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Bring indigenous remains home: elders

By EMMA MACDONALD

10 April 2003 - The remains of an estimated 8000 Aboriginal people are scattered across Europe in boxes, drawers and plastic bags, and Indigenous Affairs Minister Philip Ruddock was urged yesterday to do more to bring them home to rest.

Indigenous leaders also called for an end to modern-day experiments on Aboriginal remains a call Mr Ruddock said he would take to Britain.

Community elders performed a welcoming ceremony in Canberra yesterday for the repatriation of the remains of 60 Aboriginal people handed back this week by London's Royal College of Surgeons.

A Kamilaroi man from south-west Queensland, Bob Weatherall, has spent 20 years researching the whereabouts of indigenous remains that were scattered throughout European museums, galleries and medical schools after being dug up from Australian graves for scientific experimentation.

He said experimentation was still taking place today on remains at London's Natural History Museum.

"This barbaric practice still continues. It has to stop," he said.

Mr Ruddock said that while he did not believe experimentation was widespread, he would make a representation to the British Government. He described the grave-robbing of the past as an obscenity.

"Today we are acknowledging this past injustice and recognising the legacy of hurt endured by indigenous communities," he said.

The repatriation of indigenous remains became a priority of the Commonwealth after a statement by Prime Minister John Howard and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2000.

Mr Weatherall said during the late 1800s Aboriginal people were hunted down and killed so anthropologists and archeologists could try to prove "the inferiority of a race of people".

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander commissioner Rodney Dillon said the trade in remains was still in living memory of some Aborigines.

"People died in fear thinking their remains would be dug up. They left notes saying 'Don't bury me where they think I'll be'."

Indigenous communities regarded it as another group of stolen generations.

The remains received this week bring to 750 the number of bodies returned from Britain.

The 60 remains are mainly from the Yorta Yorta people in Victoria and NSW, and the Ngarrindjeri people in South Australia. Their return was secured by the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action with a funding grant from ATSIC.

Traditional custodians Major Sumner (Ngarrindjeri) and Henry Atkinson (Yorta Yorta) accompanied the remains from London to Canberra where they will be stored at the National Museum until their communities arrange reburials.

Mr Weatherall said it was a difficult process in some cases where traditional owners had lost the rights to their land and pastoralists would not allow burials in the appropriate areas.

Mr Ruddock said he would look at any proposals for specific repatriation processes.

Source:The Canberra Times

Government objects to tests on remains

10 April 2003 - Australia will formally protest to Britain over its museums' ongoing experimentation on the remains of indigenous Australians.

An Aboriginal delegation that brought back the remains of 60 indigenous people from the Royal College of Surgeons' collection said it had evidence that an enormous amount of experimentation on remains was continuing.

The delegation said it was told at London's Museum of Natural History this week that dentists were continuing to analyse its collection of human remains.

"Scientific investigations on Aboriginal ancestral remains and biological tissue is still continuing today," delegation head Bob Weatherall said.

"The barbaric practice still continues; it has to stop."

Indigenous Affairs Minister Philip Ruddock described the past British practice of taking Aboriginal bodies for scientific examination and experimentation as obscene.

"In terms of the issue of continuing experimentation, I must say I think it is more the exception than the rule," Mr Ruddock said.

"But I will take the matter up formally with my (British) counterpart to make known the concern that exists here if there continues to be experimentation on remains."

The skeletal remains of 60 Australians placed for storage in the National Museum in Canberra brings to 750 the number of bodies repatriated from the United Kingdom.

ATSIC chairman Geoff Clark used the occasion to take a swipe at the federal government's 1998 amendments to the Native Title Act.

He said when the bodies were stolen in the early years of colonisation, Aborigines still controlled their land.

"It's a sad moment, I think, that they have now been returned when they've been dispossessed - dispossessed by the 10-point plan and the native title processes," Mr Clark said.

Mr Ruddock said he expected a British government working group would next month recommend amending their museum laws which would accelerate the repatriation process.

"When that occurs, it's likely that there will be many more collections returned from museums to traditional custodians in the next few years," he said.

But Mr Weatherall, who has campaigned for 20 years for the British museums to give up their human collections, estimated another 8,000 bodies remained in the UK.

Source: The Age

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