Bishop Museum to initiate phased return of 10,000 artifacts to Guam, CNMI

08/04/2025 - The Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawai’i, announced on Sunday that more than 10,000 pieces from the Hornbostel Collection will be returned to Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands in phases starting this month. That includes latte stones from Guam and Rota, which are currently on display in front of Hawaiian Hall at the museum.

“The return of these pieces to the Mariana Islands fortifies a multi-year partnership between Bishop Museum, Guåhan, and the Northern Mariana Islands to collaborate through Bishop Museum’s Te Rangi Hīroa Curators and Caretakers Fellowship program and other initiatives,” said Healoha Johnston, Bishop Museum director of Cultural Resources, and curator for Hawaiʻi and Pacific Arts and Culture.

NMI Museum executive director Leni Leon told Marianas Press, “The team of 2 at the NMI Museum spent months cleaning and organizing our Garapan office to ensure we have adequate storage and exhibit spaces, as well as temperature controlled environment in preparation for the rematriation of the Hans Hornbostel Collection.” The first pieces are expected to arrive in Saipan next week. The latte stones will be transported at a later date.

Leon said the transport will come at no direct cost to the CNMI government. 

The Bishop Museum said the watershed decision came after three years of talks with government officials in Guam and the CNMI, including the Northern Mariana Islands State Historic Preservation Office. 

The Bishop Museum will host a ceremony in Hawai’i on Saturday, August 9, 2025, from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. local time at the gallery lawns to honor the return of the latte stones. Admission is free.

The Bishop Museum said it is more than a return of objects. “Rematriation is a movement focused on restoring Indigenous peoples’ relationships with their ancestral lands and cultures,” they explained. “Whereas repatriation refers to the physical return of human remains and ancestral, often-associated burial belongings, rematriation speaks to a deeper restoration and of cultural continuity.”

Report by Thomas Manglona II.