“A loss of journey”: Reasons for seeking the repatriation of First Nations Australian Ancestral Remains

The repatriation of First Nations Australian Ancestral Remains has a much longer history than is often realized. From the early decades of the 1800s onwards, European visitors and settlers documented First Nations Australians attempting to resist the removal of Ancestral Remains. By the 1970s, First Nations Australian communities had enough political agency within Australian society to mount organised campaigns against further disturbances of graves and publicly challenge arguments against reburial. From the mid-1990s, Australian federal and state governments responded to increasing public support for repatriation by committing funds to provenance research and supporting negotiations by elders and community leaders. Repatriations from overseas institutions have gathered pace since the early 2000s. Despite this trajectory, misunderstandings around repatriation persist. I outline some of the misunderstandings I have encountered to date, in particular as an employee of the Australian Embassy in Berlin from 2011 to 2015, and seek to counteract these by drawing on the words and actions of First Nations Australians I have been privileged to meet and work with. I conclude by suggesting various resources for those wishing to learn more about First Nations Australian perspectives on repatriation.