Returning ancestors, negotiating heritage governance: internal repatriation at the Warloka Site, Indonesia

Abstract

Abstract

Repatriation has been widely examined in international and settler-colonial contexts, but its operation within postcolonial nation-states presents a different configuration of heritage relationships that has received less attention. This article examines the internal repatriation of archaeological artefacts and ancestral human remains from the Warloka Site, Indonesia, and investigates how state institutions, archaeologists, and descendant communities negotiated competing claims concerning the location, custodianship, and stewardship of archaeological collections. Employing a qualitative design combining Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) and action research, the study draws upon interviews, participant observation, community dialogues, and documentation generated during the repatriation process. The findings show that members of the Warloka descendant communities understood repatriation as the restoration of relationships linking ancestors, descendants, and the ancestral landscape, a perspective referred to here as Returning Ancestors. The Warloka case further reveals a distinctive postcolonial configuration in which political decolonisation has occurred, yet colonial modes of heritage governance continue to shape relationships between state institutions and descendant communities within the same formerly colonised society. Building on these findings, the article develops the concept of Negotiated Heritage Governance to explain how community engagement with state institutions contributes to reshaping stewardship, responsibility for heritage care, and cultural meaning within continuing state-centred heritage structures.