United Kingdom: The University of Edinburgh in Scotland has handed over the skulls of four Paiwan warriors to Taiwanese Indigenous leaders.
According to the University, the repatriation is the first of its kind for Taiwan and comes as Edinburgh and similar institutions across Europe confront their colonial past.
“This repatriation is the culmination of international cooperation between the university and the Taiwanese community,” Professor Tom Gillingwater, chief of anatomy at the university, said in a statement.
“We are committed to addressing our colonial legacy, and this repatriation is the latest action we have taken in line with our longstanding policy of returning items to appropriate representatives of the cultures from which they were taken,” Mr. Gillingwater added. The skulls were given to representatives of Taiwan’s Council of Indigenous People and the head of Mudan township, a community in southern Taiwan close to where the warriors were killed in 1874.
As per historical data, the four Paiwan warriors were killed during a Japanese punitive expedition to Taiwan carried out in retaliation for the massacre of 54 shipwrecked sailors from the Ryukyu Islands in 1871.
According to reports, the skulls were taken as trophies to Japan by an American military adviser and then transferred through two other owners before they were given to the university in 1907.
The UK university remarks that “Edinburgh holds one of the largest and most historically significant collections of ancestral remains, notably skulls.”
According to Taiwanese government records, the Paiwan are the country’s second-largest Indigenous community, with a population of just over 102,000 people in 2020.
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