Terevaka Archaeological Outreach (TAO) 2020 Project Report: Digital Repatriation

Abstract

The Ngaro Project presents the products of research and educational outreach conducted by Terevaka Archaeological Outreach (TAO) between 2009 and 2020. The focus of the project is to organize information originally collected by Easter Island resident and activist, Ida Luz “Piru” Hucke Atan, regarding cultural resources from the island that now reside in collections across the world. Visits to twelve museums across the U.S. helped to amass an interactive database of high-resolution images of 447 objects (www.terevaka.net/ngaro). The project not only provides an example of digital repatriation, but also provides a structure for a multimedia, online platform that could lead to additional crowd-sourcing of information to develop a more inclusive approach for museums and Indigenous communities to collaborate in the future.