 My name is Sarah Burke. I am an honours student in Biological Anthropology from the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University. My honours project looks at differing perspectives from Indigenous and non-Indigenous people about whether the remains of Indigenous people should be scientifically studied. The remains I'm looking at aren't the ones that have been in the ground for thousands of years and only recently discovered. They are the ones that have been taken overseas since colonisation for scientific study. This was done because Indigenous people were thought to be a dying race and that their remains were therefore valuable because they wouldn't exist into the future. And the remains were used for the study of race and to see whether Indigenous people were significantly different from Western European populations. And even in some cases it was argued a different species. So these remains were removed from graveyards, from hospital morgues before families could come and collect their people. And even in some cases I've read about Indigenous people were observed by these so-called collectors and the collectors found people to kill those Indigenous people so that they would have a complete skeleton to send back. The benefit to those collectors were prestige in the scientific community that they were able to get these rare specimens. And once they were sent overseas to universities and museums they would form a collection of humanity basically or humanity as it was at that time. So in the last 40 years or so there has been a push from Indigenous communities to repatriate these remains and repatriation means to return the remains back to where they came from. So back to where they were buried or back to their descendants and communities. People I've spoken to in my research have many different opinions from Indigenous communities. Some community people don't care one way or the other about remains that are held overseas in institutions. Some have the opinion that they should be returned and put to burial so that the land is restored to its full integrity and that people are healed. Others, and this is the angle I'm looking at in my research in particular, others might be interested in what the remains can tell them about the past, things like health and disease in the community and what the ancestors were like in terms of age and height and things like that. So there are a lot of different opinions as to how Indigenous people feel about the remains being overseas. But overall I think people want them back in Australia, but once they are what happens then? And that's sort of what I'm looking at in my research. Museums have very different opinions on whether these remains should be repatriated. Australia tends to be one of the leading countries in repatriation. Many of the remains that were in collections have now been returned to their countries, that is Aboriginal countries. But in the case I'm looking at in particular in my study of the Natural History Museum in London, they were initially against repatriation. But in the last few years they have set up their own special unit in order to see whether they can repatriate remains back to Indigenous communities. And so far they've done one to the Tasmania and one to the Torres Strait. The Tasmania repatriation involved the remains of 17 individuals. Initially the Natural History Museum did not want to repatriate, but after some legal representation from the Tasmanian community there was a mediation between some representatives from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre and also representatives from the Natural History Museum. During the mediation they discussed whether the remains should be scientifically studied because it became known that DNA samples had been taken from the remains but were not yet sequenced. The position of the Tasmanian community that I've heard was that all scientific study was offensive to Tasmanian cultural beliefs and they didn't want that to occur. So eventually the two groups reached a point where all the remains including the samples were repatriated but that the DNA samples were kept by the Tasmanian police under dual custody of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre and the Natural History Museum. The case for the Torres Strait was a lot different. There was a lot of community consultation on the behalf of the Australian Government and also the Natural History Museum. Representatives from the Natural History Museum actually went to the Torres Strait and spoke to elders there about their opinions. There were a lot of conversations around what the elders wanted whether scientific study was an option and what people thought about that. So far they've repatriated some of the collection but because the collection is so vast it's about 138 individuals they're looking at doing it in stages. So that repatriation was a lot more congenial and everyone was happier with that and the way it went because there was much more consultation with community. Science can be useful for repatriation. First of all in the provenancing of remains so when they're in those collections in museums oftentimes they've been there for up to two centuries so they've been kept in cardboard boxes separately so the skulls might be separated from the post-cranial elements and so biological anthropology in particular can be helpful for restoring the integrity of an individual so putting those remains together and also to check with the records whether the individual in the box is the same as the individual on the card. Some studies in Australia have used scientific techniques to find burial grounds because Indigenous people are very concerned about uncovering previous burials when they're trying to re-enter these remains so things like ground studies can be helpful in finding those previous burials and making sure that they aren't disturbed while these remains are being reburied. I hope that my research will expose people who are involved in repatriation to the different opinions that exist not only from different Indigenous communities around the world but also from the museum perspective. Oftentimes when communities are focused on repatriation they only look to what their own opinions are which isn't necessarily a bad thing to do but it does mean that they don't know about what other people think and they don't know about how opinions are changing within the museum sphere and that people are thinking about repatriation as a positive thing for them. So I hope that my research can benefit communities by exposing them to these different opinions rather than having the goal of resolving the repatriation issue itself.