This edited transcript of conversations between an Apache cultural heritage professional, Vernelda Grant, and researcher Bridget Conley explores the knowledge that should guide the repatriation of human remains in the colonial context of repatriating Apache sacred, cultural and patrimonial items – including human remains – from museum collections in the United States. Grant provides a historical overview of the how Apache elders first grappled with this problem, following the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990) in the US Congress. She explains how and why community leaders made decisions about what items they would prioritise for repatriation. Central to her discussion is an Apache knowledge ecology grounded in recognition that the meaning of discrete items cannot be divorced from the larger religious and cultural context from which they come.
patrimony and with the glory of the spirit of humanity.’22 Malraux’s dual nationalist-humanist conception of culture became Ministry dogma. ‘The mission of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs is to make the capital works of humanity, and first of France, accessible to the greatest possible number of French, to assure the vastest audience Reincorporation 69 for our cultural patrimony, and to encourage the creation of works of art and the spirit that enriches them.’23 Cultural decentralization as enacted by Malraux entailed the democratization of access to official high