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Stolen remains coming home

By David King

6 September 2004 - The skeletal remains of up to 18 Aborigines, stolen by a Swedish explorer 90 years ago, will be returned to Australia this month in a landmark repatriation agreement.

Aboriginal elders from Western Australia, Queensland, NSW and Victoria will travel to Stockholm in late September to receive the ancestral remains and begin the process of spiritual healing. "The belief is that once a burial ground has been disturbed, the spirits and the country will not rest until the remains have been brought back," said Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre spokesman Neil Carter.

In accordance with traditional beliefs, the elders will take ownership of the remains at a small ceremony in Stockholm and then accompany them back to Australia.

"As soon as the elders heard about it, they agreed they would bring the remains back to Australia," Mr Carter said.

The 18 boxes of bones, which are believed to include skeletons of two small children, will be sent to the National Museum of Australia in Canberra for identification before being returned to their traditional lands.

Most of the remains - which are held in Sweden's Museum of Ethnography - were removed from the Kimberley by Swedish anthropologist Eric Mjoberg between 1910 and 1911.

Mjoberg's methods were said to include bribing Aborigines to lead him to remains and then smuggling the skeletons out of Australia by telling authorities the bones were from kangaroos.

Mjoberg made a second trip to the east coast of Australia after 1911 and removed bones from sites near Urandangie in Queensland, Bermagui in NSW and Camperdown in Victoria.

Culture centre official Ken Robinson said Mjoberg's scientific methods were dubious at best and described him as "a thrill-seeker".

"He was very devious in the way he operated - he would follow Aborigines when they went to do ceremonies and then sweep in and take the bones," Mr Robinson said.

"He would bribe Aborigines to take him to places where there were skeletons.

"He managed to collect quite a lot of bones, most of them from different regions of the Kimberley, the desert region south of Fitzroy Crossing and some from up in the Gibb River Road area."

Mr Robinson said Mjoberg recorded details of his travels and bone collections in a 1915 book. Swedish anthropologist Claes Hallgren recently wrote a book examining Mjoberg's methods, prompting an ethical debate that led the Swedish Government to contact the Australian authorities.

In October last year, Sweden became the first nation to offer to return Aboriginal bones and artifacts held in its museums.

The federally funded repatriation, which is being organised by the culture centre, comes after the Swedish Government had originally offered to deliver the remains back to Australia.

Mr Carter said there would be a small ceremony at the handover in Stockholm and a traditional ceremony would be held in Australia when the bones were returned.

Source: The Australian

Signs of a shift over bones of contention

By Lauren Martin

9 October 2004 - Nearly 100 years after Swedish scientists raided Aboriginal burial sites and smuggled out the skeletons saying they were kangaroo bones, indigenous men fought back tears as they brought the remains back to Australia.

Now the most trenchant opponent of repatriation, the British Museum of Natural History, has indicated it is prepared to send some remains back to Australia,

says the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Amanda Vanstone.

She was also advised this week that the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery would return indigenous remains as well.

A former ATSIC commissioner, Rodney Dillon, said he had been impressed by a change in attitude in the past six months at the natural history museum, which holds nearly 500 Australian indigenous remains.

"It's not a complete change, and they are only talking about some of them, but they are looking more at the importance of the spirit," Mr Dillon said.

Sweden's Museum of Ethnography initiated this return after diaries of Eric Mjoeberg's 1910 expedition were published, exposing his unethical and illegal exploits as a collector. The stories outraged many Swedes.

Other Swedish museums have also returned material to states including NSW and Victoria. These were the first returns from museums in continental Europe.

The National Museum of Australia's repatriation director, Michael Pickering, said he was unaware of the change of attitude among the museums in Britain, where a Cambridge University anthropologist, Robert Foley, has warned that repatriating their collection of human remains would be "tragic".

As more museums agreed to repatriate human remains, those against it had become more vocal and heated, Mr Pickering said.

Dr Foley has said there is "huge interest" in how modern humans came out of Africa and spread across the world. "These bones help us understand that," he said.

Joey Chatfield, who travelled from Camperdown, Victoria to Sweden to bring back the remains of one of his Gunditjmara/Kirrae Wurrong ancestors, was confused and saddened about why they had ever been taken. "Worse is that the scientific research wasn't even carried out for their own benefit."

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

related links :

• Aboriginal remains to be returned from Swedish museums
  October 22, 2003 - Aboriginal remains and thousands of sacred objects held in Swedish museums could be returned to Australia as early as next year. The Swedish government has offered to return the remains and objects, including 13 sets of human remains held in the Swedish Ethnography Museum.
• Swedish Ethnography Museum

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