Originary of the Foa region in New Caledonia, leader Ataï, an emblematic figure of the 1878 Kanak insurgency, was killed during the island’s ‘pacification’ operations. His head and a hand were delivered by Kanak auxiliaries to the French army and then sent to the collections of a learned company, the Société d’Anthropology de Paris. Then, within the museum, the second life of Ataï was marked by a ‘transmutation’ of the martial trophy into a scientific specimen. Her remains will be returned to his descendants in 2014. Sometimes featured in the beautiful ‘wild’ and anthropophage, or by the tactician and insoughed leader, sometimes a figure of the liberating revolutionary of a taxable people or the pacifier of a settlement of stands, the past and present interpretations of Kanak Ataï offer many faces to explore. They are also inextricably linked to the wider history of anthropological collections made up of human remains, a complex heritage that is currently sensitive. The chapters of this book offer key readers to understand the different ways in which leader Ataï’s human body elements are taken up during their heritage, the logic and the underlying issues. On the basis of an analysis of many unexplored archives and interviews with the conservative scientists, the author endeavours to reconstruct each of the stages in the heritage of the Kanak leader by the anthropologistic community — removal of the body or parts in 1878, transport, categorisation, transformation, scientific study, exhibition and subsequent return in 2014 — in order to identify the evolution of mechanisms, personal interests, collective issues and specific features. The analysis is also intended to compare in turn the practices of the Paris Anthropology Society with those of the Muséum National d’Histoire Natural and the intended use of specimens collected in New Caledonia at the end of the 19th century.