Missionaries and the removal, illegal export, and return of ancestral remains

Abstract

This chapter considers the role of missionaries in the removal of Indigenous Ancestral Remains. Missionaries acquired Ancestral Remains, but their involvement in this global activity has received little scholarship. The chapter provides the case study of Father Ernst Worms, a Pallottine missionary in the Kimberley region of Australia, who took remains and sent them to Germany in the mid-1930s, aware that this was an illegal act in contravention of Australia’s export legislation. The history of the removal and return of these Ancestral Remains is described in detail, elucidating key aspects such as the importance of repatriation research, the histories of removal that can be told from museum archives, the extensive consultation processes undertaken by the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre, and the eventual reburial of some of these remains by Bardi Jawi people in 2015. Show more