240179 SE After Colonialism (P3) (P4) (2012S)

1 Australian Anthropology since 1900: a Brief Intellectual History
2 The 1992 High Court 'Mabo' Judgement, Native Title Law and the Anthropologist.
3 Reclaiming Heritage: Museums and the Presentation of Indigenous Australian culture.
4 Australia’s 'Historikerstreit': Frontier Violence in Contemporary Australian
Historiography.
5 Indigenous Knowledge and Bio-capitalism.
6 Indigenous Australians and the Cultural Uses of Networked Information Communication Technologies.
7 The Past and Future in Contemporary Indigenous Australian Art.

The Long Journey Home: the Meanings and values of the Repatriation of
Aboriginal Skeletal Remains from European Museums.
Abstract:
Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples have long sought the return of ancestral
human remains and associated artifacts from western museums and scientific institutions.
Since the late 1970s their efforts have led museum curators and researchers to re-evaluate
their practices and policies in respect to the scientific uses of human remains.
New partnerships have been established between cultural and scientific institutions and indigenous
communities. Human remains and culturally significant objects have been returned
to the care of indigenous communities, although the fate of bones and burial artifacts in numerous
collections remains unresolved and, in some instances, the subject of controversy.
In this seminar, I will discuss the impact of repatriation: what have been the benefits, and in
what ways has repatriation given rise to new problems for indigenous people, scientists and
museum personnel. I will do so drawing on several recent cases where skeletal remains have
been returned from European museums, and which well illustrate the complexities of repatriation
for both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and researchers in disciplines with
direct interests in the continued scientific preservation of human remains.