Paper short abstract:

This paper offers an assessment of whether the rights of Indigenous Australians to fulfil their obligations to the dead have been served by the framework of relevant federal and state repatriation policies and programs implemented since the late 1970s.

Paper long abstract:

Since the mid-1970s, Indigenous Australians have actively sought the return of the remains of their ancestors from Western museums and other medico-scientific institutions. As Colin Pardoe observed in the wake of the conflicts between Indigenous people and scientists critical of repatriation that occurred through the 1980s, 'Indigenous people were demanding control, accountability and recognition of their ownership of their past. It was not something conceptualised by scholars for the good of Indigenous people.' (Pardoe 1991).

Yet achieving the repatriation of ancestral remains has not been easy, and it is questionable whether claimants have authority in and control of the processes involved to the extent of fulfilling their cultural obligations to the dead.

In this paper, I sketch some of the more salient aspects of what is now a near fifty year history of repatriation of Indigenous Australian ancestral remains from scientific collections. In doing so, I reflect on whether this has been a history in which the rights of Indigenous Australians to fulfil their obligations to the dead have been adequately served by relevant federal and state repatriation policies and programs implemented since the late 1970s.