Expanded loans as forms of indigenous access, reconnection, and sovereignty

Addressing the legacies of colonial collections and enabling Indigenous Peoples to reconnect with or extend sovereignty over ancestral items in museums requires tools in addition to repatriation. This article explores the concept of an expanded loan, which adds to the activities normally connected to a loan to include meaningful forms of Indigenous community engagement with loaned items, including ceremony and out-of-case visits/research sessions. The To Honour and Respect project, an expanded loan from the Royal Collection Trust to the Peterborough Museum and Archives in Canada, led by Hiawatha First Nation, is used as a case study to examine the possibilities and tensions raised by expanded loans.