Community meeting for Menang ancestral return

Menang community members invited to a community meeting and information session to discuss return and burial of ancestral remains.

The meeting will be held on 14 December at 11am, at the Albany Aboriginal Centre.

The Wagyl Kaip cultural advice committee are holding a community meeting to inform the community of the repatriation process, decide the location, ceremony, and date of the burial for the six Menang ancestors.

The information session will be facilitated by DPLH officers, Harley Coyne and Ken Kelly, who will also answer community questions about the process so far.

The remains were stolen from graves at unknown Aboriginal burial locations in King George Sound, Albany, during the 1870s.

Provenance of the remains were identified as being from King George Sound, Albany.

In 1888, the six partial sets of Menang ancestral remains were sold to the State Ethnographic Collections in Saxony, Germany, which has held over 80 ancestral remains of Australian Indigenous people.

An agreement between the Australian and German governments saw the return of the ancestors to Western Australia in 2019.

Since then, the six Menang ancestors have been in the care of the West Australian Museum and the WA Department of Planning Lands and Heritage in Perth.

The Federal Department of Communications and the Arts is responsible for the Australian Government’s Indigenous Repatriation Policy, which incorporates the repatriation of Indigenous ancestors held overseas.

To RSVP for the community meeting, please email Ken Kelly at: kenneth.kelly@dplh.wa.gov.au