At the same time, museum professionals often inherit collections they did not create.

A curator in 2000 may not have excavated a grave in 1940.

Yet the institution still holds the result of that excavation.

Repatriation therefore asks present-day institutions to take responsibility for historical practices they may not personally endorse.

That can be uncomfortable.

It is also unavoidable.

Collections have histories.

The Spirit Cave dispute forced institutions to acknowledge that retaining human remains is an active decision, not a neutral default.

Every year an ancestor remains in storage, someone is deciding that storage should continue.

Once that is recognized, the burden of justification changes.