Central Land Council

STREHLOW - THE FINAL CHAPTERS?

After nearly twenty years, the bitter story of the Strehlow collection of artefacts yielded a victory when traditional owners from Alice Springs went to Adelaide and collected the objects from the Museum of South Australia. In 1995, the Central land Council purchased the remainder of the collection that Ted Strehlow had bequeathed to his son Carl for an undisclosed sum, but they remained in safe keeping at the Museum until Aboriginal custodians were able to personally retrieve them, on behalf of the other owners several months ago.

A large collection of sacred objects were amassed over decades by Strehlow. Some were bought in the 1980's by the Northern Territory Government and housed in the controversial $3 million purpose built Strehlow Centre in Alice Springs. Three years ago, a second collection came on the market. This is the collection the CLC was able to purchase. The story began in 1933 when Strehlow, who was brought up at the Hermannsberg mission west of Alice Springs, returned to Alice Springs as an anthropologist.

The custodians, said to be fearful of the rapidly changing times and of desecration of their sacred objects by souvenir hunters, entrusted Strehlow with their safe keeping. He seemed like an excellent choice at the time - he spoke fluent Arrernte and appeared to understand and respect the significance of his duty to protect and hold the artefacts in trust for their owners. He documented them meticulously and described in unprecedented detail Arrernte culture and ceremonies.

He was acknowledged amount fellow anthropologists as the leading authority on Central Australia. However, in his later years Strehlow started to squabble with other academics - he felt that the recognition due to him had not been paid and began to regard the collection as his own private property. Finally, the breaking point came when he sold photos of secret Arrernte rituals to the German magazine 'Stern', which in turn sold them to Australia's 'People' magazine. He died a year later and his wife Kathleen became the 'owner' of the collection. This particularly distressed the traditional owners of the objects - a woman seeing these objects could suffer fatal consequences and constituted a major travesty of Aboriginal law. Help cam in the form of Federal legislation - the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Interim Act passed in 1984 - but not before the Strehlow Foundation had packed up the collection and allegedly shipped it overseas to try and bypass the legislation.

It was soon after this that the Territory Government purchased it for $200,000 from Kathleen Strehlow and subsequently housed the artefacts in the Strehlow Research Centre in Alice Springs. Traditional owners remain convinced that the many items held there should be returned to their rightful custodians in the near future. The next surprise cam in 1992 when Adelaide art dealer put up another collection for sale on behalf of Strehlow's son Carl. Sacred objects comprised a substantial proportion of this collection. The police raided the Strehlow home and the objects were deposited in the Museum of South Australia until the CLC bought them and returned them to their owners.

David Ross, former Director of the CLC, described the repatriation of the objects as one of the greatest victories for Aboriginal people since the Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Act was put in place twenty years ago.