At a time when young Britons are questioning their colonial past more than ever, the Unfiltered History Tour is a secret tour of the British Museum’s stolen colonial artefacts, that makes use of a tool the young generation are familiar with-Instagram filters

We can’t change the past. But we can change how we choose to engage with it in the present.

So we decided to educate these young Britons about their cultural history, using a tool they were intimately familiar with - Instagram filters.

When visitors use their smartphones to scan the museum’s stolen artefacts, they hear native experts narrate the true histories of how they were stolen, with native soundscapes from each country, built into the Augmented Reality experience.

This helped bridge the gap between those whom these artefacts belonged to, and a generation of Britons best placed to unlearn and relearn their country’s cultural history with perspective

Ernest Domfeh: My great grandfather was a drummer. My mother's father was a drummer, and I'm a drummer.

It's a special bond between a drummer and a drummer. So when you play, you get a little possessed. An Akan is the drum that I'm playing in the drum that we're talking about, which is found in the British Museum. It’s played with a bare fist. You don't use sticks to play, you use your bare hands whilst you play it, because you're using your bare palm, you should be in pain. But because of the kind of bondage, the kind of connection you have with a drum, you don't feel it, you get so charged, you get so spiritually attached, you get so overwhelmed that you don't feel the pain. That's what’s so special and so wonderful about the kind of connection a drummer has with his drum.

Soundbite: Stolen lives (give it back) Stolen culture (give it back) Vice World News presents the Unfiltered History Tour of colonialism, as told through ten objects.

Domfeh: My name is Ernest Domfeh. I work at the Kumasi Cultural Centre as a drummer and dancer. I've been playing since age four. So you can imagine how long I've been playing. The drum from the British Museum is called Apentemma. It is an Akan drum. It is from Ashanti, it is from Ghana. It is from my people. I think it is a drum that could be taken during the time of the King of Ashanti, Prempeh I, was exiled to the Seychelles. Back then the British were the overlords of the Ashantis because they were our colonial masters. They thought the Ashantis were powerful, so they needed to take hold of what is their source of power, so they could become powerless for them to rule them entirely.

It became a war, and King Prempeh was captured. So during that time, there was a female that led Ashanti Kingdom into war against the British. Her name is Nana Yaa Asantewaa. She's the grandmother of Ejisu in the Ashanti region. She gathered some of the kings and invoked some courage into them that what the British are doing is unheard of and said that they should govern themselves and fight against the British, and they fought against the British for three years. But eventually the British emerged victorious and they were able to exile King Prempeh to the Seychelles islands.

Drums – when we were getting ready to go to war, that is a meshed chanting, and singing and drumming. When we about to go to war, we prepare ourselves for the war. There was something we say in our local parlance, we call it asakra. Asakra means to change. So even if you're not in the mood for war, you are seeing these chanting songs, and it will gradually change your mood. These songs will heat your spirit up when that ritual is going on. Before King Prempeh was finally sent to the Seychelles, he was taken to Virginia.

Haki Kweli Shakur: From the late 1500s, into like the early 1600s, slavery began on the continent of Africa – which we know as the transatlantic slave trade. The British, the Portuguese, the Spanish were the main colonialists that went into Africa to initiate the slave trade with other African nations. The most prominent facilitators of the slave trade were the British. When the British went into Africa, the first place that they set up their other end of the slave trade was in the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1619. That's when some of the first enslaved peoples were bought to Virginia, that's when the colonists set up, you know, what we know today as Jamestown. I am Haki Kweli Shakur. I'm a historian from Virginia and I've been doing extensive research on the Akan drum over the last 10 years. The Akan drum, it travelled to Virginia on a slave ship. They say that the drum was bought on the ship by a son of a African chief. Others said that the drum was brought on the ship by the European settlers who brought these enslaved peoples on the ship.

Domfeh: When I first saw the drum, I was a little emotional. Because it reminded me of over 400 years ago when my forefathers, through the transatlantic slave trade, [were] taken to Virginia and later to elsewhere in the world. It took my mind back to the kind of scenes that I was picturing in my eyes when my grannies were telling me the story of our forefathers being enslaved and the way they were enslaved and how they were treated on the ship and how they were killed, slaughtered anyhow. It gave me that thought, and it was going through my head and I could imagine the pictures of how it all happened.

