(5 Dec 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Berlin, Germany – 5 December 2024
1. Various of ancestral remains being carried to ceremony
2. Ugar Island representative blowing shell
3. Various of ancestral remains being carried to ceremony
4. Close of Ugar Island representative Yessie Mosby singing
5. Mid of coffin covered by flag
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Hermann Parzinger, head of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation:
“These ancestral remains were never meant to be here. They’re here because, during the colonial era and beyond, Europeans presumed to make other peoples and cultures the subject, or more often object, of their research — appropriating artefacts from cultures outside Europe on a scale that is almost unimaginable today and even desecrating the burial places of those communities in the process.”
7. Wide of Ugar Island representative, Rocky Stephen, speaking during ceremony
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Rocky Stephen, Ugar Island representative:
"I think today is such an historical and such a very, you know, joyful moment. It’s sad, but it’s a very joyful moment."
9. Coffins covered by flags
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Rocky Stephen, Ugar Island representative:
"But this day means a lot to the Ugarem-le to be connected back to them because it’s a spiritual healing journey for us and they will return back to us to heal the part and restore what was taken away. So this is a process of healing that’s going to happen when they return back to us."
11. Wide of coffins covered by flags
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Rocky Stephen, Ugar Island representative:
“Our presence here today with all of you speaks louder than words of how much they mean to us. And no matter it was nearly a 40-hour journey to travel here, because it’s been 144 years they’ve been missed back at their home, Ugar."
13. Various Stephen and Mosby playing drums during ceremony
14. Coffins being carried away
STORYLINE:
Five sets of ancestral remains from Australia that had been in German museum collections since the 19th century were handed back at a ceremony on Thursday that a community representative described as a sad but “very joyful” moment.
The restitution is part of ongoing efforts by German museums and authorities to return human remains and cultural artefacts that were taken during colonial times.
In this case, three sets of remains that had been in Berlin since 1880 were handed over along with another two sets of remains that had been held in the northwestern German city of Oldenburg.
They were received by four representatives of the Ugar Island community, part of the Torres Strait Islands off the northeastern tip of Australia.
“These ancestral remains were never meant to be here,” said Hermann Parzinger, the head of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees Berlin’s state museums.
“They’re here because, during the colonial era and beyond, Europeans presumed to make other peoples and cultures the subject, or more often object, of their research — appropriating artefacts from cultures outside Europe on a scale that is almost unimaginable today and even desecrating the burial places of those communities in the process,” he said.
The restitution of the remains from Berlin’s Ethnological Museum and the State Museum for Nature and Man in Oldenburg means that 162 sets of ancestral remains have now been returned to Australia from Germany, and about 1,700 from around the world, according to Australia’s ambassador to Germany.
AP video by Pietro De Cristofaro
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