National resting place not ‘a black Arlington’

A plan to construct a national resting place for the remains of Indigenous Australians will not include a ‘tomb for the unknown guardians’, according to a leading Indigenous body,

AIATSIS chief executive Craig Ritchie said it was important the public understood the resting place would only act as a ‘holding place’ not a memorial. Picture: Lee Robinson.

A plan for a national resting place for the remains of Indigenous Australians will not include a “tomb for the unknown guardians”, says a leading Indigenous body, given interment of Aboriginal remains would be culturally inappropriate.

The Ngurra cultural precinct, to be built on the site of Reconciliation Place within Canberra’s parliamentary triangle, will not be turned into “the black equivalent of the Arlington National Cemetery”, according to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, which will spearhead the site’s ­development.

The $316m precinct, announced by the Morrison government in January, will house a cultural centre and a national resting place for repatriated ancestral remains with “limited provenance”.

It comes as former Australian War Memorial chair Brendan Nelson said the Ngurra precinct should include a “sacred ossuary” of Indigenous remains and a tomb of the Unknown Warrior to act as a composite to the war memorial’s Hall of Memory, across from Lake Burley Griffin.

Former PM Scott Morrison with Craig Ritchie at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Picture: Gary Ramage

AIATSIS chief executive Craig Ritchie said the national resting place was not meant as a site that included a matching tomb to the war memorial, and the suggestion of an “ossuary” was “culturally inappropriate”.

“When we conceived of the Ngurra precinct idea and put it to government, we included the proposition that it should include a resting place, and a place that will appropriately care for those remains until such a time as they are able to return to country,” Mr Ritchie said.

“It’s very similar to Dr Nelson‘s proposal but it differs in some significant ways. Firstly, it’s not a burial place. It’s not (going to be) … the black equivalent of the Arlington National Cemetery and it’s not a place where ancestors will be buried. No one will be interred.”

Former Australian War Memorial chair Brendan Nelson. Picture: Martin Ollman

Mr Ritchie said it was important the public understood there would be no skeletons or body fragments displayed in the precinct and the resting place would act only as a “holding place” until the provenance of the remains could be resolved and “returned to country”.