December 01, 2014
New York museum releases ancestors
The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is set to receive its biggest delivery yet of returned Maori and Moriori ancestral remains.
Early tomorrow morning New Zealand time the American Museum of Natural History will give a Te Papa delegation 35 toi moko or preserved heads, two tattooed thigh skins, 24 koimi tangata Moriori or Moriori skeletal remains, and 46 koiwi tangata or Maori skeletal remains.
They will be welcomed back to Wellington on Friday.
Repatriation advisory panel chair Pou Temara says Te Papa staff raised the issue of the remains when they were in New York in March last year for the opening of the Whales: Giants of the Deep touring exhibition at the museum, and a formal repatriation request followed soon after.
The ancestral remains were collected from the early 1800s up until the 1900s when there was a strong commercial trade and network in indigenous peoples’ remains, particularly in Europe and North America.
Te Papa kaihautu Arapata Hakiwai says the repatriation of indigenous remains allows New Zealand to resolve a very dark period in its history.
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