Cultural Restitution
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Updated August 2024
Below is a schedule of successful restitutions made by Australia to a country or community of source. Entries are updated regularly.
August 2024
Human remains held in a New Zealand museum have been returned to a Kimberley traditional owner group from the coast north of Derby
August 2024
The Laiagam Stone, a 3,500-year-old ritual figurative stone discovered in the Papua New Guinea Highlands in the 1960s, will be offered for sale at Parcours des Mondes by Australian dealer Chris Boylan Oceanic Art
April 2024
London's Natural History Museum is refusing efforts to restore the remains of a Woppaburra ancestor of Dr Harry Van Issum to his community on the Keppel Islands
October 2023
The Queensland Museum is under pressure to identify and repatriate hundreds of ancestral remains belonging to Pacific Island nations
August 2023
A fact-finding mission by the National Gallery of Australia has found more than 100 antiquities in the Museum's collection are looted from Cambodia
August 2023
A Cambodian gilt bronze Buddhist sculpture, dating to the 9th/10th century and trafficked by Douglas J Latchford, will be returned along with two other statues by the National Gallery of Australia
August 2023
A strut, or tunala, stolen from the pagoda of Ratneswar Mahadev in the city of Patan in Nepal's Kathmandu Valley, has been returned by The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
October 2022
Stolen Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural artefacts are returned to Hobart for an exhibition - but only on loan
August 2022
Hundreds of items from the Tek Sing, an historic Asian shipwreck that sank in the South China Sea in 1822, have been returned by Australia to the Indonesian Government
April 2022
Ancient rock art site known as the Mount Yarrowyck Nature Reserve in northern New South Wales has been returned to the custody of its Aboriginal owners
January 2022
Objections raised by some of Canberra's Aboriginal elders to Government and AIATSIS plans for Ngurra precinct claiming that have not been consulted
January 2022
4,000 year old petroglyphs are returned to Tasmania's Aboriginal community after being removed by museum staff in the 1960s
July 2021
14 looted artefacts connected to alleged antiquities trafficker Subhash Kapoor are to be returned to India by the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
December 2019
Sacred Aboriginal rock art (petroglyphs), removed from a Tasmanian rock face and placed in the collection of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, to be returned to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community
April 2019
Macquarie University in Sydney is praised by Egyptian authorities for returning the fragment of an ancient Egyptian stela, dating from the 13th Dynasty, stolen 25 years ago
November 2018
Thousands of antiquities taken from Papua New Guinea are being returned by Australia as part of a decades-long project, with thousands more to go
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australia-s-largest-return-of-artefacts-to-png-sign-of-closer-ties
September 2016
The National Gallery of Australia returns three sculptures stolen from Indian temples or archaeological sites, purchased by the Museum from Subhash Kapoor and Nancy Wiener
March 2015
The National Gallery of Australia's prized 2nd cent Seated Buddha will be returned to India after striking a deal with the New York gallery owner who sold them the statue in 2007
September 2014
Australia's Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, will return two looted Indian figures, a Dancing Shiva and an Ardhanarishvara, to India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, as a "gesture of goodwill"
April 1976
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart returns the remains of Truganini to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community
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