Aboriginal remains repatriation
Imagine you cannot visit the grave of and pay your respect to members of your family because their remains are not in a cemetery but tucked away in the laboratory of an overseas university, thousands of miles away.
Aboriginal remains have been removed from graves and burial sites, but also from hospitals, asylums and prisons throughout the 19th century until the late 1940s [12]. Sometimes declared as 'kangaroo bones', they were illegally exported to France, Holland, Scotland, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, England and the USA [13].
It is actually on record in the history of Mackay, Queensland, that one overseas collector made a request to the trooper that he shoot a native boy to furnish a complete exhibit of an Australian aboriginal skeleton, skin and skull. —The Sydney Morning Herald, 31 January 1955, page 2
Bob Weatherall, Chairman of the Centre for Indigenous Cultural Policy in Brisbane, exerts
himself in the repatriation of Aboriginal remains since many years.
The largest collection is believed to be held by Professor Matt Kaufman at the Anatomy Museum of Edinburgh University [14]. Prof Kaufman keeps an 'absolute secrecy' about his collection so that estimates of the extent vary from a conservative 'five or ten complete skeletons' to several hundred.
The largest confirmed collection of Aboriginal remains is with the Natural History Museum in Britain, which has one dried head, 124 skulls and about 20 skeletons from Australia and Tasmania, five of which have names and addresses [14].
In early 2009 the British government revealed that in 2005 it held 382 sets of Aboriginal remains in 18 institutions [17].
However, it is impossible to guess the extent to which Aboriginal remains are held in private collections or stored in attics or in the plethora of regional and small private museums.
Given the rather small official figures, it can only be guessed that several thousand and probably more than 10,000 Aboriginal corpses and parts of corpses were brought to England alone [14].
The huge amount makes Chairman of the Centre for Indigenous Cultural Policy in Brisbane Bob Weatherall propose that the missing remains constitute the original and first Stolen Generation of Aboriginal people [15].
"What is also abundantly clear," concludes The Guardian an extensive article, "is that there would be no debate at all if the remains were the immediate ancestors of living white Australians," [14] a view Bob Weatherall agrees to: "We don't hear the same thing when foreign affairs or the military are repatriating Australian Vietnam veterans who have been left over in Vietnam." [15]
The damage to the Aboriginal community of having remains [overseas] is astronomical. The spirits of our dead are disturbed by being separated from their bodies. The remains are as important to us as land rights. It's a much more volatile issue, closer to the heart than even getting our land back. —Michael Mansell, Aboriginal lawyer [14]
"There were bones everywhere along the Murray." When excavation machines called 'rippers'
gouged irrigation channels through the earth to draw water from the Murray into the fields they regularly opened
up burial sites, exposing Aboriginal remains [20]. Pictured: The Murray River at Swan Hill.
Inside a museum's storeroom—an Aboriginal perspective
Jason, a character in John Danalis' book Riding The Black Cockatoo, reveals his feelings when he was working as an intern in the Melbourne Museum.
"'One day I tripped over this box, literally tripped over it. I opened it up, and inside were the remains of my people. Can you imagine that? They tried to keep it a secret from the dumb young blackfella. The more I looked the more I found. Well, I started making noise, asking questions: 'Why do you need all these old ones, what use are they, why can't they go back to country?'
'What did they say?'
'Research, they said, we need them for research.' He spat the words out like pieces of rotten food.
'Well, show me,' I said, 'show me the research.' And you know what, they couldn't show me one bit, not one paper. And after all these years – decades, man! – that my people have been jammed in boxes with little metal tags attached to them as if they weren't even human beings.'" [22]
There was supposed to be a whole Aborigine in pickle in one of the Royal Colleges. —Dr Jack Aitken, retired anatomy professor, Britain [14]
"He had seen things… he couldn't explain"
Ngarrindjeri Elder Major Sumner from the lower Murray River area in South Australia has been involved in Aboriginal remains repatriation for several years. He tells how he's been in contact with the spirits of the deceased [26].
"When you're over there [in America or Europe] doing ceremonies, you get a feeling that these [deceased Aboriginal] people are relatives from your own community who have been laying around in boxes since the 1800s, down in basements. When you are there, thinking about them, it feels that they are speaking with you. You're in contact with them and you feel that there's happiness because they're going home. A lot of these feelings are coming from their spirits."
"When I was at the Manchester Museum, the director, Tristan Besterman, asked me if I'd smoke him and I asked why. He told me that over the years of being director, he had seen things, images, that he couldn't explain. After I smoked him, he gave up that job and is now helping us identify other remains, and talking with institutions." ⇒ Aboriginal spirituality
Aboriginal remains slowly return home
Museums and universities across the world hold Aboriginal remains which have been brought back from trips to the 'untamed land' and its 'savage natives'.
Increasingly these institutions are realising that holding Aboriginal remains disrespects not only Aboriginal culture but also the deceased's descendants. More than 1,000 Indigenous remains have been returned to Australia between 1998 and 2008 [4], but 'tens of thousands' of remains are still held in overseas institutions. An accurate register of what remains are where does not exist.
