Central Land Council

SACRED OBJECTS SENT BACK TO CUSTODIANS

Almost a hundred secret sacred objects held in the South Australian Museum for up to a century have been returned to their custodians in Central Australia in the past few months. About 20 important men's items were returned to Kintore near the Western Australian border in August.

The SA Museum's head of anthropology, Chris Anderson, took the objects back to Kintore himself and says that their return was "an extremely important experience for everyone involved." He says the men at Kintore are still very worried about being able to protect the objects and that they want to build their own museum to store and protect the material from floods and other possible damage. the men are willing to build the museum themselves bust so far haven't been able to get funding to buy the materials they need.

The return of the objects follows five years of talks between the SA Museum and the men at Kintore and is part of the SA Museum's policy of returning much of its collection to Aboriginal owners. Dr Anderson says the SA Museum wants to return all the secret sacred objects as it has enough background information to know who can be approached to speak about the material. The policy has been set by Aboriginal people at Central land Council meetings working in consultation with the SA Museum.

Dr Anderson says that about one quarter of the 2000 Aboriginal heritage items held in the SA Museum could be considered for return. Another 60 secret sacred objects are now being returned to communities in the Mt Liebig, Haasts Bluff and Papunya regions. These objects are being returned to their owners under a programmed funded by the Central Land Council. Among the material being returned are objects collected by the late Professor Ted Strehlow. His main body of work and collected artefacts makes up the Strehlow collection which will soon be housed at the NT Government's Strehlow Centre, under construction in Alice Springs.

Members of the Strehlow Centre Board have said publicly that they doubt whether any of that collection will ever be returned to Aboriginal custodians and claimed that there in no demand for the objects to be given back. But Dr Anderson says that while this might be true for some people around Hermannsburg, who had a very close relationship with Profession Strehlow, he doubted it would be the case for people from other areas whose dealings with the Professor were more in the nature of dealing with "a patrol officer." The only consultations over the objects referred to publicly by Board members have dealt specifically with the people of Hermannsburg and Dr Anderson says that at least some part of the Strehlow Collection would have been taken from Aboriginal people in other areas.