Museum hands back aboriginal artefacts
SACRED aboriginal artefacts held by Manchester Museum have been given back to a delegation of indigenous Australians in the first cultural handover ceremony of its kind.
The museum, part of The University of Manchester, has been in possession of more than 40 objects since the 1920s.
Artefacts and even human remains were often collected by British colonists and returned to the UK.
Australian Aborigines and native Americans have been campaigning for them to be returned to their people for decades and the museum is one of a number of British institutions that has been active in returning ancestral remains since 2003.
A secret ceremony was held in the bowels of the museum on Oxford Road, attended by visitors from four aboriginal language groups, to view where the items were stored before they were packed up ready to be shipped home.
Manchester Museum is the first museum in Europe to begin the repatriation process in a project in collaboration with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, to mark the 250th anniversary next year of Captain James Cook’s first voyage to Australia.
Visiting Manchester, Christopher Simpson, from the Wakka Wakka language group, said: “It’s a shared history we have with the UK and Australia and the arrival of Cook also marked the departure of our cultural heritage items.
“Our people want our secret sacred items home.”
The artefacts range from traditional body ornaments and slippers to a churinga, a wood or stone item believed to embody the spiritual double of a relative or ancestor.
A formal handover ceremony is due to be held at the Australian High Commission in London today, where a Memorandum of Understanding will also be signed by the delegation and the museum.