Washington’s Smithsonian Institution has become the first US institution to return human remains at the request of Australian aboriginal groups, following the lead set by various museums in the UK in recent years.

From:
The Australian

Bones return to Arnhem Land
Natasha Robinson | August 06, 2008

THE remains of 33 indigenous people taken by American researchers 60 years ago touched down in Australia yesterday to be repatriated to Arnhem Land.

A delegation of four traditional owners returned home after travelling to Washington DC to collect the remains from the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of Natural History.

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Following on from their successes in Scotland, the Ngarrindjeri have also collected skulls of their ancestors from Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum to be returned to Australia.

It is worth remembering again, that the current reunifications of Aboriginal artefacts only happened after a change in the law allowed many of the countries larger museums to over-rule the anti-deaccessioning clauses in their own charters & return these pieces. Once various key institutions had returned pieces, many smaller museums and galleries followed their example.

From:
BBC News

Page last updated at 09:48 GMT, Wednesday, 9 July 2008 10:48 UK
Aboriginal skulls returning home

Four Aboriginal skulls, which have formed part of a British museum’s collection for more than 100 years, are to be returned to Australia.

The 19th century human remains were donated to Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum by someone who claimed to have been given them.

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Despite setbacks along the way, after ten years of campaigning, the Ngarrindjeri tribe are accepting the return of a number of Aboriginal artefacts from institutions in Scotland. Like many other such repatriations made in recent years, this has only been made possible by a change in the law in the form of the Human Tissue Act 2004.

From:
The Times

From The Times
July 8, 2008
Scotland hands back Aborigine relics
Charlene Sweeney

With a simple but symbolic whorl of smoke, a group of Aborigines began the long-awaited process of repatriating their ancestors’ remains from a Scottish museum to their homeland.

The Ngarrindjeri, who have been campaigning for the return of the relics for ten years, sent a delegation to Edinburgh to accept ownership of six Aborigine skulls from the National Museums of Scotland, and a fragment of a woman’s skull from the University of Edinburgh.

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