The Homeward Project

Relational Repair through Community Care

For more than a decade, the Museum has worked with Native American and Indigenous communities across the globe to repatriate and steward cultural materials in alignment with their wishes.

In 2025 – 110 years after our founding – the Museum launched The Homeward Project to accelerate this work. The Homeward Project is our enhanced commitment to audit all cultural materials in our care and support community-led decisions about their future return, stewardship, or display.

In the last year, our Cultural Resources team grew from three staff to a team of eight to support this work, and we continue to expand.

Our goal is to finally make good on our commitment to the hundreds of Indigenous communities whose belongings and ancestors we took, objectified in the name of “science,” and refused to return for decades.

Repatriation at the Museum

The Museum of Us supports the repatriation of cultural resources to all descendent communities. Ultimately, we are interested in stewarding cultural resources only with the full consent of descendent communities. Therefore, the Museum strongly supports repatriations to descendent communities both within the United States and internationally, inclusive of Native American Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities. We take an action-oriented approach that centers the perspectives and worldviews of the descendent community. We acknowledge that the repatriation of ancestral human remains and cultural resources is an integral part of confronting past injustices and enabling the practice and revitalization of cultural traditions.

Learn more about repatriation and NAGPRA at the Museum.

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In March 2026, the Museum completed the first wave of returns of its Chamoru belongings to the Guam Museum in Hagåtña, Guam.

The Homeward Project - Chamoru Repatriations