Today, Lund University in Sweden gave two craniums of Australian aboriginals back to the Australian state. The craniums were bought in London at the end of the 19th century for one pound. The craniums were given back in a ceremony attended by the Australian ambassador and a representant for the aboriginal population of Australia. The craniums will first go to the National Museum of Australia, in order to determine from what area or people they come.
Ambassador Howard Brown said that it is very important for Australia and its government to repatriate Aboriginal bones to their land. Also the principal of the University, Göran Bexell, said it is an important issue to repatriate those craniums.
And it is. Earlier, the Ethnographic Museum in Stockholm has given back alltogether 32 Aboriginal craniums, on two occasions 2004 and 2007. Australia has a formal repatriation program and has put 23 million SEK (4 million US$) into that. Last autumn, Australia demanded the two craniums from Lund and the result of an according to ambassador Brown good cooperation with Sweden came today.
It is to be hoped, that also the demanded repatriation of remnants of the own indigenous population, the Sámi, from different institutions, will be a fact as soon as possible. It is difficult to see why the process in that case must take so much more time if the Sámi parliament so clearly put forward a demand ...
Read the press release of Lund University (in swedish) at http://www.newsdesk.se/view/pressrelease/lunds-universitet-aaterlaemnar-aboriginiska-kranier-196788 and http://www.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=708&news_item=2372
See also http://sydsvenskan.se/lund/article302259.ece and http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/artikel_889467.svd, two newspaper articles in Swedish as well.
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