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Sweden returns remains of 10 Aborigines to Australia

22 October 2007 - International Herald Tribune France - Swedish museum officials on Monday handed over the remains of 10 Aborigines to an Australian delegation, nearly 100 years after they were brought to Sweden for racial studies.

The skeletal remains were received by Australia's ambassador to Sweden, Howard Brown, in a ceremony at the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm. They were set to be turned over later to Aboriginal groups in Australia.

"These people's remains need to come back so that their spirits and souls can rest in peace," Ismahl Croft, an Aborigine from Kimberley in western Australia and a member of the delegation to Sweden, told Swedish news agency TT.

The remains were given to the Museum of Ethnography in the early 20th century. They are believed to have been smuggled by a Swedish expedition that dug up graves in Australia between 1910 and 1911, museum officials said.

"Research has shown that graves were plundered and that remains were illegally smuggled out of Australia. It is good that we are now given an opportunity to hand them back," said the director of the Ethnographic Museum, Anders Bjorklund.

Aboriginal bones were used as research material in racial studies at the time.

Sweden has previously returned the remains of 15 other Aborigines to Australia.

Source: International Herald Tribune France

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