The forced repatriation of cultural properties to Tasmania.

The forced repatriation of cultural properties to Tasmania. In July this year the Tasmanian Aboriginal Land Council (TALC),claiming to represent the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, sought aninjunction in the Australian Federal Court to force us to surrender toTALC five archaeological assemblages from Tasmania excavated underpermit between 1987, and early 1991, all of which were under activeanalysis in the La Trobe University 1. u/r = unranked2.AsiaWeek is now discontinued. Student lifeDuring the 1970s and 1980s, La Trobe, along with Monash, was considered to have the most politically active student body of any university in Australia. archaeology laboratories. TALCclaimed that the permits under which the material was held had expired,that we had refused the direction of the Minister to return the materialto TALC, that the material was of great spiritual and psychologicalimportance to Tasmanian Aborigines The Tasmanian Aborigines were the indigenous people of the island state of Tasmania, Australia. (Aboriginal name: lutrawita or trouwunna)In the space of thirty years (1803-1833), the population of the Tasmanian Aborigines was reduced from around 5,000 to around 300, and that TALC's wish was torebury Re`bur´yv. t. 1. To bury again.Verb 1. rebury - bury again; "After the king's body had been exhumed and tested to traces of poison, it was reburied in the same spot" these assemblages in the respective sites to heal the wounds,created by their excavation. TALC set the precedent for such action lastyear when it put a Pleistocene assemblage into the waters of a dam nowcovering the site from which it came. At the end of the preliminary hearing the judge concluded thatimportant matters of fact and law relating to relating torelate prep → concernantrelating torelate prep → bez��glich +gen, mit Bezug auf +accthe case should be tried,and maintained an interim injunction which saw the materials removedfrom La Trobe La Trobe may refer to: Charles La Trobe (1801 - 1875), the first lieutenant-governor of the state of Victoria, Australia. Places named after Charles La Trobe: La Trobe University, Victoria Latrobe Valley, Victoria and held in the Museum of Victoria. Almost immediately theTasmanian Minister for Environment and Land Management as arepresentative of the Crown took possession of the material and had itreturned to Tasmania. This ended the court action. Although at the timeof the court,s decision the Minister was quoted in the press as sayingthat he would return the material to TALC, as at the beginning ofOctober 1995 the material remains in storage somewhere in Tasmania. Anextensive press, radio and television coverage of the matter continues,in which the Minister refuses to indicate what might eventually happento the material. Two separate but related questions are pertinent. Should theMinister have forcibly forc��i��ble?adj.1. Effected against resistance through the use of force: The police used forcible restraint in order to subdue the assailant.2. Characterized by force; powerful. returned the material to Tasmania prior to thecompletion of the analysis, and should TALC have the authority to reburyany archaeological material in such a way as will destroy the scientificintegrity of properly excavated and analysed assemblages? Many mattersof fact, past circumstances and personal views surround these questions.Here space permits only the barest necessary background. Furtheraccounts will be found in Allen (1995) and Murray (in press). BackgroundThe five sites include three southwestern Tasmanian Pleistocenesites, none of which are likely to have had any human occupation at allin the last 12,000 years (see Porch & Allen (1995) in the specialnumber of Antiquity published alongside this issue, for explanation);one northern Tasmanian site occupied briefly in the terminal Pleistoceneand the late Holocene; and one contact site (a white settlement farmwhich contained some Aboriginal artefacts - see Murray (1993)). None ofthe sites were known to Tasmanian Aborigines before their excavation. The contents of these sites consist partly of garbage discarded byhumans, and partly of material unassociated with human occupation -animal bones deposited via the faeces of Tasmanian devils and theregurgitated pellets of owls; bones and shells of animals and snailswhich died naturally in the sites; and in-washed soil. The sites containno human bones or teeth, ornaments or art which might be consideredsacred. The human components consist only of food remains, charcoal,discarded stone and bone tools and the debitage The term debitage refers to the totality of waste material produced during lithic reduction and the production of chipped stone tools. This assemblage includes, but is not limited to, different kinds of lithic flakes, shatter, and production errors and rejects. from their manufacture.The historic site also has Aboriginal tools made on glass. All sites were excavated under permits issued by the TasmanianDepartment of Parks, Wildlife and Heritage @Parks@. In the late 1980sthese were issued for a maximum of three years and from 1990 for oneyear only. These periods were intended to cover excavation and analysis.Permit issue required consultation with the Aboriginal community; priorto TALC being formed in 1990, this consultation was with the TasmanianAboriginal Centre (TAC). All La Trobe excavations were carried out withthe permission of TAC or TALC and all excavations employed one or moreTAC or TALC members as overseers who had the right to close anyexcavation which turned up human skeletal material. Extensions for the permits for the prehistoric sites which hadexpired in 1991 and 1992 were applied for in 1993. This was the firsttime any permit extension had been sought since the