Five sets of ancestral remains from Australia held in German museum collections since the 19th century were returned in a ceremony on Thursday that a community spokesman described as a sad but “very joyous” moment, CNN reports.
The restitution is part of an ongoing effort by German museums and authorities to return human remains and cultural artefacts that were stolen during colonial times.
In this case, three sets of remains that had been in Berlin since 1880 were handed over, as well as two other sets of remains stored in the northwestern German city of Oldenburg. Four members of the Ugar Island community, part of the Torres Strait Islands off the north-eastern tip of Australia, travelled to Berlin to honour their ancestors and accompany their remains on their journey home.
Hermann Parzinger, the head of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees Berlin’s state museums, said:
“These ancestral remains were never meant to be here. They’re here because, during the colonial era and beyond, Europeans presumed to make other peoples and cultures the subject, or more often object, of their research — appropriating artifacts from cultures outside Europe on a scale that is almost unimaginable today and even desecrating the burial places of those communities in the process.”
Around the early 20th century, he said, Berlin’s museums had developed a network of scholars, travellers, traders and others who sent cultural objects from around the world, and “in an effort to compete with other major European museums, they too often neglected the humanity and dignity of the peoples they encountered.”
Natasha Smith, Australia’s ambassador to Germany, said the return of the remains from Berlin’s Ethnological Museum and the State Museum of Nature and Man in Oldenburg meant 162 sets of ancestral remains had now been returned to Australia from Germany and about 1,700 from around the world. She said the return of the remains was an “extremely high priority” for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and the Government.
Ugar Island representative Rocky Stephen said at the ceremony honoring the ancestors:
“It’s sad, but it’s a very joyful moment. This is a process of healing that’s going to happen when they return back to us. No matter (if) it was nearly a 40-hour journey to travel here, because it’s been 144 years they have been missed back at their home.”
Berlin museums are now keen to do “everything possible to repatriate” remains whose countries and communities of origin can be identified and want to bring them home, Parzinger said.
More broadly, governments and museums in Europe and North America are increasingly trying to resolve ownership disputes over objects looted during colonial times.
In 2022, for example, Germany and Nigeria signed an agreement paving the way for the return of hundreds of artefacts known as the “Benin Bronzes” taken out of Africa by a British colonial expedition more than 120 years ago.
