Australian Museum returns Rapa Nui ancestral remains to Easter Island

The Australian Museum, Sydney's leading natural history institution, has repatriated human remains from its Rapa Nui collections after more than a century in storage. Founded in 1827, the museum held these remains as part of an anthropological collection assembled during the colonial era.

The returned material consists of seventeen skulls and one sample of hair, taken from Easter Island in 1882 during a German scientific expedition. The remains later entered the Australian Museum's holdings, where they stayed until this recent repatriation to the island, now a Chilean territory in the South Pacific.

The move forms part of a broader trend among Western museums to return human remains and cultural artefacts to Indigenous communities, driven by mounting pressure from source communities and their governments. In recent years, numerous European and Anglo-American institutions have undertaken reviews of collections assembled during the colonial period, particularly where objects were excavated or removed without the consent of local populations.

The Rapa Nui case illustrates the lasting consequences of 19th-century European scientific expeditions, which frequently treated Indigenous human remains and sacred objects as mere study specimens. The return of these seventeen skulls represents a further step in Australian museums' efforts to make amends with Pacific peoples, and may prompt other institutions holding similar collections to reassess their own holdings.

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Written by the ADM desk based on The Art Newspaper. Read the original article for the full story.