'Old people' come home after a century abroad

When Tom Trevorrow was growing up on the banks of the River Murray in South Australia, white Australian farmers would drive around in big Chevys, proudly displaying an Aboriginal skull on the dashboard.

"They got a kick out of it, a thrill," he recalls. "It was a showpiece: 'Look at me, I've got a real Aboriginal skull."'

This was the 1960s, when Aboriginal skeletons gathered grime in cabinets in museums throughout Britain and Australia.

"A lot of scientists say they're skeletal remains. To us, they're family," says Trevorrow, who for the past 20 years, as chairman of the Ngarrindjeri Heritage Committee, has worked to "bring his old people home".

A few weeks ago, a delegation from the Ngarrindjeri tribe collected three skulls acquired by Oxford University in the 1860s.

When Ngarrindjeri elder Major Sumner, his body painted in ochres, conducted the formal handover ceremony on the university lawns, he felt a sense of satisfaction.

"It's a big accomplishment, not only for us but for Oxford University, as it's the first time they've agreed to repatriate," says Sumner.

"It sends a clear message to other British institutions. Why do they need to hold on to our 'old people'?"

The three skulls, from Goolwa, in the heart of Ngarrindjeri traditional country, which stretches from where the Murray meets the Great Southern Ocean north to the Adelaide Hills, have joined hundreds of other remains awaiting burial at Camp Coorong, a tiny Aboriginal community 200km south of Adelaide.

In 2008, Edinburgh University returned the last piece of its collection - a solitary ear bone - to the Ngarrindjeri. To mark its homecoming, and that of two skulls returned from Exeter in the southwest of England, a "smoking ceremony" to cleanse the bones was held at Camp Coorong.

The vast area of wetlands and dunes around the Coorong lagoon has been home for millennia to the Ngarrindjeri, who today number around 3500.

It was in the spirit of reconciliation that Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made his apology to the "stolen generations" - children of mixed race removed from Aboriginal families in a policy to bleed the country white.

Tom Trevorrow is still hoping for an apology for his tribe's own stolen generation: hundreds of his ancestors whose remains were sent to Britain between the mid-1800s and early 1900s as anatomical specimens.

During this era of prolific collecting, bones - especially skulls, believed to indicate racial characteristics - and soft tissue were studied according to Darwin's theory that, "the civilised races will almost certainly exterminate 'the savage races'."

Among the many colonial collectors was Scottish-born William Ramsay Smith, who studied medicine at Edinburgh University and was responsible for the bulk of its collection, some 500 to 600 individuals.

Smith left Scotland in 1896 to take up a role as physician at the Adelaide Hospital. Within three years he was Adelaide's coroner, inspector of anatomy and chairman of the Central Board of Health.

But his main interest lay in postmortem research for "medical purposes", and Smith used his positions to illicitly dissect and remove human remains.

Witnesses described how he would practise with a .303 rifle on corpses at the mortuary of Adelaide Hospital. Outside, it wasn't unusual to see the head of an Aborigine in a kerosene tin, waiting to be sent to DJ Cunningham, professor of anatomy at Edinburgh, where Smith donated the majority of remains - including organs, skin, tongues and male genitalia - over at least 15 years.

"There is a suggestion Smith was body shopping - collecting individuals of unusual pathologies or disease," says Dr Mike Pickering, repatriation programme director at Canberra's National Museum. "He was trying to buy favour with his alma mater."

Smith became a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Cunningham did not seem interested in knowing how Smith procured the remains, making one request for soft tissue in 1906.

"As for the soft parts, I shall do my best," Smith replies. "I shall make a strong effort to get a whole young subject if I can. Much material is allowed to waste for lack of somebody on the spot to secure it."

Government surveyors and police would find Aboriginal bones and send or sell them. "In most instances, Aboriginals were not shot for remains," says Professor Turnbull from Queensland's Griffith University.

In the early 1990s, Edinburgh University was the first British institution to begin repatriating Aboriginal bones. After the first batch was returned, a second room of remains was discovered by archaeologist Dr Cressida Fforde.

By 2000, hundreds of remains had been sent to Canberra's Repatriation department, where many of the "dislocated" individuals were reconstructed.

Tom Trevorrow says: "It takes a lot of work to get to where we are today. But I believe the healing is beginning."

His voice drops to a whisper: "Sometimes I go into the room and tell the old fellows:'I'll have you back in your burial grounds. Give me a little more time. I'm dealing with some hard issues here. You gotta help me."'

He gives a half-smile. "I talk to them just like people go into a cemetery and talk to their loved ones. I think they are the ones giving me the strength to carry on."

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