New Zealand Museum Agrees To Return Sacred Artefacts To Northern Territory’s Warumungu Community

More than a century after they were taken from the Warumungu people in the Northern Territory, four precious artefacts will be coming home. The artefacts include two hooked boomerangs (wartilykirri), an adze (palya/kupija)

ngurrulumuru Walter Baldwin Spencer James Field  The Guardian agreed to return the artefacts in June this year

The news comes after the AIATSIS announced last week that six sacred artefacts being held at another New Zealand museum, Tūhura Otago Museum in Dunedin, would also be returning to the Warumungu community.

The artefacts include a boomerang (kalpunta), adze (palya/kupija) and a selection of stone knives (marttan).

Senior Warumungu man Michael Jones said he was glad the artefacts would be returning to his community. “Them old things they were carved by the old people who had the songs for it, too. I’m glad these things are returning back,” he said, per an AIATSIS statement. “The museums are respecting us, and they’ve been thinking about us. They weren’t the ones who took them, they just ended up there. “We can still teach the young people now about these old things and our culture.” Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney said returning the artefacts was a “significant moment for the Warumungu people and fundamental to the processes of truth-telling and reconciliation”. A delegation of Warumungu representatives will travel to New Zealand later this year, alongside members of the AIATSIS, to collect the artefacts in handover ceremonies with local Māori communities.

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and an axe (), which have been kept at the Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum. They were taken from the Warumungu community by anthropologist Sir and telegraph station master in the late 19th century. According to , the men took more than 6,000 artefacts from First Nations communities in central Australia. Negotiations to return the objects began in September 2021 between the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), the Warumungu community and the Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum. The museum . They will be displayed at the Nyinkka Nyunyu Art and Culture Centre Collection, which is located on a sacred site of the Warumungu people in Tennant Creek.