Restitution and return of looted royal heritage: the role of Ghanaian chiefs and queens in sustaining heritage traditions

Abstract

In interrogating this discourse on the restitution and return of looted royal objects, our
role and input in this conversation as traditional leaders in Ghanaian communities are
inevitable. This is in the light of the fact that the source of most of these looted royal
art objects unlawfully placed in German and some European museums are from the
Volta Basin area of Ghana, formerly part of German Togoland. We argue that factoring
in the views of chiefs and queens, being traditional leaders of communities in
Africa, provides a better understanding of the origin and contexts of the use of most
of these pirated cultural objects highlighted in the restitution and repatriation debates.