home | news l

Plundered Aboriginal remains go home

10 April 2003 - The bodies of 75 Aboriginal men and women were returned to Australia yesterday after spending decades in the collection of the Royal College of Surgeons in London.

It is one of the biggest repatriations of Aboriginal remains from Britain where museums are believed to hold the body parts of 5,000 indigenous Australians. Most were taken from graves by anthropologists and doctors in the 19th century. Others are believed to have been collected in more dubious circumstances.

Rodney Dillon, a commissioner for the indigenous affairs body, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), and one of the leaders of the campaign for the repatriation said: "There were those who made a living from taking our remains. Our graves were robbed. Some of us were murdered to order.

"Imagine how the spirits of those returned must now feel, their graves violated, their people dispersed and dispossessed over the period of their absence."

A ceremony to purify the remains was held at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, where they will be kept until researchers can identify where they should be finally laid to rest.

The majority of the remains are thought to be of Yorta Yorta people whose traditional lands are near the Murray river on the border of Victoria and New South Wales. One of the biggest collections to have been returned in recent years was compiled by an Adelaide coroner in the early 20th century.

Dawn Casey, the director of the National Museum and a member of the Tuckala people from Queensland said: "There are grandparents around at the moment who knew some of these people. It's very important to indigenous people that they are buried in their own traditional country."

A spokesman for Atsic, Geoff Clarke, said the return would allow the healing of indigenous communities to begin, but the repatriation is unlikely to stifle debate on the current condition of indigenous Australians.

Source: The Guardian, UK

Further information: repatriation issues page - includes news index and external links