Repatriation in the Torres Strait

Abstract

This chapter details the history of removal of Ancestral Remains from the Torres Strait of Northern Australia and initiatives to bring them home. It discusses the experiences of four repatriation researchers working together in the Torres Strait. All have worked in repatriation for a number of years but from different career backgrounds. Their coming together in this collaborative research highlighted some of the researcher-focused considerations that are both explicit and implicit in field research for repatriation. The Torres Strait research serves as a case study in the need to understand the pressures placed on researchers, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers, in looking at such socially sensitive and complex issues such as repatriation. It highlights the need for non-Indigenous researchers, and administrators, to better appreciate the intricacies of the individual cultures with whom they work, to appreciate the cross-cultural interplays often concealed in the histories of contact and collection of remains, and to avoid generic approaches to repatriation.