The Field Museum in Chicago will be returning the partial remains of three Aborigines to Australia more than a 100 years after it had been scattered all over the world in a lucrative trade in these bones.
The remains were collected by European colonists, doctors and natural history researchers who had looted burial grounds an massacre sites in Tasmania in the 19th century, according to MailOnline.
Aboriginal rights campaigners attended a signing ceremony on Wednesday, 25 June 2014 at the Chicago Field Museum.
“It is a wonderful feeling to be part of an event like this, where we each do what we can to repair the damage done in the past,” said Annette Peardon. She is one of the visiting Aboriginal delegates who represents the Tasmania Aboriginal Centre and had been seeking the return of the remains from various institutions from around the world.
“Aborigines were almost wiped out by white settlement in the 19th century. Thousands were killed when they were pushed from their ancestral lands,” she told MailOnline.
The bones were part of a 7,000-item collection of Pacific materials that the museum bought from English collector Capt. A.W.F. Fuller. Captain Fuller did not travel to the Pacific himself, but bought artefacts in the early 20th century from individuals, auction houses and institutions.
According to museum records the three partial skulls were never put on display at The Field Museum, and could not come up with any records that any of them had ever been used for research.
IMAGE: File image of a human skull (via: Shutterstock.com)
