That should be Bob Weatherall...
Trudy & Rod Bray wrote:
>
> Campaigner wants no conditions on the return of
> remains
>
> ABC Radio AM - Friday, May 19, 2000 8:04 [transcript]
>
> Well, Bob Meatherall from the Foundation for Aboriginal and
> Islander Research has been campaigning for the return of
> the remains for over 15 years. He told Lisa McGregor that
> the British Museum of Natural History has no right to attach
> any conditions.
>
> BOB MEATHERALL: I think it's totally ridiculous actually that
> they're going to stipulate the terms and conditions of our
> ancestors. They've had them over there for ages now, and
> they've been carrying out scientific investigation on our
> people. Now, the fact that they were robbed, taken from
> their graves and those types of places and their final resting
> places, even some people were contracted, and they were
> basically taken from morgues and hospitals and prisons and
> places like that and had their arms and their legs and their
> heads dissected. Not only did they take the skeletal
> remains, they also took the soft tissue of Aboriginal people.
>
> LISA MC GREGOR: So you don't support the museum
> attaching any conditions to the remains once they're
> returned to Australia?
>
> BOB MEATHERALL: Absolutely not. We will not accept any
> terms and any conditions of the ? that the museums put on
> us so that their scientists of the world can continue to prod
> our ancestors. They don't need to do that any more. What
> they want ? whatever they want to learn they can get from
> the people who are living and allow the spirits of the people
> to go back to rest and let them go into the spirit world. And
> that's all that we ask for. And anyway, when they come back
> to Australia it'll be the terms and conditions of the traditional
> owners' customs and traditions that will dictate what actually
> happens to those remains.
>
> LISA MC GREGOR: So the remains should return to the
> control of the Aboriginal communities where they've come
> from?
>
> BOB MEATHERALL: Yes that's correct. The Australian
> Government has a set of principles, and that principle was
> that all remains from overseas and in Australian institutions
> were to be returned to Aboriginal people and for Aboriginal
> people to determine on their terms and their conditions what
> should happen to them and in accordance with their
> traditions and customs.
>
> LISA MC GREGOR: Do you think those communities would
> make them available to scientific research?
>
> BOB MEATHERALL: It would be actually up to that
> particular indigenous communities throughout Australia, um,
> and they would be actually acting in accordance with their
> laws and their traditions and what they believe that the
> rights of the dead are, and so that they will act accordingly
> to those terms and conditions that is laid down in their law.
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