Heritage NSW report on Mungo Man ‘full of lies’

A Heritage NSW report that said Aboriginal communities unanimously wanted the historic Mungo Man and Mungo Lady reburied in secret unmarked graves is ‘full of lies’, says Joel Kelly.

Joel Kelly says the push in recent years to rebury the 40,000-year-old skeletal remains in unmarked locations would go against the wishes of generations of Aboriginal elders. Picture: Darren Seiler

A Heritage NSW report that said Aboriginal communities unanimously wanted the historic Mungo Man and Mungo Lady reburied in secret unmarked graves is “full of lies”, says an Indigenous man whose family has been involved in the debate over the remains for decades.

Joel Kelly, whose grandmother Alice Kelly was one of the first to call for a “keeping place” for the remains, told The Australian that the push in recent years to rebury the 40,000-year-old skeletal remains in unmarked locations would go against the wishes of generations of Aboriginal elders.

He said elders such as his grandmother had always wanted to see the remains honoured and buried in a way that would preserve them for study by ­future generations.

“We’ve suggested a burial mound, in the way they would have been traditionally buried, but in a way that still protects the remains so that they are there for future generations or future elders who might have questions they need to ask them,” he said.

“It would allow for the world to come and pay their respects to them also.”

The remains of Mungo Man and Mungo Lady – whose discoveries in the late 1960s and early 70s changed the scientific understanding of how humans came to live in what is now Australia, and the culture that existed here at a time when megafauna still roamed the continent – were set to be reburied in unmarked graves by the end of this year after a report by Heritage NSW said there was “unanimous” agreement on the plan by an Aboriginal Advisory Group that had considered the issue.

Mr Kelly said voices in favour of a reburial that would not see the remains lost forever had been isolated from within the process and the government body’s findings did not paint a true picture of the views of a significant number of Indigenous people.

The push for an anonymous reburial of the remains, Mr Kelly said, had not been the subject of adequate consultation with relevant Indigenous communities and the “vocal” opposition from him and his father to the plan had not been adequately ­reflected in the report. “(It) said we never wanted a keeping place, never wanted an education centre and we wanted them buried in secret when none of that is true,” he said.

“When I went through the report, it was full of lies. It removed 30 years of relationship-building and decision-making processes by elders past and present.”

Funding and maintenance of a keeping place has long been a sticking point in discussions but Mr Kelly noted that the likely upkeep was tiny compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars committed to redevelopment of the Nat­ional War Memorial.

A change.org petition in support of his grandmother’s vision for a keeping place for the remains has collected almost 16,000 signatures since Mr Kelly started it a month ago.