MERCURY MANSELL CONCERNS

Aboriginal leader raises alarm on museums human remains

EMILY BAKER, Sunday Tasmanian

ABORIGINAL leader Michael Mansell will write to a Launceston museum to clarify if unidentified human remains in its collection are those of Indigenous Tasmanians.

The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery has advertised for a paid intern to help identify the origins of a small number of human remains and make recommendations on their repatriation.

Museum cultural services and creative arts director Tracy Puklowski said yesterday it was believed the specimens — deposited at QVMAG in the early 20th century — had been loaned from a museum outside Australia.

“We have no evidence to suggest Tasmanian Aboriginal remains are among these specimens,” Ms Puklowski said. “The items we wish to research are believed to have originated from another museum outside Australia.

“The practice of exchanging collection items with other museums was a common practice in the 19th and early 20th centuries.”

Aboriginal Land Council chairman Michael Mansell said yesterday the state’s institutions had given a guarantee in 1984 that their collections did not include Tasmanian Aboriginal remains.

But he questioned why the QVMAG would be looking at repatriation if the remains were not of indigenous people.

“We’ll have to wait and see but by crikey it’ll be extraordinary [if they are],” Mr Mansell said.

“This would be extraordinary news if they kept it from us. I hope I’m wrong.

“We’ll seek clarification of it.”

Britain’s Natural History Museum decided in 2006 to repatriate the bones of 17 Tasmanian Aboriginals at the request of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre. They were returned to Tasmania the following year.

Mr Mansell said Tasmanian Aboriginals remained in an ongoing dispute with the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart to have rock carvings from Preminghana, on the state’s West Coast, returned to Aboriginal hands.

“We asked at least 10 years ago for them to hand them over and take them back at their cost to its original spot,” Mr Mansell said.

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