Skulls of indigenous people returned to Newfoundland

Remains taken from graves made up part of National Museum’s collection

They were among the last members of an indigenous tribe who were denied their final resting place and appropriated as symbols of Britain’s colonial reach.

Now, more than two centuries after their remains were taken from their graves and sent to Scotland, the skulls of two Beothuk people have finally been returned home.

The remains of Nonosabasut,

a chief of the indigenous people native to Newfoundland, along with those of his wife, Demasduit, were brought to Edinburgh in the 1820s, and for more than 150 years, formed part of the National Museum of Scotland’s collections.

But after a drawn out and impassioned campaign waged by indigenous groups, supported by authorities in Canada, they were repatriated last week.

The couple were among countless Beothuk to have their land taken by Sir Charles Hamilton, a British naval officer who served as the governor of Newfoundland between 1818 and 1823.

Nonosabasut, the head of his family, was murdered in 1819 while trying to prevent the abduction of Demasduit, but she was captured and died the following year of tuberculosis.

The couple were buried alongside their infant son, but their sepulchre was discovered by William Cormack, a Scots-canadian explorer who was educated at the University of Glasgow and the University of Edinburgh.

He gathered the skulls and a selection of other funerary items, before sending them to his mentor, Robert Jamieson, a professor of natural history at Edinburgh, in 1828. It is believed the last Beothuk died the following year.

Prof Jamieson added it to a university collection which eventually came into the ownership of the National Museum of Scotland via the former Industrial Museum of Scotland in the 1850s.

But amid growing criticism and debate over the inclusion of human remains in the collections of museums in the UK and further afield, pressure was brought to bear on the institution.

A group spearheaded by Chief mi’ s el joe, an indigenous leader from of the Miawpukek First Nation in Conne River, urged the museum to allow the remains to go back to Canada.