Dawn Casey knows how emotional the process of handing back human remains to an Indigenous community can be. Especially when those remains are not whole, but in fragments, and especially when the remains were taken from graves, as was the case with the Ngarrindjeri people of South Australia. ‘There’s a mixture of happiness and a mixture of strong emotions about why it happened, and how it happened. It’s extremely moving,’ says Casey, clearly speaking from experience.
As the Director of the National Museum of Australia, Casey is charged with overseeing the only organisation in Australia with the legislative power to accept human remains from overseas, through its Repatriation Unit. Only last August, Casey was involved in a hand-over ceremony which saw 85 sets of Aboriginal remains returned to Darwin’s Larrakia people. Today, the nation’s largest-ever repatriation – some 300 remains – will involve the Ngarrindjeri people of South Australia. A large portion of the collection was recently returned from the Royal College of Surgeons in London, and Edinburgh University, where it was sent by controversial South Australian coroner, Dr William Ramsay Smith, between 1898 and 1906.
Casey says the whole process – from identifying remains through to handing them back – is harrowing. There are the obvious reasons why this should be the case – the feelings of dispossesion and wrongs done to the Indigenous community’s ancestors, which cannot be settled until the remains are put to rest – as well as the not so obvious.
For instance, Casey explains, when a number of different Indigenous communities have attachments to particular remains, and the difficulties in knowing which group to return them to. Or when it is known that remains were not dealt with in the traditional way upon the individual’s death, or were tampered with after burial.
‘People get very nervous about not having these remains, and them not being dealt with in the traditional way to start with. It’s very emotional for a lot of people, because, on the one hand it’s great to have the [remains], but on the other hand, [Indigenous] people know how dramatic it is going to be.’
Over the past few years, a number of British cultural institutions with Indigenous remains have begun to return collections – following discussions between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Australian counterpart John Howard during 2000, in which Howard pressed Blair to help persuade UK museums and universities to repatriate the remains of some 2,000 Aborigines.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives have since travelled to the UK to lobby organisations known to possess human remains, and encourage repatriation.
However, there are different laws governing collections in museums and universities. National museums, such as the British Museum and the National History Museum in London, are not permitted to return any objects, including human remains, unless the collection items are damaged or deteriorated to the point where they are considered to no longer be of value, under the British Museum Act of 1963.
Edinburgh University and the Royal College of Surgeons are not covered by this legislation, and therefore have willingly repatriated large collections of remains.
The decision to return remains from university museums lies with trustees of the institution; other museums are governed by Local Authority legislation, and independent museums often fall under charity laws.
However, a working group has been meeting behind closed doors over the past two years to determine the legal status of human remains from all over the world currently held by UK museums and universities; to develop guidelines and policies for the safe keeping and return of remains, and to consider how the law might be changed to allow museums to repatriate remains if they wish. The group, which includes lawyers, scientists and museum representatives, is set to deliver its recommendations to the UK government by the end of the British summer 2003.
Casey, for her part, affirms that despite the differing laws governing institutions, those in the UK have been very co-operative and understanding about the need to return human remains. However, she doubts the validity of arguments calling for the retention of remains for research purposes. ‘Certainly, it’s not been the case in Australia for many years,’ she observes. ‘I would argue that people who use those excuses are very nervous about letting go of collections because of research that they may do.’
But, she emphasises, the case for research is an incredibly complex one. She recalls an instance in which one of the remains at the NMA was found to have a bullet hole. Although research may determine or provide insight into cases of genocide or even the spread of disease among Australia’s Aborigines, Casey questions: ‘Why do we have to continue to prove these things happened?’
CLICK HERE to read Part 2, canvassing the varied opinions across the UK museums community.
