CURATORS are considering returning aboriginal remains held in a Scottish museum to Tasmania so that they can be given a ceremonial burial.
A skull, dating from the late 1880s, is in storage at the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh.
Yesterday Greg Browne, an Aboriginal and representative of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre in Hobart and fellow Aboriginal Caroline Spotswood met
Jane Carmichael, the museum's director of collections, asking for its return.
Mr Browne wants the museum to follow the lead of the Natural History Museum in London, which is conducting a handover ceremony today of 17 sets of remains of Tasmanian Aboriginal remains.
"When we walked into the museum we were sad to think that our ancestor's remains were here and we didn't know what sort of attitude we would be facing," Mr Browne said.
"But the discussion we had with Jane Carmichael was warm and friendly and very positive. We are looking forward to a further discussion with a view to repatriation of the remains. There is only one skull, but it is very important to our people."
The campaign to have Aboriginal remains kept in museums and universities returned home started in the mid-1970s. Once returned, they are not subjected to DNA testing but are given a burial. "It is our people's belief that bodies need to be reunited with the land," Mr Browne said.
"We will have a cultural ceremony where this is carried out with dignity and respect in the traditional way."
The skull has little provenance, but curators believe it dates from the late 19th century and that it is from a Tasmanian Aboriginal. Mr Browne and Ms Spotswood are also visiting Oxford and Cambridge Universities to ask for skeletal remains to be returned. Campaigners have voiced objections to DNA tests being conducted on remains.
Ms Spotswood said: "What we've done is open a precedent in regards to open dialogue and developing and building up trust.
"So that's really good for us to move into other negotiations with other museums and say this is what we're doing, this is what we've done with the Natural History Museum and it's worked out really good."
In 1991, the skulls of nine Tasmanian Aboriginals, from the historic anatomy collection at Edinburgh University, were returned to Australia.
A spokeswoman from the museum said: "Today's meeting was very constructive and we agreed to continue the dialogue. We now expect that there will be a formal request for repatriation of this skull.
"Any formal request will be considered by our board of trustees on a case by case basis, taking into account the UK legislative framework."
Should we return all human artefacts?YES • DR IAN Duffield, expert in colonial and aboriginal history, University of Edinburgh.
"I strongly support the remains going back.
"These people were exactly the same as us and had done us no harm, but they were regarded as primitive and inferior.
"It was a case of 'might is right' and bogus science being used to justify appropriating remains for scientific research.
"The basic point is that removing human remains is a completely barbarous thing to do."
NO • MICHAEL Fry, historian.
"Why do we have museums and other such institutions other than to facilitate cultural exchange between nations?
"The most striking way to do this is to have artefacts from various countries which we can go and look at.
"I don't see any problems with these remains, unless they have been desecrated in some ways.
"The only grounds for dispute would be over legal ownership which wouldn't seem to be a problem in this case."
The full article contains 604 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
