Swiss museums confront legacy of colonial-era human remains

Three Kawésqar ancestors are leaving Basel for Chile, reopening a national reckoning with Switzerland’s colonial legacy. On September 10, 2026, Canton Basel City returned the remains during a ceremony in the cantonal parliament. Ten members of the Indigenous community attended alongside Francisco González, head of the Pueblo Kawésqar Foundation, and representatives of the Natural History Museum Basel.

Basil Thürig, the museum’s co director, apologised to the descendants. He said the remains had been used in racial research that treated people as objects and helped legitimise racist hierarchies and colonial violence. The apology addressed a history that reaches beyond one institution. Swiss museums still hold at least 4,000 human remains from the colonial era.

For the Kawésqar community, the return restores the possibility of burial and family connection. González described the process as one of dignity and healing. He also acknowledged the distance between the people who committed the acts and those confronting them today. “We are the heirs of a history that connects us,” he said.

The ceremony gave a public face to a question long confined to museum inventories: who has the authority to hold human remains, and how should institutions respond when their collections were built through unequal power?”

At least 4,000 human remains remain in Swiss museum collections, according to the available research. The figure includes bones and other remains gathered during the colonial era and later placed in museums, university collections, archives and private holdings. Their presence challenges Switzerland’s long standing image of a country untouched by colonialism because it never governed an overseas empire.

Cultural anthropologist Konrad Kuhn says that view ignores Switzerland’s economic, scientific and social links to colonial expansion. Swiss researchers, traders and collectors travelled through colonial networks and helped build collections for cities, cantons and cultural societies. Museums competed for specimens, while gifts from people connected to institutions supplied further material.

Kuhn describes a bourgeois belief in the legitimacy of colonialism, reinforced by scientific theories that ranked people according to race. Some Swiss scientists believed they had the right to take possession of other people’s bodies in the name of research. Those ideas gave institutional cover to the removal of remains from graves and communities.

The collections are now spread across organisations with different owners and legal structures. That fragmentation makes restitution slow. Responsibility may rest with a canton, a city, a museum foundation or a private institution, depending on the provenance and ownership history of each item.”

A student’s research brought the Kawésqar remains back into public view. While examining the Natural History Museum Basel’s collections, the student found records identifying the ancestors and alerted the Chilean foundation. That discovery began the negotiations that led to the September restitution.

Provenance research then established a detailed chain of acquisition. The collection includes the skull of a male individual, probably from Tierra del Fuego, and two complete skeletons. The man was estimated to have died between 35 and 40 years old. The woman was believed to have been about 18. Investigators concluded that the skeletons had been removed together from a burial site on Santa Inés Island.

The remains reached Basel after being acquired in Punta Arenas between 1909 and 1914 by Arnold Masarey, a Basel physician and naturalist, and Ludwig Paravicini, a stockbroker and collector. Both men had links to Fritz Sarasin, who led the anthropological collection at what was then the Museum of Ethnology in Basel.

The records show why cataloguing alone is not enough. A specimen number can preserve an object’s route through an institution while obscuring the people, families and burial places behind it. Restitution depends on reconstructing both histories.”

Swiss museums face a legal and ethical task that extends far beyond one successful return. Institutions must identify the remains in their care, establish where and how they were taken, consult descendant communities and decide who can authorise a transfer. Swiss collections operate under different authorities, including cities, cantons, associations, foundations and private owners.

That structure complicates national coordination. A museum may hold incomplete records. A university may retain material transferred from an earlier institution. A private foundation may control objects gathered by a collector whose role has not been fully documented. Each case requires historical research and a process that recognises Indigenous authority and cultural practice.

Kuhn says the Swiss debate began later than in some other European countries. He also notes that recent years have brought momentum, including among local and regional museums. The discussion has so far focused on tracing origins and working through responsibility rather than relying on broad accusations or automatic legal conclusions.

The Basel case demonstrates the value of cooperation. A student identified the material, researchers reconstructed its provenance, a foundation represented the Kawésqar community and the canton authorised the return. Those steps provide a practical model, while leaving thousands of other cases unresolved.”

The Basel return gives Switzerland a concrete test for the next phase of its museum policy. The country must now move from individual discoveries to systematic inventories, transparent provenance research and sustained dialogue with communities whose ancestors are held in Swiss institutions. The scale is clear: at least 4,000 human remains require review.

That work will affect museums across the country, not only major institutions in Basel, Zurich or Geneva. Regional collections may contain remains acquired through scientific societies, missionary networks, private donations or overseas trade. Their records can be incomplete, and the historical language used in catalogues may reflect the racial theories that shaped the collections.

The Kawésqar restitution also changes the role of descendants in the process. Francisco González and the Pueblo Kawésqar Foundation helped define what the return meant and how it should be carried out. The ceremony combined an institutional apology with a community led account of dignity, memory and healing.

Swiss museums will have to decide how openly they publish collection data, how they fund research and how they handle remains that communities request for burial. The answers will influence public trust in institutions that still hold material gathered under colonial conditions. Basel has completed one return. The national inventory is only beginning.”