Germany returns 19th century remains to Hawaii

The body overseeing Berlin's museums handed over Hawaiian ancestral remains, collected by a German naturalist in the 19th century to Hawaiian authorities on Friday. The remains of 32 individuals, known as "iwi kupuna," were handed over to representatives of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a semi-autonomous state agency directed by Native Hawaiians.

The remains were part from collections that the heritage foundation took over from Berlin's Charite hospital in 2011 and whose provenance it is researching. The foundation said the bones were acquired by collector and naturalist Hermann Otto Finsch around 1880 during a voyage to the South Pacific and were sent to Berlin. Discussions about repatriating the remains had been ongoing since 2017.

The German foundation has said it will return human remains from "colonial contexts" if the countries and groups they come from are known and their return is desired. In addition to the human remains, the Berlin foundation plans to return to Hawaii this year funerary items that were removed from burial caves around 1885.