Whose evidence counts? Indigenous oral histories, colonial archives and the return of cultural heritage

Return processes for Indigenous cultural heritage often rely heavily on colonial documentary records, despite archives frequently recording possession rather than the circumstances of acquisition. At the same time, Indigenous communities maintain oral histories that preserve knowledge of how ancestral belongings left Country, including accounts of dispossession, unequal power relations and acts of cultural safeguarding. Drawing on the Return of Cultural Heritage Program at the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, lessons from native title jurisprudence and three case studies, this paper explores how oral histories and archival records can be used together to reconstruct collecting histories. It argues that Indigenous knowledge should be afforded equal consideration in provenance research and return assessments, offering a more complete understanding of the past and a fairer basis for decisions about cultural heritage return.