French Guiana: "We are no longer willing to wait for the return of our ancestors' bodies after 133 years of suffering."

More than one hundred and thirty years ago , as part of ethnographic and colonial exhibitions in Paris, notably in the Jardin Zoologique d'Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne or in the great universal exhibitions (1878, 1889, 1900...) or colonial exhibitions (1894, 1896, 1906, 1907...), populations from all over the French empire were exhibited. The aim was to entertain visitors, legitimize colonization, and make "specimens" (living or dead) available to scientists... Some would die in these human zoos.

Their bodies were then studied by anthropologists, doctors, and craniologists before ending their fateful journeys in museum storage. Since then, their descendants from all over the world have been seeking to find and repatriate the bodies and "remains" of these ancestors. Nothing is more natural than wanting to honor one's dead, remember, and pay a final tribute to one's ancestors. Some are from the French overseas territories, particularly from French Guiana.

While the colonial past is being reawakened on all continents, particularly in Africa with numerous requests for the restitution of cultural property, and several repatriations of "human remains" have taken place (or are in progress) as part of voluntary research by the French administration and museums (including the Musée de l'Homme), the legal and parliamentary debate on the return of these "remains" seems blocked in the overseas regions.

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