Remains of 13 Aboriginals will be returned to Australia

The remains of Aborigines plundered from graves were found in boxes at two British universities and a museum.

Ned David, Nick Abraham, Major Sumner and Grant Rigney in London. Picture: i-Images

Thirteen “old people” are returning home this weekend.

They are the remains of Aborigines believed to have been plundered from their graves in Victorian times and found in boxes in the storage cupboards of two British universities and a museum.

One relic — a skull made into a water vessel — had been part of a ‘’world art’’ collection by the Royal Pavillion Museum at Brighton and it took 11 years of negotiations to overcome initial strong resistance to returning it.

After being welcomed and cleansed with a smoke ceremony, dancing and chanting in the marbled great hall of the Australian high commission in London, the remains are no longer potential exhibits or long-forgotten trophies, but respected ancient spirits returning to traditional lands.

Major Sumner, an elder from the lower Murray region of South Australia, led the repatriation ceremony in London and told The Weekend Australian he would continue to sing to the spirits as they returned to bigger re-burial ceremonies.

‘’I am happy because I am taking them home, and this feeling I have is coming from their spirit. As we travel home with them I will have the home song going in my mind, I will be singing them home.’’

For Mr Sumner’s wife, Loretta, who helped prepare the remains and wrapped them in bark for the traditional smoking ceremony, the process is also touching.

She has helped prepare some previously repatriated remains and though they are termed “old people” — thousands of bodies, and body parts were stolen from graves in the 1800s — she whispered that the remains were often not from old people.

“One skull was so small,’’ she said, cupping her hands in the memory of preparing an infant.

One of the 13 sets of remains came from Cambridge University and will go back to the West Australian community of Whadjuk Noongar.

The water-vessel skull has been sourced back to the Ngarrindjeri community and will be reburied in Camp Coorong, near Meningie, South Australia.

But the remaining 11 are unprovenanced and will go to the National Museum in Canberra for further non-invasive research and analysis to determine their origins.

“At least they will be back in Australia,’’ Mr Sumner said. “We believe if the old people are not in their country then their spirit is wandering and ... never rests.’’

The mystery 11 remains were found in the dark recesses of Birmingham University in boxes marked only “Australia’’. June Jones, senior lecturer in biomedical ethics at Birmingham University, said: “There are no written records. How they came to be at the university is a mystery, there are no records of donation.

“We knew we had a collection of ­ancient human remains but there are no log books or records of ­donation.’’

The university’s link to a medical school was established in 1825, when surgeon William Sands Cox began teaching in his father’s house. Throughout the 1800s many surgeons taught from home and one theory is that the skulls were donated to the university as a alumni family bequest.

“In Victorian times the skulls were used for comparative anatomy and the measurements were used to show how different ethnic groups had different facial characteristics,” Ms Jones said.

“The thought then was the different characteristics created different intelligence levels, and even moral character.

“Such practices have been ... discredited now.”

There are believed to be thousands more Aboriginal remains in Britain — and some in Australian state museums — yet to be returned to their communities.

This week Advisory Committee for Indigenous Repatriation co-chair Ned David and Mr Sumner joined Grant Rigney from the Ngarrindjeri community and Mervyn Abraham from the Whadjuk community to encourage further repatriation of remains, many held by Oxford’s Natural History Museum, and Cambridge University and the British Museum.

While many of the institutions slowly had come around to recognising Aboriginal remains should rightfully be returned to their spiritual lands, Mr Rigney said the British Museum had so far resisted giving up its remains.