Returned Maori remains mounting up at Te Papa

A powhiri will be held at Te Papa next Tuesday to welcome home 18 sets of Maori remains from museums in Britain and the Netherlands.

The arrival will leave the national museum holding more than 100 remains while ancestral homes are sought for them.

DNA technology has not yet been developed to the point where modern-day descendants of the long-dead Maori can be located.

A Glasgow museum yesterday handed back to a representative of the Museum of New Zealand the tattooed heads of three 19th century Maori, donated by Scottish collectors in 1906 and 1951.

Glasgow City Council last year agreed to hand them back following a request from Te Papa.

The heads, which were never put on display in Glasgow, are being brought to Te Papa in Wellington with a leg bone which is thought to be from a Maori chief killed in an 18th century battle.

Te Papa's kaihautu (co-leader), Te Taru White, said the repatriation was part of a pro-active campaign by the museum to seek the return of remains from foreign institutions.

One of the heads being returned next Tuesday is from the Netherlands, where it was held in the National Museum of Ethnology.

Ten sets of remains were sent back 10 weeks ago from three institutions in Australia.

By the end of next week, Te Papa's whare tapu will hold more than 100 sets of remains, for which it will seek New Zealand origins so that they can go to those regions for burial.

Mr White said a lot of remains were still overseas, including some in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, 37 in New York, and a significant number in the British Museum.

"We will be making sensitive approaches to those institutions and working with them on the return of remains," he said.

Increasing numbers of Maori remains are being returned to New Zealand in the wake of a British law that has allowed nine leading museums and institutions to send such holdings to indigenous communities around the world.

The Human Tissue Act relates to remains which are reasonably believed to be less than 1000 years in age.

British Culture Minister David Lammy has described the law change as a "response to the claims of indigenous peoples ... for the return of ancestral remains".

- NZPA