After nearly 12 decades in a Buenos Aires museum, the frozen mummy of an Inca child found high on a peak in Argentina's northwest was finally returned to the Indigenous community that had long sought his homecoming.
According to Yahoo, the move closes a 119-year chapter that began with a discovery by members of the military and mountaineers and ended with ceremonies and rituals in Jujuy province.
The mummy, known as the "Child of Chani," was discovered in 1905 on Mount Chani in Argentina's Jujuy province. The child was believed to have been 5 to 7 years old and was recovered at roughly 5,900 meters, or about 19,357 feet, above sea level.
Researchers said the child had been offered in an Inca ceremonial rite called "capacocha." The remains were later taken to the Juan B. Ambrosetti Ethnographic Museum in Buenos Aires, under the University of Buenos Aires.
For decades, Indigenous communities in the Puna region have argued that the child should be returned. That demand was met this week when the mummy was taken from the capital to El Moreno in Jujuy, where the Kolla community welcomed him with ceremonies and rituals.
At an official event at the museum before the transfer, university leaders acknowledged the long delay and apologized.
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"Not everything is in pursuit of science," Ricardo Manetti, dean of the university's Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, said, per Yahoo.
What was once seen mainly as a museum object is now being recognized as an ancestor with cultural and spiritual significance. The child's return is about identity, memory, and respect for traditions that survived colonization, displacement, and years of exclusion from decisions about their own heritage.
Museums and universities have long held items and remains taken from Indigenous communities, often without consent. The transfer from downtown Buenos Aires to El Moreno marks a tangible act of restitution rather than another symbolic promise.
The Kolla welcomed the child back through ceremonies and rituals, treating the restitution as spiritual and cultural rather than merely administrative.
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The return allows the community to decide how the child should be honored moving forward.
"This little boy has much to tell us about our identity," said Kolla leader Clemente Flores, per Yahoo. "He is a beloved being, a grandfather of ours who fell asleep to show us the history of our culture and ways of life, some of which still endure."
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