DNA paves the way home

SCIENTISTS have discovered a new way to ensure the long lost remains of the Far North’s indigenous peoples find their way back to country.

Griffith University researchers have used pre-European human remains found in Cape York to test a method of identifying the region where the peoples originated.

The remains – from Weipa, Cairns, Mapoon in Cape York, and Bourke, Willandra Lakes and Barham in NSW – were either excavated from their burial by community request to save them, or were well documented repatriations from the Queensland Museum.

Professor David Lambert, from the university’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, was part of the team that used nuclear DNA-based methods to analyse the ancient bones.

The team worked closely with traditional owners, and found most of the remains had contemporary matches, enabling them to track down modern day families.

“I think there are probably four phases to this work,” Prof Lambert said. “The next phase is to work with one or more museums in Australia to be able to actually identify a whole lot of the remains they have, and identify where they come from.

“We’ll do other studies from that, and look at remains from other communities to show that we can really identify those remains and where they came from.”

Aboriginal remains were extensively removed from graves, burial sites, hospitals, asylums and prisons throughout the 19th century, shortly after European settlement of the continent.

They were exported worldwide.

Prof Lambert said the important study would aim to repatriate as many indigenous peoples’ remains as possible back to country.

“It’s only when we’ve done a very large set of these remains that we’ll be able to identify where they’ve come from, that we’ll sort of feel we’ve made a major contribution to Australia and to the return of ancient people to their ancestral community that they came from,” he said.