Scottish universities return Tasmanian remains

Universities in Scotland are holding handover ceremonies this week to return Indigenous items to Tasmania.

The University of Aberdeen is to host a ceremony on March 21 to repatriate the skull of a young man thought to have been murdered in the early 19th century to service the trade in Aboriginal body parts.

The remains have been in the university’s collections since the 1850s.

The university approached the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre in 2019 to make it aware of the skull, and the repatriation was unconditionally approved by the university’s governing body in 2020.

The centre will take the remains back to Tasmania, where they will be laid to rest in a traditional ceremony conducted by Aboriginal people.

Details of how the remains were acquired by the university are limited. Records show that the skull was part of the collection of William MacGillivray, regius professor of natural history in Marischal College.

After his death in 1852, the collection was purchased by the university, with the remains described in the sale catalogue as “Native of Van Diemen’s Land, who was shot on the Shannon River”.

Andry Sculthorpe, project manager at the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre said: “Aboriginal people feel the enormous responsibility of restoring to our own country both the physical remains, and through them, the spirits of our ancestral dead.”

The Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow held a ceremony this week to hand over a shell necklace to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, 30 years after the first request was made for its return.

The 148cm-long necklace will be cared for by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, where it will be accessible to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community for research, learning and inspiration.

The unique artefact is believed to originate from the Bass Strait islands, located between Tasmania and mainland Australia. It is recorded as being donated to the Hunterian by Margaret Miller of Launceston on a visit to Scotland in 1877.