Ancestral remains return home
The ghosts of New Zealand’s colonial past have taken 59 more steps to being laid to rest.
Yesterday, the remains of 59 Maori and Moriori - stolen in a bygone era and taken to museums around the world - returned home to Te Papa.
Te Papa kaihautu Arapata Hakiwai, who travelled to Europe to collect the ancestral remains, said international institutions were beginning to realise the importance of returning them.
‘‘They are realising many ancestors were taken by unethical means,’’ he said.
Two of the remains were skulls taken in 1890 by Swedish natural historian Conrad Fristedt, who spent time in the Bay of Islands and kept his discoveries secret from Maori living in the region.
A toi moko - tattooed preserved Maori head - was also returned.
The remains had been repatriated from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, Ubersee Museum in Germany and Manchester University Museum and Pitt Rivers Museum in England.
Te Papa would help return the remains to iwi, thought to be in the Chatham Islands, Northland, Waikato and Marlborough.
‘‘This is also a bittersweet occasion, as our repatriation work reveals newly established colonial museums, alongside visiting natural historians from Europe actively participated in the trade of Maori and Moriori remains,’’ Hakiwai said.
These had been taken from sacred repositories, he said.
‘‘Many New Zealanders are unaware of this history, and do not realise the long-standing history of the lack of respect offered to wahi tapu by colonial settlers.’’
The repatriation is the latest in a string of such events, including 60 returned in 2016.
More than 400 individuals have been returned from institutions worldwide since the programme began in 1990.