A ceremony has been held at the Auckland War Memorial Museum to begin the repatriation of six First Nations ancestors back to Australia, NITV reports.
Five will be returned by the museum and one by the University of Auckland, last week’s report says.
“Within our cultural beliefs as Wanjina-Wunggurr people, we recognise that the spirit of our ancestors is embedded in their bones,” Gary Umbagai (Wanjina-Wunggurr), a descendent of one of the tūpuna, told NITV.
“Our people’s bones should be in their country, not somewhere else; that is not right.”
Umbagai travelled to Aotearoa to attend the ceremony and return his tupuna home to the Dambeemangaddee community of Collier Bay, Western Australia.
The museum’s director David Reeves told NITV their Māori advisory group had directed them to identify ancestral remains in their collection to return to their home countries - a practice it has followed for more than 25 years.
He said correctly identifying remains can be difficult.
“One is simply identified as being from Australia and other than a date range we don’t have records of exactly even how they came to the museum.
“And that’s a very sad situation, but it’s the reality of 19th century record keeping.”
Reeves said the exchange of human remains between museums had once been widespread but is now considered “abhorrent”.
“It was the practice in the 19th century amongst scientists and museum directors and the like to effectively exchange human remains from different communities all over the world.
“It’s a practice which has become viewed as pretty abhorrent these days and most especially to have them on display.”
