TMAG, Royal Society to apologise to Tasmanian Aboriginal community as part of petroglyphs return
‘Workers remove the 14,000-year-old Preminghana petroglyphs from their original location on the far-North-West Coast in the 1960s. They are part of a network of Aboriginal rock carvings.
Two of Tasmania's longest-running institutions will formally apologise to the Aboriginal community as part of the process in repatriating the Preminghana petroglyphs to their home on the far-North- West Coast.
The Royal Society of Tasmania and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery will offer paired apologies on February 15 "in recognition of the shared history of the organisations".
The text of the apology will be made available on the day. A TMAG spokesperson said it was part of the reconciliation process.
MORE ON THE PREMINGHANA PETROGLYPHS:
Aboriginal leader slams wait for rock carvings return
City of Launceston agrees to repatriate Preminghana petroglyphs
NAIDOC Week 2020: urgent call for petroglyphs' return
TMAG agrees to pass on final permit to Aboriginal leaders
"Whilst the apology event and the physical return of the petroglyphs are not happening on the same day, they are both a demonstration of TMAG's commitment to strengthening its relationship with the Tasmanian Aboriginal community," she said.
The Royal Society was involved in the practice of exhuming the bodies of Aboriginal Tasmanians before they would be dismembered and often displayed to the public.
The practice continued throughout the 19th century and included the mutilation of the bodies of the last "full-blooded" Aboriginal Tasmanians, Truganini and William Lanne.
TMAG included the remains of Aboriginal people in its collections.
Along with the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, TMAG stored the Preminghana petroglyphs after their removal in the 1960s.
The 14,000-year-old petroglyphs will be returned to their original location on the far-North West Coast in early March, involving transportation by truck and the possible use of a helicopter to lift the several-tonne rock carvings into place.
Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania chairman Michael Mansell said the apologies from the two institutions were an important step.
"It signifies a change of attitude in Tasmanian society, reflected by two fairly conservative institutions who are now taking responsibility for their past actions, rather than just saying 'here's the petroglyphs, take them, we're not going to talk about what we did'," he said.
"They're saying 'let's open the books, and let's be honest and truthful about how we got them, how we disregarded the feelings of Aboriginal people, and did what we wanted to do because we were part of white society'."
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OPINION
As Michael Mansell has said, this is an important step. Nonetheless, why isn’t the city of Launceston and the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QMAG) apologising as well?
Somewhat ironically Minister Jaensch, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, left it to Remembrance Day, Nov 11, 2020 to remember to ‘approve’ the petroglyphs’ handback.
Both Council and the QVMAG have much to do in regard to reconciliation and yet again they have been found wanting.
Michael Stretton’s assertion, or was he deeming it, and in open council, that the city’s councillors were not QVMAG Trustees was and is a flawed understanding of the councillors’ governance role in regard to the QVMAG’s collections.
Likewise, Mr Stretton’s assertion that the QVMAG’s petroglyphs were being “deaccessioned” which, on the evidence, couldn’t be so or even verified as there is no evidence of them ever being ‘accessioned’ – formally taken into the QVMAG’s ‘ownership’.
By extension, this implies that the petroglyphs were stolen, or on loan or on the very best construction ‘taken into the institution’s care’ given that that at the time it was imagined and assumed that Tasmania’s Aboriginal people became ‘extinct’ with Truganini’s death.
The Councillors were not required to approve the petroglyph’s “deaccession”. What they had the opportunity to do was to just hand them back to the pakana people given that there was no ‘demonstrable ownership’ in any context to relinquish – except perhaps by bureaucratic deeming.
It turns out that her death was all so convenient in the context of the colonial aftermath given that she had a sister living on Kangaroo Island and Fanny Cochrane Smith lived on in southern Tasmania until she died in 1905.
So, the QVMAG is deeply embedded in all this as an institution’s and by extension Council too. Clearly, both the City of Launceston and the QVMAG have obligations here and no amount of ‘history smoothing’ will absolve either.
Moreover, there are reports that the QVMAG has in its collection still a plaster cast of a petroglyph taken from Preminghana quite likely circa 1930.
Why is this not being discussed or has it – they?– been destroyed in some history sanitising process?
In the vernacular, it’s ‘FESS UP TIME’ and ‘fence mending time’ down at Launceston’s Town Hall!
Launcestonians are diminished by the city’s governance’s and ‘cultural custodians’ recalcitrance and it is time that they ought not be.
With respect,
Ray Norman
