Doing research in Swiss museums, Sri Lankan artist Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige comes across objects in storage that were collected as evidence of the life of an Indigenous Adivasi community in her country. Even though Switzerland had no colonies, it benefited from the colonial system. Between 1883 and 1913, naturalists Fritz and Paul Sarasin organised expeditions to British Ceylon and the Dutch East Indies. They explored these areas – assisted by forced labourers – and brought exotic animals, plants and artefacts, as well as human skulls and skeletons to Basel: The result was one of the largest ethnological collections in German-speaking Europe – paradigmatic of colonial violence and Eurocentric scientific pretensions. Sri Lanka demanded their return as early as the 1970s, but Switzerland refused.
Deneth Piumakshi Veda Arachchige travels along the Sarasins’ route and, together with Adivasi representatives, campaigns once again for restitution. An obstacle course through bureaucracy and rigid museum structures begins. The film consistently follows the interdisciplinary artist and co-author of the script as she creatively and investigatively negotiates ownership issues, shedding a highly uncomfortable light on the colonial entanglements and their still existing blind spots in the global North.