Germany begins 'largest' return of Aborigine remains

A German museum handed over the remains of an Aboriginal ancestral king to Australia on Tuesday in the first of three such ceremonies across Germany this month, which Canberra called a record return. The Australian ambassador to Germany, Lynette Wood, and elder Gudju Gudju Fourmile of the Yidinji people received the skeletal remains at Munich’s Five Continents museum where they have been stored since 1889. “His journey now will be to be taken back home to Yidinji country,” Fourmile said. Yidinji representatives draped a black, yellow and red Aboriginal flag over the box containing the remains. Skulls and bones from Australia’s native peoples were removed by scientists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and taken to museums, universities and collections in Australia and around the world. There they were subjected to “research” purporting to explain human biological variety. In a statement, Austra