Science could help return Indigenous remains stolen from Country, a Bendigo leader says.
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"The Australian Defence Force ... uses these tools to return its own fallen, so they too can be at peace in their homelands," Rodney Carter has told a gathering in Queensland.
The Dja Dja Wurrung and Yorta Yorta man says a scientific method called isotope analysis could provide vital clues for desecrated burial sites Ancestors were taken from over the centuries.
Mr Carter says the clues could be in Ancestors' bones, which can carry vital information including signs of diets unique to different parts of Australia.
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More than 12,000 cases of Ancestors' remains are thought to lie in state institutions throughout Australia and historic records often leave little trace of their provenance.
More remains are held in private collections and international institutions.
Call for unity among First Nations groups
Rallying support has not always been easy. A minority of Indigenous groups have taken a cautious stance on such scientific methods.
"Because not every First Nations person agrees with this approach, governments have been reluctant," Mr Carter told the Advertiser.
He used the Queensland gathering to rally support and try to assuage the concerns about the complex and emotionally draining task of examining unprovenanced Ancestral remains.
"The challenges before us ... and require us to learn to embrace the tools that science can help us with," he told an audience brought together by the American Anthropological Association Commission for the Ethical Treatment of Indigenous Human Remains.
Ancestors may not have given permission for their remains to be removed but descendants had obligations to overcome impediments to their return, Mr Carter told the Queensland gathering.
Long history of remains taken in central Victoria
A steady stream of bones were discovered throughout Australia in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
That included in central Victoria. Some were taken as curios, desecrated by members of the public or destroyed, historic media reports show.
One central Victorian man mailed remains to England in one case the Advertiser is aware of, and this masthead's investigation has established others vanished after a Bendigo museum's collapse.
Others were seized by authorities investigating whether they were loved ones buried by Indigenous people or others who had met with misfortune of foul play.
Some records show police sent remains to experts in Melbourne, even further away from their original burial place, and it is often clear their loved ones were not informed.
In one such case from 1897, two supposed Indigenous people's remains were found in an area Aboriginal people were not known to have returned to for at least 30 years.
The remains had been found in a remote area near a summit's top and police could find few clues about the owner of an abandoned hut from nearby.
Bendigo detectives sent the remains to Melbourne based on a doctor's speculation they could be Indigenous and potentially several decades old.
Regardless of why remains may have been taken from grave sites over the centuries, Mr Carter hoped for their return, both for the sake of Ancestors and their descendants.
"Reburying someone is an amazing thing because they are back where they came from, you know?" he told the Advertiser.
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Tom O'Callaghan
I grew up in Bendigo and I want to tell your stories.
I grew up in Bendigo and I want to tell your stories.
