HONOLULU (May 5, 2025) – A team representing the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) and Hui Iwi Kuamoʻo is on its way back to Hawaiʻi after receiving iwi kūpuna (ancestral remains) in formal ceremonies this week from the National Museums of Northern Ireland – Ulster Museum (NMNI Ulster).
OHA CEO Stacy Ferreira said, “with deep humility and reverence we witness the healing of a long-standing kaumaha (sadness). The return of our iwi kūpuna is about restoring dignity, healing generations, and reaffirming the living spirit of our ancestors.”
Belfast, Northern Ireland -28th April 2025 : Photo by William Cherry/Presseye
This repatriation was years in the making. In October 2021, OHA put in a claim for the repatriation of five iwi kūpuna and five mea kapu (sacred objects) believed to be at the museum. Museum staffers could not immediately locate three of the iwi kūpuna. In April 2022, a team from Hawaiʻi traveled to Ireland and retrieved two iwi kūpuna plus the mea kapu. At the time there was a clear commitment from the Ulster Museum staff to continue searching. That search came to an end when the three missing iwi kūpuna were located in November 2024.
Upon notification that the iwi kūpuna were found at the museum, Hui Iwi Kuamoʻo and OHA collaborated with the museum to make arrangements for a second repatriation.
Hui Iwi Kuamoʻo founder Halealoha Ayau said that the removal of the iwi kūpuna from Hawaiʻi was illicit and a form of desecration, adding that the iwi will be reintered on Hawaiʻi Island.
“We don’t have to know who these people are, we just have to know they are Hawaiian,” Ayau was quoted as saying in an interview with BBC News. “The living have a responsibility to bring them back and to replant them into our land. They can continue their journey to decompose, become elemental again, and their spirit(s) allowed to travel on.”
Belfast, Northern Ireland -28th April 2025 : Photo by William Cherry/Presseye
Kathryn Thomson, chief executive of NMNI said that the repatriation represents the museum’s commitment to address past wrongs. “Whilst the motivation behind the acquisition of ethnological material can appear strange today, it reflected curiosity about the wider world and a desire to represent diverse cultures. However, the European bias and power imbalances that often characterized this collecting have left a complex and sensitive legacy for us to address today.”
It is believed that ethnologist Gordon Augustus Thomson of Belfast, Ireland, traveled to Hawaiʻi Island in 1840, found and removed the iwi kūpuna from burial caves and donated them to the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society in 1857. The iwi kūpuna and moepū were then included in a 1910 donation to the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery, a precursor to Ulster Museum and NMNI.
The repatriation team included Halealoha Ayau, Halona Tanner, Mana and Kalehua Cáceres, Kamana Cáceres, Keoki Pescaia, Ulu Cashman, Koʻiahi Panua, and Kalei Velasco representing Hui Iwi Kuamoʻo, and representing OHA were Kamakana Ferreira, OHA Compliance Archaeologist and Kūʻike Kamakea-ʻŌhelo director of ʻŌiwi Well-Being and ʻĀina Momona.
