The Queensland Museum is taking steps to address a longstanding issue regarding the housing of nearly 900 ancestral remains, most of which belong to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
The remains were taken from graves without consent many years ago, leading to protests from the families of the victims.
The majority of the human remains possessed by the Queensland Museum were gathered in Brisbane between the mid-1800s and the late 1960s, collected for scientific study and public display.
Regrettably, this collection process occurred without consulting the affected families, despite an awareness that it would cause distress.
The Queensland Museum's collection comprises 833 individuals from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds and 65 individuals from various Pacific nations.
Alongside these remains, the museum also possesses 445 distinct "secret and sacred objects," all of which have been earmarked for repatriation, as reported by Nine News.
"Since 1862, Queensland Museum Network has acquired secret and/or scared objects and ancestral remains from across Queensland, The Torres Strait Islands and the Pacific," The Queensland Museum's Repatriation program said, via a statement.
"It acknowledges that some past practices of the Museum, and its staff, were not respectful of, and did not understand the significance and cultural importance of objects and human remains.
"Traditional Owners were also not empowered to prevent the removal of their possessions. Queensland Museum Network apologises for these actions."
(Image: Bob Weatherall/SoundCloud)
Gamilaroi Elder, Uncle Bob Weatherall is urging the Queensland Museum to create a comprehensive register of items in its collection that could potentially be accessible to the Indigenous community.
"It's culturally inappropriate - it seems like they're locked away, incarcerated," he said in a 2016 interview with A Cross-Cultural Working Group on 'Good Culture' and Precariousness.
"It's quite disturbing that there's another society who think that they should have possession of your stuff - it's stolen, they know that.
"But knowing what the situation is, we've got to encourage them to be more diligent in their repatriation program and try to expedite that as early and quickly as possible without any conditions."
He has been advocating for the Queensland Museum to process and return remains and objects from its collection for nearly four decades.
"I kicked that door open in about 1985 and they didn't want to talk to me at all," he said, via the Brisbane Times.
Six months after Nine news initially inquired about delays in the Queensland Museum's repatriation progress, the Queensland government discreetly allocated $4.5 million to hire additional staff.
Queensland Museum Network's chief executive, Jim Thompson, noted that the museum has successfully returned the remains of approximately 200 individuals since commencing repatriation initiatives in the 1990s.
"It's a very complex and sensitive process, it's really difficult," he told 9News.
"We need to make the community aware of what's in the museum because a lot of people don't know what's in here - they know things were taken but they wouldn't know where they ended up.
"We're working with those people and those communities as much as they can to say, 'Can you take this material back, how would you like it back and when would you like it back?'"
Communities seeking access to Ancestral Remains and Secret and Sacred Objects can reach out to the Queensland Museum via [email protected].
Further information about Queensland Museum's Repatriation Program can be found on their website.
