Cape Reinga eyed as burial spot

Cape Reinga is where spirits of the dead are said to depart for Hawaiki. Photo / Greg Bowker

Cape Reinga is one suggested resting place for the estimated 25 per cent of human remains whose place of origin Te Papa will struggle to identify.

Since 2003 the museum's international repatriation programme for koiwi tangata - skeletal remains - has brought home 186 from medical schools and museums abroad.

Te Papa is meant to be just an interim home as researchers try to find where the remains come from. So far they have sent 26 koiwi to 12 iwi.

Repatriation manager Te Herekiekie Herewini said Te Papa held 500 individual koiwi but for about 125 of them it would be difficult or impossible to establish provenance. Te Papa also holds 101 toi moko, which are preserved heads.

So the museum is asking Maori to discuss what should be done with those skeletal fragments.

Two options include having a putunga kotahi, mausoleum, built in Wellington to house the remains or agreeing to a Ngati Kuri request for burial near Te Rerenga Wairua, Cape Reinga, the place where Maori believe spirits of the dead depart for Hawaiki.

But Mr Herewini said those options were not set in stone and Te Papa was encouraging a long discussion over two years at regional hui.

It was important to make the right decision so koiwi "are put in a place of peace but they are at peace themselves", Mr Herewini said.

His team are usually led by clues such as records from foreign institutions about who donated the fragments and when.

He said big collectors such as Canterbury Museum founder and curator Julius von Haast, who sent remains to Europe, left meticulous notes for today's researchers.

Von Haast was surveyor-general in the 19th century and made notes when he came across burial sites and then when he was collecting.

But there were many who raided caves or other burial places and stole remains, traded them and were not going to be slowed down by paperwork.

"Many were taken without consent of the whanau or the hapu. Places like New Zealand were exotic so there was a market for koiwi tangata."

Repatriation efforts have been strengthening since the early 1970s. In May the French Parliament voted to return 15 toi moko.

France, like other European nations, has traditionally resisted the repatriation of ancient body parts in case it led to the loss of Egyptian mummies and other treasures.

But the French Minister for Parliamentary Relations, Henri de Raincourt, said retention by provincial and national museums could no longer be justified. "From a ritual showing the respect of a tribe and family towards their dead, the mummified heads became the object of a particularly barbaric trade due to the curiosity of travellers and European collectors."