November 17, 2022
Aboriginal items returned to Top End
Auckland War Memorial Museum, Tāmaki Paenga Hira, has repatriated four items from its collection to the Aboriginal tangata whenua of the Northern Territory.
The adze, axe and two hooked boomerangs were collected by anthropologists from the Warumungu people near Tennant Creek in the 1890s.
Maori curator Kahutoi Te Kanawa says the Maori-led ceremonies at the museum to return the items to Warumungu representatives were deeply moving.
“This is sort of hard to talk about because, you know – you feel for them. You feel for the taonga, you feel for the people. They were so grateful they were cared for…that they found them,” she says.
Dr Te Kanawa says an the Warumungu gifted the museum a fighting boomerang and shield to commemorate the occasion.