One way professionals are addressing these issues is by reassessing the significance of the artifacts or collection under consideration. Today all the values of a cultural place are assessed as a first step in considering appropriate long-term conservation and management strategies. The role of the cultural heritage site manager is changing from the expert who pronounces on significance and conservation to the partner who works with the community to elicit all the elements of a place's value and consequent future management. This approach gives places a multifaceted significance, making their management more complex but ensuring that all the identified values are conserved. Now we consider a broader range of conservation and management options in which concepts of present significance, local value, and the importance of continuing traditional use contribute to decisions about conservation and management.
Issues relating to objects require the same process, as has happened in some recent cases.
Traditionally, we have isolated what I might call the museum value of an object or collection from its other cultural values. The task for the future is to integrate all these values, both intellectual and emotional, and to come up with solutions to the repatriation question which honor this range of values. Curators need to work closely with groups that claim ownership or custodianship of, or a special relationship to, an object or group of objects. The example below exemplifies this approach. During her time in Canberra, where she was carefully reconstructed by scientists, she taught us a great deal about ancient Australia and its inhabitants.