With a solemn ceremony in Stockholm's antiquities museum, Sweden marked the return of 22 skulls looted from a native Hawaiian community mainly in the 17th century. The symbolic ceremony Saturday - attended by guests from Hawaii and the Nordic countries' own indigenous Sami population - was part of Sweden's increased efforts to return indigenous remains collected by scientists across the world in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Swedish government in 2005 ordered its museums to search through their collections, and has since returned more than 20 human remains, mainly to Australia. The Hawaiian skulls had been returned privately earlier Saturday so that the Hawaiian delegates could perform a ritual according to traditional customs. Five of the skulls were returned by the museum itself, while 17 came from Stockholm's medical university Karolinska Institutet. On Wednesday, Sweden will return to New Zealand a near complete skeleton, a skull and three skeleton parts all believed to have been from the indigenous Maori population.
