The remains of 49 Māori and Moriori people, taken by an Austrian taxidermist, have been returned to the country.
The remains were brought back to New Zealand last month from the Natural History Museum, Vienna. They were taken from New Zealand and the Chatham Islands by Austrian taxidermist and grave robber Andreas Reischek, who lived in New Zealand between 1877 to 1889.
A delegation received the remains at the Te Papa Museum in Wellington.
Professor Sir Pou Temara, Repatriation Advisory Panel Chair, acknowledged the importance of the return.
“These ancestors were stolen by those with no regard for the Māori communities they belonged to,” Temara said.
“In his diary entries Reischek boasts of eluding Māori surveillance, looting sacred places and breaking tapu – he knew exactly what he was doing. His actions were wrong and dishonest.”
The return is a result of more than 70 years of negotiations between New Zealand and Austria.
Te Papa’s Acting Head of Repatriation Te Arikirangi Mamaku-Ironside was complimentary of the actions of the Austrian museum.
“The Natural History Museum, Vienna has made a profound commitment to right the wrongs of the past, and approached this work with a spirit of openness and reconciliation.”
However, Mamaku-Ironside said there was still work to do. “While we’ve seen an increase in conversations about repatriating human remains, there is still a lot of work to do to bring all our ancestors home,” he said.
