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Australian government officials frustrate the repatriation of Tasmanian Aboriginal remains

12 September 2006 - The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre is outraged at the interference by Australian government officials in the repatriation of Aboriginal human remains from English museums.

Michael Mansell said today "We go to all the trouble of sending two Aboriginal delegates to talk to museums in England to get them to hand over the human remains of our people so they can be brought home for traditional ceremony. We have continually told OIPC (Office of Indigenous Policy Coordination), the federal government replacement for ATSIC, that it should only become involved when we request them to do so. We now are told by museums in England that OIPC have been to see them in advance of our delegates and have told the museums they should be dealing with OIPC.

This has allowed the museums to play the Aboriginal delegates off against the federal government officials. The result is that the museums are able to refuse to hand over their collections because the museums rely on arguing that there are now "competing" claims.

At the top level, the federal government have been openly supportive of the efforts of Tasmanian Aborigines towards repatriation, but public servants within Australian government departments appear to be completely unaccountable for their actions. They scoff at our requests to stay out of the way, and seem to ignore the spirit of the joint statement by Prime Ministers Blair and Howard in 2000, which led to the Human Tissue Bill which now enables British public museums to return Aboriginal remains.

These machinations by the government officials have only created confusion with museums and have not progressed the return of any more ancestral remains to Aborigines. The Tasmanian delegates' meeting yesterday with the Natural History Museum was disappointing but not surprising. This museum, which holds the largest collection of Aboriginal dead, showed no more willingness to return our remains than in previous years. They still require Aborigines to justify to the museum on the museum's terms why our ancestors' remains should be returned to us, and they admitted themselves that they have no understanding of why Aborigines want our remains returned - although we've been explaining this to them for twenty years both in person and writing.

Despite these obstructions, we intend to keep up our campaign for as long as it will take, heartened by occasional victories."

The two delegates are bringing back to Tasmania human remains returned from the British Museum; they depart London on Wednesday 13 September and will arrive at Hobart airport at 1.55pm on Friday 15 September.

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Source: Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre

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