Repatriation of ancestral remains a ‘difficult process’, museum CEO says

Exclusive: The chief executive of the Queensland Museum says extra staff and funding will help ramp up repatriation efforts to return hundreds of ancestral remains back to country.

9News exclusively revealed the Queensland Museum holds the ancestral remains of 833 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, the remains of 65 individuals from Pacific Island nations, and 445 additional "secret and sacred objects".

Chief executive Jim Thompson said the museum had returned the remains of about 200 people back to country since repatriation efforts began in the 1990s.

"It's a very complex and sensitive process, it's really difficult," he told 9News.

"We need to make the community aware of what's in the museum because a lot of people don't know what's in here – they know things were taken but they wouldn't know where they ended up.

"We hold that material as custodians only – we don't own that material in any way, shape or form and decisions about its future can only be made by owners of that material.

"We're working with those people and those communities as much as they can to say, 'Can you take this material back, how would you like it back and when would you like it back?'.

"Often they are not in a position, they don't have keeping places, they don't have places of which they could bury ancestors at the moment so they often ask us to hold on to the material until we can find that."

Six months after 9News first lodged enquiries with the Queensland Museum about the extent of ancestral remains it holds, the Queensland government allocated $4.5 million to ramp up repatriation efforts.

Thompson said the museum often receives items from overseas or individuals across Australia who come across ancestral remains found in private collections.

"We also have a lot of private individuals who are now finding material at home after the deaths of parents or family members and saying, 'What do we do with this? This is material that we should not have in our home'," he said

"While we're repatriating and getting material out and ancestors out, we're actually getting more in so the collection at the moment, ironically and sadly, is going up.

"Our aim is to get all of those back to country but many more items continue to come in, particularly from overseas at the moment.

"These items were collected, without the proper practices at the time and accumulated in museums over a period of time."

A First Nations Elder, Uncle Bob Weatherall, is calling on the Queensland Museum to provide an extensive register of known items within its collection which could be made available to the First Nations community.

A museum spokeswoman said it would be "inappropriate" to provide a public register of items but encouraged any affected communities to contact the museum directly.

"Penalties apply if an individual or corporation shares information of a secret or sacred nature without express permission of Aboriginal peoples and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples," she said.

"From the time that Queensland Museum Network (QMN) deaccessioned the Ancestral Remains and Secret and/or Sacred material from the main collection, the control and decision-making powers relating to this material were passed into the hands of the identified First Nations communities from whom these items were originally taken.

"Decisions as to who can view and access this material, whether this material is actual Ancestral Remains and Secret and Sacred Objects or any information pertaining to these items, now lies in the hands of those identified communities."