University to repatriate Aboriginal man's remains

The University of Aberdeen is to repatriate a murdered Aboriginal man's remains, thought to have been obtained during a colonial conquest in Tasmania.

It is believed the young man was decapitated near the Shannon River on the island in the 1820s or 1830s - a time in Australia's history when colonisers used bounties to fuel a trade in tribespeople's body parts.

The university contacted the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre in 2019 following pressure on institutions to return exhibits linked with Britain's colonial past.

The remains, held at the university since the 1850s, will be handed back on Friday, taken to Tasmania and laid to rest in a traditional ceremony conducted by Aboriginal people.

In 2019, the University of Glasgow agreed to raise and spend £20m in reparations after discovering it benefited by millions of pounds from the slave trade.

It was believed to be the first institution in the UK to implement such a "programme of restorative justice".

The university said details on how the remains were acquired were limited, with records listing only that it was part of the collection of William MacGillivray - a natural history professor.

After his death in 1852, the collection was purchased by the university.

The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, which includes cultural services in its remit, believes the remains were from a man killed in order to service the trade in Aboriginal body parts.

It is thought unlikely that the identity of the man will ever be known beyond that of his tribal group.

The return of the remains was approved by the university's governing court.

Neil Curtis, head of collections at the University of Aberdeen, said: "Given the violence and racism that led to their acquisition, it would be unacceptable for these ancestral remains to be used for research, teaching or exhibitions purposes.

"We are pleased that the remains of this young man can now be handed over to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre for appropriate burial in his homeland."

Andry Sculthorpe of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre said Aboriginal people felt an "enormous responsibility" of returning remains to their homeland.

"This is a record of racist attitudes to the study of humanity, including human remains acquired by grave robbing and other immoral activity, in this case, murder," he said.

"We applaud the institutions that have the courage to let go of their perceptions of intellectual supremacy, embrace their own humanity and do what is right by the people who are most impacted by the atrocities they have inflicted in the past."

"This young man's murder will not be forgotten and we will bring him home to rest at last," he added.

The gesture sees Aberdeen become the second Scottish university to return a Tasmanian item this week, following the return of a rare shell necklace by the University of Glasgow on Tuesday.

The 19th century necklace is believed to have been made by Aboriginal women on the Bass Strait islands, located between Tasmania and mainland Australia.

It features elenchus or maireener shells found off the coast of Tasmania, and comes from a tradition of Tasmanian necklace-making that has continued uninterrupted for thousands of years.

It was donated to the Hunterian museum at the University of Glasgow by Mrs Margaret Miller of Launceston, during a visit to Scotland in 1877, and the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC) first requested the item's return in 1995.

Hunterian director Professor Steph Scholten said the decision to repatriate "set a new precedent".