The indigenous Rapa Nui islanders do believe this, and have asked regularly from the 1950s till 2018 for the heads at Easter Island to be returned to them precisely for this very reason. In 1963, in response to a lot of ungrateful countries having the cheek of asking for their stuff back, we passed the British Museum Act, forbidding the British Museum from returning any of its holding, except in a small number of ‘special circumstances’.