The world view is changing, I think, in terms of traditional owner groups regaining their ancestral remains. I think there's a strong moral and ethical argument that the scientific community has to take into account. —Graham Atkinson, spokesperson British Museum [19]
Some examples of Australian Aboriginal remains which were returned include [1,2,3]:
.jpg)
Skull of an indigenous person (Andaman Islands). Many Indigenous remains like these are still held in museums all over the
world. Lack of cultural sensitivity or museum personnel impede their examination and return.
-
- 1985
May: Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania returns the Tasmanian Aboriginal human remains commonly known as the Crowther Collection (33 skulls and three skeletons) for cremation at Oyster Cove. The "largest gathering of Tasmanian Aboriginal people in a decade" attends the cremation [13].
-
- 1990
February 1990: Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin, Britain gives back the head of the great-great grandfather of Tasmanian lawyer Michael Mansell after he went to Dublin petitioning for the return of Aboriginal remains including the one of his family [14].
-
- 2003
April: Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin, Britain hands over 60 Aboriginal human remains to Aboriginal representatives, who had travelled to Britain to collect the remains and return them to Australia [10].
10 September: The Museum Victoria returns the remains of an Aboriginal baby girl nicknamed 'Jaara Baby' to her modern-day relatives, the Dja Dja Wurrung people of north-west Victoria, 99 years to the day after they were found in a tree trunk by a woodcutter.
-
- 2004
October: Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm, Sweden sends back 20 Aboriginal skeletons it had collected from the Kimberleys, Western Australia [7].
-
- 2006
November: Natural History Museum, Britain agrees to return the remains of 18 Tasmanian Aborigines but only after it conducted scientific tests on them [11].
-
- 2007
May: National History Museum, England. Remains returned after a 20-year battle with the Tasmanian Aboriginal people.
June: Glasgow Museum, Scotland. Return of skulls of Torres Strait Islanders to their ancestors on Mer Island.
October: Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm, Sweden returns 10 Aboriginal remains which were taken from graves in the Kimberley region of Western Australia by a Swedish archaeological expedition in 1910 and 1911 [5].
There was this idea at the time that Aboriginal Australians were like human fossils, of a kind that had survived longer in Australia than elsewhere. —Anders Björklund, director Ethnographical Museum, Stockholm, Sweden, explaining why Aboriginal remains were taken [8]
-
- 2008
February: Lund University, Sweden. Return of the remains of two Aborigines that had been in the museum's possession since the end of the 19th century. This return brings the Swedish remains returned to Australia to 32 [6].
April: National Museums Scotland. Return of six Aboriginal skulls.
July: Edinburgh University, Scotland. Return of the last remains in its collection to members of the Ngarrindjeri people (SA).
Natural History Museum, London. Reluctantly, the museum let go some Aboriginal remains. Many more are
stored in its vast halls, believed to have been transferred there for safekeeping from the Royal College of Surgeons
while London was being bombed during World War II [19].
August: National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC, USA. The remains of 33 Indigenous people from the Gunbalanya and Groote Eylandt (Arnhemland, NT) return after 60 years. The remains are believed to be the first return from a major American institution.
November: Charite Medical History Museum, Berlin, Germany. The museum's director announces his intent to return the skulls of 18 Aboriginal Australians taken to Germany more than 100 years ago. The Charite would be the first scientific institution in Germany to return remains.
December: University of Oxford, Britain agrees to hand over the remains of three Aboriginal people. The three human skulls and lower jaws - acquired in the 1860s and held in its museum of natural history - belong to the Ngarrindjeri people from Goolwa (Port Elliot) in South Australia [9].
It seemed so utterly unreasonable that the British Museum needed – actually needed – 1570 sets of remains from Aboriginal men, women and children. —John Danalis in his book Riding the Black Cockatoo
-
- 2009
January: Booth Museum of Natural History, Brighton, Britain promises to repatriate two skulls and two thigh bones, donated almost 100 years ago [16]. The museum also holds a Ngarrindjeri skull which has been turned into a water carrier and is considered 'extremely rare' [17]. The skull is with the museum since 1925 when it was donated by a local collector.
June: Seattle Art Museum, USA is the first US institution that independently initiates a repatriation. It promises to return 'a sacred Aboriginal object' to its traditional land in central Australia and to consult with central Australian elders and representatives [18].
July: The University College, London, UK, hands over the skulls of three individuals from Victoria's Gunditjmara community and another from the Dja Dja Wurrung nation [19].
Booth Museum of Natural History, Brighton. Even small museums hold Aboriginal remains
which were often donated by private collectors.
The Charite's collection is among a dozen in Germany and many more in Europe where Australian diplomats have asked curators to repatriate Aboriginal remains [3]. Britain and Sweden have already successfully returned Indigenous remains.
About 10,000 remains are still held by Australian, about 5,000 by British institutions [21].
Don't be fooled to think that Aboriginal remains are those of anonymous ancestors. In the case of the first American return some traditional owners believe the collection may include the remains of their grandmothers [2].
