Panel 1: Reclamation

12.30–1.00pm Saturday 11 July
Tank 5

This panel brings together cultural practitioners from the Queensland Museum to discuss the complex and deeply personal responsibility of returning Ancestors, cultural materials and artefacts to communities. Offering insight into institutional repatriation processes, the conversation will explore the cultural care, protocols and obligations that guide this work, as well as the challenges and responsibilities of working between institutions and community. Through their experiences, panelists will highlight how repatriation supports cultural continuity, strengthens relationships, and contributes to broader processes of healing and revitalisation.

CIAF’s 2026 Reclamation & Regeneration panel session will go in-depth into all things artmaking, collecting, promoting, policies and politics, conservation, and artistic authenticity in an era of Truth-Telling. Our esteemed panelists are made up of artists, arts workers, curators and arts writers, authors, and visionaries in arts showcasing internationally. Representing First Nations arts will be experts of all fields, background and ages—alongside the occasional ally in the arts—bringing to the fore a reignited look into groundbreaking cultural and contemporary arts practice and theory.