Aboriginal skulls begin journey home to peace

By TERRI JUDD in Manchester

At a time when international tugs of war over artefacts have become all too common, one British museum has handed back some particularly poignant antiquities.

Four Australian aboriginal skulls were passed over to their native custodians in a move described as the "end of the torment".

The Manchester Museum gave the skulls to a delegation of elders who will return them to their traditional homelands in Victoria for burial in a sacred place.

Such remains, brought to Britain as gruesome souvenirs, for experimental purposes or as scientific curios by early white settlers, have become a burning political issue in Australia.

Aborigines believe the spirits of the dead cannot rest in peace until their bones are laid in their native ground. Nor can they be free if the remains are separated.

The British Government has given an undertaking to increase efforts to repatriate such artefacts from museum collections across the country.

Manchester agreed to return the skulls in 1992, but it has taken 11 years to organise.

Museum director Tristram Besterman said the act of returning the skulls recognised "our common humanity".

"These remains were removed during the colonial era at a time of great inequality of power," he said.

"Their removal more than a century ago was carried out without the permission of the Aboriginal nations ... in violation of the laws and beliefs of the indigenous Australian people.

"The Manchester Museum cannot atone for the wrongs of our own forebears at a time when different values prevailed. Nonetheless, by returning these remains now, we hope to contribute to ending the sense of outrage and dispossession felt by Australian Aborigines today."

Yesterday's ceremony follows an agreement drawn up between the University of Manchester and the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action (Faira).

"This will end the practice of scientific investigations and maintaining Aboriginal ancestors in cardboard boxes, plastic bags and vaults in museums," said Bob Weatherall, from Faira.

Major Sumner, a traditional custodian from the Ngarrindjeri nation in South Australia, added: "We now put an end to the torment."

Last year, the College of Surgeons' museum became the first English institution to return Aboriginal remains. Among them were hair and skin from Truganini, hailed as the last Tasmanian Aborigine before she died in 1876.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission has identified more than 50 institutions in 18 countries that acknowledge holding remains and artefacts. These are slowly being recovered.

Ken Colbung, MBE, a JP in Western Australia, went to Liverpool six years ago to demand the return of the head of outstanding leader Yagan, from the Tondarup Ballaruk clan. He was the first to speak up for his people's rights and tried to reconcile whites and blacks in the 1830s.

Yagan was shot by a farmboy. His head was smoked, pickled and exhibited before being buried in a paupers' grave in Liverpool.

The Home Office initially refused exhumation after objections from relatives of stillborn babies in the same public grave, but sonar technology was used to locate the head without disturbing the other bodies.

Colbung, an elder of the Nyoongar Bibbulman tribe, said reuniting Yagan's head and torso "will immediately set his spirit free to continue its eternal journey".

- INDEPENDENT