This is about our ancestors and our heroes who fought against the invasion. They had their heads cut off and their skeletons were sent overseas to museums around the world.—Bob Weatherall, Chairman Centre for Indigenous Cultural Policy, Brisbane [4]
The long travel of Aboriginal remains
The case of the Charite in Berlin is a good example of how Aboriginal remains change hands and travel within and inbetween countries.
The Charite's collection of 10,000 bones was gathered by German pathologist Rudolf Virchow [3]. After his death in 1902 he bequeathed them to a state society.
In the 1930s the collection was confiscated by the Nazis, and when World War II started they were stored in a warehouse where they remained for decades after the war had ended.
Several German museums cared for the bones collection until they arrived at the Berlin Charite in 2005.
But even in the presumably save hands of museums Aboriginal remains are prone to theft or destruction by war bombings [14] which sends them on a journey further away from repatriation.
International repatriation of remains
Some countries have signed agreements with Australia to facilitate the repatriation of Indigenous remains. The British government committed in July 2000 to help return Indigenous human remains from collections in the UK to Australia [9].
Over 600 Indigenous ancestral remains are believed to be held by UK institutions [25]. Among them is the skull of Aboriginal warrior Pemulwuy. The skull might have been transferred from the Royal College of Surgeons to London's Natural History Museum, but the museum's director advised that much had been destroyed during World War II [25]. Even a royal initiative by Prince William in April 2010 could not accelerate the matter.
The Australian government is committed to the unconditional return of Indigenous human remains from overseas countries and institutions. —Jenny Macklin, Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister [25]
The Australian government contributes minimal, if any, funds to the repatriation of Aboriginal remains.
- $4.7m
- Estimated cost to recover and rebury the bodies of about 300 Australian and British soldiers at Fromelles, northern France, funded by the Australian government [23].
- $20m
- Price to construct a new Commonwealth war cemetery at Fromelles. Australia shares this cost equally with Britain [24].
Resources
John Danalis grew up with an Aboriginal skull sitting on the mantelpiece of his family's home. This is the story of the journey he undertakes when he decides to return the skull to its traditional owners.
Part history, part detective story, part cultural discovery and emotional journey, this is a book for young and old, showing the transformative and healing power of true reconciliation. Read more
Out of respect for Aboriginal culture I use Indigenous sources as much as possible.
[1] 'Scots return remains', NIT 10/7/2008 p.12
[2] 'Remains coming home after 60 years in America', Koori Mail 431 p.4
[3] 'Germany to hand back black remains', NIT 27/11/2008 p.11
[4] 'Return of remains overhaul urged', Koori Mail 439 p.7
[5] 'Sweden to return Aboriginal remains to Australia', ABC, 19/10/2007, www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/19/2064893.htm
[6] 'Swedish uni returns Aboriginal remains to Aust', ABC 20/2/2008, www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/20/2167340.htm
[7] 'Aboriginal remains home from Sweden', National Museum of Australia, 6/10/2004, www.nma.gov.au/media/media_releases_index/2004_10_06/
[8] 'Sweden to return Aboriginal remains to Australia' The Local, Sweden, 19/10/2007, www.thelocal.se/8844/20071019/
[9] 'Oxford Uni to return Aboriginal remains', LiveNews, 17/12/2008, livenews.com.au/articles/2008/12/17/Oxford_Uni_to_return_Aboriginal_remains
[10] 'Aboriginal Remains Return Home', Indigenous Law Bulletin 23/2003, www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ILB/2003/23.html
[11] 'UK museum to return Aboriginal remains', Sydney Morning Herald, 19/11/2006
[12] 'First Aboriginal remains to be returned from U.S.', Reuters, 25/7/2008, www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSSP21999620080726
[13] ''Tassie': A Roundup of Aboriginal Activities in Tasmania', Aboriginal Law Bulletin 60/1985, www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AboriginalLB/1985/60.html
[14] 'Quest for the missing dead', The Guardian, 24/2/1990, ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dingonet/questfor.htm (25/12/2008)
[15] August 2000, www.faira.org.au/lrq/archives/200008/stories/stolen.html (25/12/2008)
[16] 'Coming home', Koori Mail 442 p.14
[17] 'Government urges Aboriginal skull return', Koori Mail 445 p.19
[18] 'Sacred Aboriginal object returned from USA', NIT online, http://nit.com.au/story.aspx?id=18120
[19] 'Etchings talks begin in UK', NIT 6/8/2009 p.12
[20] 'Riding The Black Cockatoo', John Danalis, Allen & Unwin, p.71
[21] John Danalis, loc.cit., p.137
[22] John Danalis, loc.cit., p.175
[23] 'Fears for bodies of the fallen Fromelles diggers', The Age, 17/8/2009
[24] 'Fromelles to get Digger cemetery', The Australian 1/8/2008
[25] 'Pemulwuy hope', Koori Mail 473 p.8
[26] 'Pride in culture', Koori Mail 479 p.21