The unfinished business of Australia’s colonial past lies in secret, dark places within the world’s leading institutions. The remains of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – collected, sold and traded over centuries – are held in museums, universities and private collections across Australia and internationally.
Staff at eight Australian museums have the complex and highly sensitive task of returning them to their ancestral lands, but the work is unending. The number of repatriations is outstripped by the remains they receive monthly, dug up on building sites, unearthed by erosion at national parks or found in dusty boxes on old farming properties.
About three months ago, Dempsey and her sister, Sylvia Price – through their native title body, the Bularnu Waluwarra Wangkayujuru Aboriginal Corporation – received an email from the federal arts department, which facilitates the return of First Nations ancestors from overseas collections.
Aboriginal remains, originating from a cattle station on Waluwarra country outside Mount Isa, had been found at the institute of anatomy at the University of Cologne, the sisters were told.
Further investigation identified the remains of two more ancestors on home soil: one at the Australian Museum in Sydney and another at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane.
Two of the ancestors were sold to the Australian Museum in extraordinary circumstances in 1905 by Walter Roth, who was then Queensland’s chief protector of Aborigines.
Roth’s sale of 2,500 artefacts to the Australian Museum – including 97 human specimens from the Indigenous peoples he went on to govern – for £450($85,000 in today’s money) was one of the reasons for his resignation under public pressure the following year.