Now we have so many Black communities in America, in the West Indies, in Virginia, South America, and all these places.

Shakur: When the drum was brought to the colony of Virginia, it was obtained by this reverend by the name Reverend Clerk. He did that on behalf of one of the most notorious British collectors by the name of Sir Hans Sloane. He wanted to take that type of artefact back to the British empire as a collection item. We don't know the deep, extensive history of how Reverend Clerk got the drum, but he got the drum and he handed over the drum to Sir Hans Sloane and he took it back to the British Empire.

Domfeh : If a drum is from Africa, the drum is from Ghana, if a drum is from Ashanti, and it's found in Virginia, everything points to the fact that it was taken on a slave ship, and brought there.

Shakur: They stole our ancestors. So I just find it very disrespectful to our ancestors, that you will take that and try to take you back to Britain and put it on display, it's a symbolism of mockery.

If it was returned to Virginia, it would mean to African-Americans of African descent, is a sense of what I say identity and reestablishing our ties to our identity and our ancestry. I think it would bring a sense of starting to repair.

Domfeh: I work at the Kumasi Cultural Centre. My duty is to preserve, protect and propagate the culture of my motherland, the culture of my homeland. So, we are trying to teach the little ones. This is what we are made of and this is what we should keep and maintain. And not to go to Western, but also keep ourselves as true Africans, true Ghanaians, true Ashantis and true Akans, so that we can not forget our identity as a people.

Shakur: So many of us are starting to reconnect with our ancestry back in Africa. A couple of years ago, Ghana had this thing called “The Return” to Ghana for African-Americans who are descendants of Akan people, of African people, of Ghana. You know, bringing that drum back to Virginia will also reestablish that powerful connection that they have already sparked.

Domfeh: I think the drum is our drum – Ghanaian Ashanti people – the drum is Akan, that drum is our nationality, so the drum should be brought back to Ashanti land.

Shakur: They have a rightful heir to that drum. So it's theirs. It was created there, you know, in the 1700s in Ghana. So for them to want the drum to come back to Ghana, I think it still would be a powerful symbolism also for African-Americans as well. Because at the same time, like I said, if they take it back to where it came from, we still can feel great about that because we can still go to Ghana. They don't have no argument to keep something that came from people that you enslave.

Domfeh: I don't think it is right. Why should an Akan drum be [in] a British museum?

Shakur: You didn't create that drum. You didn't make the drum. You enslaved them, you murdered them. Why would you want to keep something that your people did to another people horrifically and dehumanised and violated their human rights?

Domfeh: If the British want to show or keep drums or artefacts, they should keep artefacts of their own, why should they take an Akan drum and keep it in the museum?

Shakur: The longer that you hold on to that drum means that you cosign what you did to our ancestors.

Domfeh: So I think it is prudent that you bring it back to its roots.

Credits: This podcast was produced by Jesse Lawson, with research from Marthe Van Der Wolf. This episode features original drumming from Ernest Domfe and sounds from BP or not BP. The Unfiltered History Tour is a VICE UK production.

The British Museum’s artefacts might be objects for its visitors, however, they hold deep cultural and religious significance for the communities they belong to.

While the Hoa Hakananai’a is popularly known as the ‘Easter Island head’, He holds deep religious signifiance to the people of Rapa Nui who worship Him as a living God. Similarly, while the Amaravati Marbles are admired for their marble craftsmanship, they originally formed the Amaravati Stupa (dismantled and torn down by the British), Asia’s second largest at the time

Each audio uncovers the cultural significance and manner of looting of each artefact; the Chinese Summer Palace Jades faced a similar fate as the Benin Bronzes, cultural treasures that were looted by British soldiers after massacres by the British Army. These facts are unknown to most young Britons, as the British Museumnever reveals how these artefacts were acquired in the first place.

When visitors use their smartphones to scan the museum’s stolen artefacts, the relevant filter is activated via geolocation. Listeners are transported back in time, as native experts narrate the true histories of how they were stolen, with first-ever visual depictions of scenes of crime forming a contextual overlay over the artefact in real-time using Augmented Reality.

While the British Museum’s narrative portrayed the colonies as helpless in the face of British aggression; AR in smartphones were used to tell history from the perspective of the colonies, as formidable foes who fought to save their cultural treasures.