Smithsonian Magazine - 10.2019

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opposition. But Mungo Man was intact,
a unique piece of prehistoric evidence.
We drove from the picturesque lake-
front to a prosaic, ramshackle suburb
called Mitchell. In a neighborhood with
warehouses selling industrial applianc-
es in the shade of stringy eucalyptuses,
Pickering stopped at a security gate and
punched in a code to open it; only after
more codes, special keys and signing a
logbook could we enter a cavernous museum storage facility
crowded with relics, like a theater prop room. In archival drawers
were convict leg irons from the early 1800s, jars of antique mar-
supial specimens, copperplate etchings of native plants made by
naturalists on Capt. James Cook’s 1770 expedition. Our goal was
a room within the warehouse—the Repatriation Unit. “It’s not
pretty, but very functional,” Pickering said, as he unlocked the
door. The space is austere and solemn, with beige walls and icy
climate control. Neatly stacked in a back room were some 300
cardboard boxes, some as small as shoe boxes, each one con-
taining Aboriginal bones. Many were retrieved from Canberra’s
now-defunct Institute of Anatomy, which exhibited skeletons
to the public from the 1930s to 1984. Some have been sent by
private Australians, sometimes in cookie tins or crates. Others
came from museums in the United States, Britain and Europe,
all of which have held Aboriginal skeletons for study or display.
“We had 3,000 individuals, all indigenous, in the ’80s,”
Pickering marveled. “Rooms full of bones.” Locating the Ab-
original communities to return them to involved serious de-
tective work. Many of the skeletons were mixed up, their labels
faded or eaten by silverfish, and their origins were only traced
through century-old correspondence and fading ledgers.
The unit’s centerpiece is a table where skeletons are laid out
for tribal elders, who wrap the remains in kangaroo skin or wa-
fer-thin paperbark to take back to Country. But not all of them
want to handle the remains, Pickering said, often asking staff to
do it instead. “It can be a harrowing experience for the elders,”
says heritage officer Robert Kelly, who has worked in repatria-
tion since 2003. “To see the skulls of their ancestors with serial
numbers written on them, holes drilled for DNA tests, wires that
were used for display mounts. They break down. They start cry-
ing when they see these things.”
Although Mungo Man had never been
displayed or seriously damaged by intrusive
scientific tests, emotions ran high in the lab
on the morning of November 14, 2017, when
his bones were carefully placed in the casket
here for his funeral procession to the west.
The first ceremony was held, of all places,
in the storage facility’s parking lot, near the
vintage hearse, its doors marked with the red,
black and yellow of the Aboriginal flag. War-

ARID THOUGH THE LANDSCAPE WAS, THE NOMADIC

ABORIGINAL GROUPS KNEW HOW TO LIVE OFF THE DESERT.

The skeleton of

Mungo Man as it

appeared during

excavation in

1974. The bones
      would spend the
      next 43 years at
      the Australian
      National Univer-
      sity in Canberra.

10 MILES

Lake

Mungo

Lake

Leaghur

Mulurulu

Lake

Garnpung

Lake

MUNGO

NATIONAL

PARK

Melbourne

Sydney

Canberra

AUSTRALIA

New South

Wales

AREA OF

DETAIL