00:00Not just a piece of wood or part of a tree, to Gamilaroi people this is a living, breathing
00:08ancestor.
00:09I feel blessed to be able to have access to our historic teaching method for my own children.
00:17I think it's wonderful.
00:19That's an extension of their family, that Dulu, so extremely important in terms of that
00:24being repatriated.
00:29The centuries-old Dulu, a carved river red gum, was cut down in the early 20th century
00:35and transported to Sydney before being sold to a Swiss researcher who gifted the carving
00:40to a museum in Switzerland.
00:42There it stayed for more than 80 years before being rediscovered in the museum's storage
00:47area by a Gamilaroi researcher.
00:50There's hundreds of thousands of cultural items that are held in museums and collections
00:54all over the world.
00:56Over the past six years, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
01:01has successfully led negotiations to repatriate more than 2,000 cultural heritage items, including
01:08this Dulu.
01:09We ensure that Australia's First Nations communities are in the driving seat in those conversations.
01:16One hundred and forty overseas collecting institutions have registered a willingness
01:20to collaborate on repatriation, up from 80 18 months ago.
01:25Which is great to see, but it means that we've got decades and decades and decades
01:30of work in terms of repatriating material back to country.
01:33If we really want to have reconciliation, if we really want to have a friendship, then
01:39we should be supporting it in a cultural manner.
01:42Get in the game.
01:43Reawakening culture and helping to right past wrongs.
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