Final farewell as ancestors come home

Wind howled over the dunes, raising hairs on the back of the neck, as Karajarri men, then women, brushed leaves over three wooden caskets to settle the spirits inside.

About 50 people including law bosses Lenny and Johnny Hopiga looked on silently as the men lowered the boxes into a deep pit dug into the dune overlooking the turquoise waters at “Lalarrjartu” – La Grange Bay.

Elder Wittadong Mulardy sang a wailing dirge as the Karajarri rangers shovelled sand into the hole and piled shells on top of the grave, before groups of women smoothed it over and tidied the edges.

They then said their final farewells, imprinting their palms into the sand and wiping away tears. Their ancestors had finally come home to Bidyadanga.

The emotional ceremony was part of a nationwide push by the Federal Government to repatriate Aboriginal remains, objects and artefacts stolen in the late 1800s and early 1900s for museum and private collections in Australia and worldwide.

So far, the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre has assisted reburial ceremonies for four of the region’s tribes, after their ancestral remains were retrieved from Vienna’s Natural History Museum and the Swedish Museum of Ethnography.

The Karajarri remains were retrieved from around Australia after painstaking research by anthropologists. KALACC repatriation officer Neil Carter said the reburials gave people a sense of closure and righted past wrongs.

“The old people said ‘you’ve got to bring them back, take them back to their people and country, otherwise their spirits won’t rest’,” he said.

“When the kartiya (white) people took them away, they didn’t take away the full skeletons, they took bits and pieces … I wouldn’t like my grandmother’s skull to be placed in a museum and studied and passed around like an object.”

Mr Carter said KALACC was working to get back more remains stored in Germany, France, Holland and England.

Karajarri Traditional Lands Association chairman Mervyn Mulardy said it was important that all the old people were brought home. Yesterday, his five unknown ancestors were buried next to a revered law boss who died in the 1930s.

The Department of Indigenous Affairs also handed back for reburial remains mistakenly sent to Perth after they were discovered several years ago by police.

“Our boss Jimidi, he got company now,” Mr Mulardy said. “We don’t know how old these bones are … but they’re back here where they belong.

“A lot of old people used to bury Karajarri people along this coast – and that’s why we brought our old people back to bury them here.

“It’s taken us a long time … I never thought I’d see them come back.”

Yawuru, Karajarri and Nyingkina elders from around the Kimberley, who share laws, customs and rituals with Karajarri people, were overcome with emotion at the event.

“I feel good to be here – it’s a good feeling in your liyan (spirit),” Yawuru elder Frank Sebastion said, choking back tears.

Festivities continued with a wake and community feast before children and elders performed a celebratory corroboree on the beach after dark.