of all, on the legal grounds resulting from the Declaration, and secondly, on the analysis of the inventory of selected Singaporean museums, which contain exhibits that are human remains in their collections. The main research hypothesis focuses on the statement that Singapore, as one of the few Asian countries, maintains a special regime of pietism towards the deceased, which is manifested in the way of treating and storing human remains as museum exhibits. It may be due to the country’s cultural conditions on the one hand, and religious and legal conditions on the other. That, in turn, translates into the approach of museums to restitution claims, which are increasingly being put forward by representatives of indigenous peoples in connection with the return of the remains of their deceased ancestors. These claims find their legal basis in acts of international law and collective human rights. Therefore, the work answers the questions whether museums in Singapore duly respect international law in protecting human remains and the rights of indigenous peoples, and how this translates into reverence for this type of exhibits in museum practices in connection with ICOM regulations.