A shared understanding of success is critical for best practice in repatriation. However, there is currently little dialogue, or harmony, between museums, agencies, and Indigenous communities about what constitutes success or how it should be measured. While Indigenous approaches frame success in terms of positive impact on healing and wellbeing, museum, government and funding agency measures (KPIs) can be attached to numbers of returns/reburials within a certain timeframe. Too often this leads to processes driven by inappropriate criteria that consequently struggle to deliver on the opportunity for social benefit that repatriation represents (Pickering 2003).

While removal of Ancestors caused long-term injury, repatriation can combine factors integral to healing and wellbeing in a powerful and unique manner (eg. nation building, cultural governance, identity, self-determination, spirituality, cultural resilience, knowledge transmission, relationship-building (Hemming et al forthcoming; Kinnane and Sullivan 2016)). However, these are rarely highlighted as priorities for undertaking repatriation, leading to a critical need for greater understanding about their inter-relationships and to urgently translate findings into policy and practice. This includes best-practice in the repatriation archive (rarely articulated in policy) which underlies processes central to healing and wellbeing in repatriation. Using a Ngarrindjeri methodology (Yannarumi) this project investigates healing and wellbeing as the priority and key indicator of success in repatriation and reburial, to support practice, develop protocols, and inform policy - nationally and internationally.