relevant TasmanianAboriginal Relics Act was proclaimed in 1975, although it is commonknowledge that many earlier excavated assemblages, long out of permit,have not been returned to Tasmania. Because of increasingly hard@lineviews on heritage ownership and control being expressed by the newlyformed TALC, exacerbated by unsupportive attitudes of someTasmanian@based archaeologists to our research, we viewed theseextensions as important to ensure that the objectives of the researchmight be achieved. A detailed history of subsequent events is in Allen (1995). In ourview Parks has run a consistent policy of exonerating themselves fromany responsibility or decision-making in this matter, even though theyare the statutory authority responsible for implementing the Act. Ratherthan seeking to negotiate a solution, they have argued that the matterhas to be resolved between ourselves and TALC. TALC argued that we hadhad longer than the time specified on the permit and that was `longenough', despite our detailed submissions to them describing whathad been achieved, what still needed doing and a timetable (end of 1995)for the material,s return to Tasmania. A year after the application forextension had been made, the Acting Director of Parks was finally forcedto act, and recommended to the Minister that he not grant the extensionbecause the advantages of empowering the Aboriginal community outweighedthe scientific loss. No attempt was made to find any sort of compromise,and no reason for refusal was given by the Minister to us, other thanthat TALC considered it inappropriate to extend the permits. He alsodirected us to give the material to TALC rather than return it to theState. Urgent and repeated requests to appeal this decision resulted inthe Minister agreeing to stay further action pending a meeting inJanuary 1995 between the Director and us to discuss our position.Although invited, TALC chose not to attend this meeting, where it wasagreed that pending the introduction of a new permit application systemwe could retain the material we were holding. Apart from a letter ofintent to set up this system from a junior Parks officer in April thisyear, we have heard nothing further from Parks on this matter, despiterequests for information. In June 1995, an article,who owns the past?, by Science staffwriter Virginia Morell (1995) referred to the Tasmanian business andclearly incensed TALC. Since june, a series of statements by TALC andtwo archaeologists employed by TALC have vilified us, personally andprofessionally. Three particular charges and our refutations of them arecovered in the Allen paper previously cited. After failing to get Parksto take action,talc themselves proceeded to legal action. Discussion1 Should the Minister have forcibly returned the material toTasmania prior to the completion of the analysis? We think not. Eachinitial permit was granted after detailed scrutiny by the Parks, ownprofessional archaeologists and other specialists, who knew from theresearch designs and previous Tasmanian archaeological history that itwas highly unlikely that the research could be completed in the time forwhich permits were granted, especially when this period was reduced toone year. Given previous experience there was no suggestion that such atime line would ever be enforced by Parks. We believe that by grantingpermits Parks was contracting with us to have specific pieces ofresearch undertaken and completed before the return of the materials,and by preventing this completion they have effectively breached thesecontracts. Similarly, we maintained all agreements negotiated with TACand TALC in good faith. The central problem here is that the creationand development of a highly politicized organization like TALC hascreated a different situation to that which existed when the permitswere first issued. Having been increasingly `empowered' by Parks totake control of Aboriginal heritage in Tasmania, TALC now apparentlysees no reason why it should adhere to adhere toverb 1. follow, keep, maintain, respect, observe, be true, fulfil, obey, heed, keep to, abide by, be loyal, mind, be constant, be faithful2. agreements made before itexisted. Because of its unwillingness or inability to act, Parks hascomplied with a massive re-alignment of the goal posts, despite the factthat as a government instrumentality InstrumentalityNotes issued by a federal agency whose obligations are guaranteed by the full-faith-and-credit of the government, even though the agency's responsibilities are not necessarily those of the US government. it should remain bound to its prioragreements and especially the tenets of the legislation which bothempowers it and defines its responsibilities. Instead, new Parks New Parks is an area in the city of Leicester, England. It is in the west of the city, close by the county border (west of which is Glenfield. South of New Parks is the Western Parks area, and to the east is the Newfound Pool area. policies and procedures Policies and Procedures are a set of documents that describe an organization's policies for operation and the procedures necessary to fulfill the policies. They are often initiated because of some external requirement, such as environmental compliance or other governmental which appear to run contrary to this legislationare mostly ad hoc For this purpose. Meaning "to this" in Latin, it refers to dealing with special situations as they occur rather than functions that are repeated on a regular basis. See ad hoc query and ad hoc mode. reactions to specific events rather than actions toimplement and guide evolving social attitudes in a pluralist society. In such a milieu, medium- to long-term scientific projects withlittle political clout are particularly vulnerable.2 Should TALC have the authority to rebury any archaeologicalmaterial? Leaving