| A set of spears souvenired by Captain James Cook during his first encounter with Indigenous Australians in Sydney’s Botany Bay, almost exactly 254 years ago, has been handed back to the original owners’ descendants.
Cook’s journal records his attempt to land on a beach in Botany Bay – known as Kamay to the local Gweagal clan of the Dharawal Nation – and befriend the people he saw standing on the sand. Dharawal man and Gujaga Foundation chairman Ray Ingrey said the new in-situ display would “balance the story of what happened in 1770 there, for everybody when they come to Kurnell to see the spears up close and personal”.Ms Timbery said her community had struggled for a long time to “change the narrative” about what had transpired that day.
Some of the young Gweagal people at the handover in Trinity’s 17th-century Wren Library are the grandchildren of those who originally began campaigning for the spears’ return. Successive Australian governments have for several decades been supporting the repatriation of Indigenous artefacts from museums across the world, and there are several such handovers every year.Leonard Hill, CEO of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, which coordinates the effort, said his team was working with about 70 institutions that held a combined 33,000 items. The total worldwide trove is estimated at 113,000 artefacts in more than 300 institutions.
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