Indigenous Remains Repatriated By The Netherlands To Caribbean Island Of St. Eustatius - The World News -

Leiden University acknowledged that the remains entered its anatomical collection without documented consent, a common practice during an era when Indigenous skeletons were classified as “ethnographic specimens” rather than human relatives.

: The island is also seeking to recover artifacts currently housed at William & Mary in the United States. Leiden University acknowledged that the remains entered its

"The removal of these ancestors was a violation," says Jouke Velzing, a historian and local activist on Statia. "It stripped them of their dignity and stripped the island of a connection to its pre-colonial past. For over a century, they were objects in a drawer, rather than human beings with a lineage." " says Jouke Velzing