KEY POINTS:
Helen Clark received some good news yesterday, standing in her socks on the porch of a meeting house from Tokomaru Bay which a Chicago museum bought 100 years ago.
The remains of at least 14 Maori in the possession of the Field Museum of Natural History will be returned to New Zealand.
The announcement was made solemnly by the museum's bushily bearded curator, John Terrell. He has formed close connections with New Zealand through his work, which included a job as a curator of the 1986 Te Maori exhibition.
The old and beautifully preserved meeting house in Chicago is not connected to the remains, but is the historic showpiece of the museum's collection of things Maori - tiki, patu, exquisitely fine cloaks stored in a cellar alongside Roman bathing tubs.
The bones are also stored away and are not for viewing.
One of the remains is a moko mokai, a shrunken head with facial tattoos. The others are thought to be skeletal remains, but their origins are unknown.
Inviting the Prime Minister on to the meeting house porch, Dr Terrell removed his shoes and others followed suit.
The museum's board of trustees agreed on Monday to a request by Te Papa to return the remains to New Zealand.
More than 30 institutions around the world have agreed to return remains.
Paying tribute to the museum, Helen Clark said: "It has been an incredibly sensitive subject for Maori to have human remains of their ancestors sold and ending up in museums, including very, very fine museums like this one."
Explaining the purchase of the meeting house, Dr Terrell said it was bought in 1905 at a time when Chicago was a working-class city and "there was a deliberate attempt to bring the world to Chicago because Chicago couldn't go to the world".
The meeting house was built in the 1820s and was later sold by a chief to a German antiques dealer. The museum bought it in Hamburg in 1905.
Culture and Heritage Minister Mahara Okeroa said he was grateful for the decision to return the remains. They would be kept in Te Papa until research was done into their tribe or iwi.
Te Papa wants all human remains repatriated.
It is believed more than 200 heads are still in overseas institutions.
