Finding a Form

This article explores the everyday challenges of collaboration between community groups and heritage organizations in England. I explore how political and ideological debates about the moral principles of repatriation (and the legal and bureaucratic frameworks that continue to bolster colonial ownership and circumscribe community relations to cultural heritage) are managed within everyday working practices, conversations, and ways of being within partnerships. I focus specifically on the challenges faced by community groups to find a form that is both recognized and useful within this fraught cultural work. I write as both an anthropologist, and a long-term member of a community association, Te Maru o Hinemihi, that has been working for more than 15 years with the National Trust, the UK and Europe's largest heritage charity advocating for the care and return home of the Māori ancestress Hinemihi.