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Squabble over Aboriginal chief's head

By Nigel Bunyan

19 April 2000 - The head of an Aboriginal chief was believed to be still in an Australian bank vault yesterday, almost three years after being exhumed from an English cemetery.

Yagan Kaat was killed by bounty hunters in 1833 and his decapitated head was later presented to the Royal Liverpool Institution. It passed to the Liverpool City Museum before being buried 33 years ago. Kaat's skeleton lies in an unmarked grave in the Swan Valley, Western Australia.

In August 1997 a delegation from the Bibulum community of Western Australia persuaded Liverpool city council to hand back the skull, on the grounds that unless it was reunited with the rest of Kaat's skeleton his spirit would remain earthbound.

Yesterday one of Kaat's descendants, Corrie Bodney, claimed the skull was still being kept in a bank vault. Mr Bodney said: "The people who collected the head came from outside the territorial boundaries. Now there is a squabble among the people who went to Britain. We are very depressed about it."

Ken Colbung, the Aboriginal elder who led the campaign to exhume the skull, said: "The head is being kept in a bank vault because we are worried that those who vandalised a statue of Yagan may try to damage or steal the head."

This article is from The Daily Telegraph

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