An FBI quest to return sacred human skulls stolen from a Pacific island tribe

This month, a U.S. Coast Guard plane landed in the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu bearing unusual cargo. In its hold lay five large wooden crates, like something out of an Indiana Jones film.

Inside the crates were smaller crates. And inside those were human skulls.

The skulls were intricately decorated but incredibly fragile. Two sat by themselves in their crates, but three were attached to elaborate sculptures as part of life-size effigies known locally as rambaramp.

The sacred objects had been looted decades ago from Vanuatu before mysteriously resurfacing in New York City several years ago.

On Thursday, the remains were formally returned in a ceremony in Port Vila featuring officials from both nations, the FBI, traditional dancers and the transfer of a live pig.

“I’m so grateful that we were able to return something that is so precious to Vanuatu back to the place that it deserves to be,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said.

The remarkable story of how the rambaramp returned to Vanuatu begins eight years earlier and more than 8,000 miles away. It reflects not only the FBI’s growing efforts to repatriate artifacts looted abroad, but also a U.S. attempt to increase law enforcement cooperation in a region where China is increasingly vying for influence.

The United States supports an Australian plan to improve police training in the region, Campbell said Thursday, a day after Pacific island nations signaled their backing for the idea. And the Biden administration is preparing to announce its own initiative to help Pacific nations fight growing drug use, he said.

“This is an area where we think we have the potential to make a real difference,” Campbell said shortly before the repatriation ceremony.

The return of the remains follows the recent opening of the U.S. Embassy in Vanuatu - one of three that the State Department has established in the region in the past 18 months as part of enhanced diplomatic outreach. A fourth has been announced in Kiribati.

Campbell’s attendance, on the heels of a trip to Tonga earlier in the week for the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, underscored that outreach.

“With this ceremony, I think people will know about the U.S.,” said Kaitip Kami, curator of the National Museum of Vanuatu, where the remains will be stored. “We have been looking forward to the U.S. Embassy for a long time to help with these issues of repatriation.”

Kami smiled when the crates were opened. “I didn’t know who these people were, but I felt very good,” he said. “They are a part of us. They are our relatives, stolen for so many years.”

A logistical puzzle

Chris McKeogh has handled more masterpieces than some museum curators. The special agent on the FBI’s New York art crime team has helped return a stolen Chilean tapestry, paintings looted by Nazis and even a $5 million Stradivarius violin.

But few things prepared him for the day in 2016 when a New York art company handed the FBI about 90 objects it suspected had been stolen from places around the world.

The artifacts, which had belonged to a collector who died a decade earlier, included sacred objects - many with human remains - from Indonesia, Peru and Native American tribes from the Northern and Southwestern United States, McKeogh said in an interview. Yet it was the rambaramp from Vanuatu that most concerned him.

“The fragility of these items can’t be overstated,” he said. “These are very much the most fragile items that I’ve ever dealt with.”

The skulls were covered in delicate materials, including clay and paint. And the three “humanoid sculptures,” as he called them, were huge - the biggest was about 11 feet long.

With the U.S. Embassy opening in Vanuatu in July, the conditions were finally in place to attempt a return. But the question of how to deliver them remained.

“(We) had conversations years ago about how to properly move these items across the room,” McKeogh said, “and now here we are trying to figure out the logistics of shipping them halfway across the world.”

The artifacts were already in crates, but the wooden boxes weren’t sturdy enough to ship. So the bureau paid to have new, custom crates fitted over the old ones. The result was hardy but heavy. The biggest box clocked in at 696 pounds, McKeogh said. All together, the five crates weighed around a ton.

When the call came a few weeks ago to send the crates to Vanuatu, McKeogh himself rented a moving truck and drove the precious cargo from New York City to the bureau’s Washington field office.

FBI agents drove the crates to Dulles Airport and then accompanied them on a FedEx flight to Kentucky. From there, the escorted remains were flown to Honolulu, where they were loaded onto a Coast Guard plane and flown to Fiji.

But disaster nearly struck on the last leg of the artifacts’ almost week-long journey. As the Coast Guard plane took off from Fiji for Vanuatu, it hit a bird and was forced to land.

A few hours later, the plane finally touched down in Port Vila. Decades after being stolen, the rambaramp had returned.

History and healing

Vanuatuan officials thanked the FBI and U.S. officials for returning the artifacts during an emotional ceremony Thursday, before sharing coconut-shell cups of kava - a plant-based drink popular across the Pacific for its relaxing effects - and examining a rambaramp in its crate.

“These artifacts are not just objects, they are connected to our ancestors … and our identity,” said Robert Ravun, a chief from the Smol Nambas tribe from which the artifacts were taken.

“By bringing them back to us, you have restored pages of our history,” said Ravun, who is also president of the Malvatumauri Council of Chiefs from across Vanuatu. “This act of repatriation strengthens the bonds between our nations.”

Campbell connected the repatriation effort to a broader boost in U.S. engagement in the region, where American attention waned after the Cold War but is now returning amid increased competition with China.

“This is a big day for us in a number of ways,” he said. “We’ve opened our embassy, returning the United States to the place where it always should be, here on the front lines in the Pacific.”

Nitiana Mann, the FBI’s legal attaché for the region, said the repatriation was part of growing operations in Vanuatu, where the bureau recently placed a special agent. Campbell suggested FBI activities are likely to increase in Pacific island nations where the United States has embassies, especially when it comes to countering drugs.

Law enforcement in the Pacific has become a prickly subject recently as Australia - the United States’ closest ally in the region and a traditional policing partner for many island nations - has vied with China to provide policing support.

China tried to strike a sweeping security agreement with 10 Pacific island nations in 2022. It has sent police to the Solomon Islands and Kiribati since then and was reportedly in talks this year with Papua New Guinea.

Those efforts have sparked concern in Canberra and Washington. On Wednesday, Australia and a handful of Pacific island nations announced that the Pacific Islands Forum had backed a $271 million plan - paid for by Australia - to improve police training in the region.

Returning cultural artifacts is relatively uncontroversial, said Tarisi Vunidilo, a Fijian archaeologist and assistant professor at California State University at Los Angeles.

“Some people might see it as having a political motive,” she said. “But for me, I often see these countries do take these ceremonies seriously. They come with a lot of power, a lot of respect, a lot of mana.”

Repatriations have increased in recent years as awareness of historical art theft grows, Vunidilo said.

“It’s a beautiful thing when the local communities are informed that their ancestral remains are coming back,” she said. “It’s a celebration because it’s healing.”

For Kami, the Vanuatuan museum curator, the return of the rambaramp had personal significance. His grandfather was from the Smol Nambas tribe. The remains could belong to some of his ancestors. He hopes that the sculptures’ paintings will eventually enable him to identify the remains and track down their descendants.

“This is our culture,” he said. “Now it has come home.”