aside human skeletal material, which is not at issuehere, there are many reasons, legal, scientific, cultural andphilosophical, why this material should not be reburied. Here we canonly list the major ones. * Reburial Noun 1. reburial - the act of burying againreburyingburying, burial - concealing something under the ground of these materials in sites, somelisted as World Heritage, appears to be illegal under the currentTasmanian law, and the Burra Charter of ICOMOS ICOMOS International Council On Monuments and Sites , to which Australia is asignatory sig��na��to��ry?adj.Bound by signed agreement: the signatory parties to a contract.n. pl. sig��na��to��riesOne that has signed a treaty or other document. . Irreversible decisions such as those to destroy culturalproperty, should not rest with any organization which is responsibleonly to itself and subject to no legislative constraints. * We agreethat culturally significant material heritage should be returned toappropriate Aboriginal custodians for them to protect and preserve intothe future. In Tasmania in particular, the culturally significant,category should also extend to archaeological collections specifically,because the first 80 years of European settlement in Tasmania saw notonly the demise of every full-blood Tasmanian but also the loss of allbut fragments of traditional Tasmanian culture. Archaeological sites andartefacts are more significant in Tasmania precisely because theyprovide the main cultural link between modern Tasmanian Aborigines andthe Aboriginal past with which they identify. Unique archaeologicalcollections should not then be sacrificed to current politicalexpediency ex��pe��di��en��cy?n. pl. ex��pe��di��en��cies1. Appropriateness to the purpose at hand; fitness.2. Adherence to self-serving means: . * It is becoming more obvious that younger generations ofEuropean Australians, under the impetus of much more educationalexposure to the values of Aborigines aborigines:see Australian aborigines. , their traditions and deepantiquity in this country, now embrace Aboriginal history as part oftheir own history as Australians. As the current processes ofreconciliation develop between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australiansthis will increase. In this sense archaeological artefacts are part of anational heritage which precludes individual ownership, but encourageslocal Aboriginal groups to act as the appropriate custodians of them.However, custodial rights also carry the responsibilities ofconservation and preservation. * In the case of archaeologicalcollections the complications of,ownership as empowerment, extend withincreasing antiquity. It seems to us that no rights of ownership whichinclude the right to destroy cultural heritage can be bestowed on anyindividual human group, large or small, when the material in questioncomes from caves which arguably ar��gu��a��ble?adj.1. Open to argument: an arguable question, still unresolved.2. That can be argued plausibly; defensible in argument: three arguable points of law. have had no humans living close to themor entering them at all for the past 12,000 years, and whosearchaeological contents may have been discarded as long as 35,000 yearsago. These are staggering periods of time which bestow a specialsignificance on this material as the heritage of all living humans, notmerely TALC. * However, antiquity alone does not bestow importance.There are many younger Tasmanian sites whose scientific importance isequal to Pleistocene sites in the Southwest. All sites in Tasmaniareflect the history of prehistoric human endeavour, not merely the oldones. If Aboriginal history is important, then preserving the evidencewhich creates present and future histories is paramount. It is no lightresponsibility to deny the future access to the past. The archaeologicalsamples in question have been transformed by years of scientific studyinto unique documents which illuminate our common human history. Theirdestruction for short-term political objectives will destroy knowledge(and the potential to expand this knowledge further in the future). Assuch it is an extreme form of censorship. Placing already excavated material back in or on sites destroys thescientific validity not only of each scientific collection, but also thesites themselves for future scientific investigation. If this happens tosites without any documentation, as demanded, then when memory is lostall sites in a region will be made effectively suspect.Ultimately we have been punished for disagreeing with TALC'sexclusive policies on cultural heritage. Parks has taken the easy optionand seized the material to no apparent end. It is another ad hocreaction. ReferencesAllen, J. 1995. A short history of the Tasmanian affair, AustralianArchaeology (December) 41:43-8. Morell V. 1995. Who owns the past?,Science 268:1424-6. Murray, T. 1993. The childhood of William Lanne William Lanne (also known as King Billy or William Laney) (c. 1835 - March 3, 1869) was a Tasmanian Aboriginal, and third husband of Trugannini. He is most well-known as the last surviving male of the Oyster Cove clan. ;contact archaeology and Aboriginality in Tasmania, Antiquity 67:504-19.In press. A forced repatriation RepatriationThe process of converting a foreign currency into the currency of one's own country.Notes:If you are American, converting British Pounds back to U.S. dollars is an example of repatriation. of cultural properties to Tasmania, inM. Chanock & C. Simpson (ed.) Law cultural heritage, a special issueof Law in Context. Porch, N. & J. Allen. 1995. Tasmania:archaeological and palaeo-ecological perspectives, in J. Allen &J.F. O'Connell (ed.), Transitions: Pleistocene to Holocene inAustralia & Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea(păp`ə, –y , Antiquity (special number) 69-714-32.