Members of the Kaurna Aboriginal community have gathered for an emotional repatriation of the final ancestral remains that were held at the South Australian Museum. Some remains were in storage for a up to a century. Now a sacred burial site in Adelaide's northern outskirts is the resting place of more than 500 Kaurna ancestors.
00:00Hundreds of ancestral remains back on Kaurna land, a sacred reburial long overdue.
00:10It's, in a way it's magic, you know, what we've come in and today, you know, the weather,
00:16well the spirits are with us, they're crying those tears of joy for us.
00:21Since colonisation, cultural institutions have been holding Aboriginal remains.
00:26At South Australia's museum alone, the remains of 577 Kaurna ancestors were kept in these storage boxes.
00:35It's a scary thing, repatriation, for our community, in the community, but now it's open.
00:43That's because the museum locked it up so tight.
00:46This is the fourth and final group of remains to be repatriated from the museum to the burial site Wangayata.
00:53The museum once again acknowledging the hurt caused to Kaurna people.
00:58It's been a hard road, you know, it really has.
01:01There's been a lot of, what we did as a museum, as an institution, created a lot of trauma.
01:05It is all something that's bringing us closer together.
01:09This repatriation follows decades of anguish and advocacy from the Kaurna community, but elders say the reburial ceremony marks just the start of a long journey with work underway to repatriate more ancestors from around the world.
01:25They hope to educate more young people by bringing them on overseas repatriations.
01:30You're going there for one purpose. You're going to get them all people and bring them on.
01:35This is home. It's such a beautiful place and it's home.
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