Skeleton in closet of Northland College

By CLAIRE TREVETT


Boyce Davey has a body in his office at Northland College.

It hangs from its metal stand, tucked in behind a filing cabinet, shrouded in a long pink cloth.

Mr Davey, the school's principal, pulls aside the cloth to reveal a skeleton, one of those used in school science departments to teach students the essentials of anatomy.

All seemed in order - the head bone connected to the neck bone, which was connected to the back bone and so on.

Only Mr Davey discovered the skeleton was not the fake staff always assumed it was, but a real one.

Maori made up about 90 per cent of the school roll, and the skeleton was a huge culturally sensitive issue.

He moved it from the classroom into his office while he figured out what to do with it.

"That's one of my problems at the moment. How to dispose of a real skeleton. We wanted to dispose of it with the proper dignity."

He said the school and local kaumatua were trying to trace its origins, and had contacted the Auckland University School of Medicine for help.

"There must be lots of other schools around that don't know they've got real skeletons."

Northland College teacher Wiringi Timoko said many Maori in Kaikohe felt uneasy about the skeleton.

"People are getting a bit frightened of it being here now that they know it is a real one," he said.

"There are things tapu about a skeleton and dead bodies, so a karakia has been said to keep it safe. It has its own wairua [spirit] and things have to be done properly."

He said the school hoped to discover its origins and send it back to its homeland or to a museum or university.

"One group said it had come out of a cave somewhere and someone had used the opportunity to make some money out of it.

"The science department thinks it came from India and it is a woman. Another group thinks it has come from Africa and it is a male."

Auckland University anatomist Professor Richard Faull said genuine human skeletons had not been available commercially in New Zealand for at least 30 years.

"We do have skeletons which were bought more than 30 years ago and those bones have much better markings for teaching than many of the plastic ones."

Most real skeletons sold commercially had come from India and could be easily distinguished because of the way they were assembled.