News last week that Aboriginal spears will be returning to their source community at La Perouse, the landing site on Coastal Sydney of James Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific, suggests media emotions are running ahead of due diligence.

NITV, National Indigenous Television in Australia, reports that La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council, the main representative body for Aboriginal people with a cultural connection to Coastal Sydney, has announced repatriation plans for three Gweagal spears, now in the collection of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge. However, the report is clearly premature.

Cambridge loaned the spears to the National Museum of Australia’s Endeavour Voyage exhibition in Canberra which ended on 26 April. Following this exhibition, NITV says the spears will transfer to Sydney in time for the opening of a temporary exhibition to coincide with Reconciliation Week, “with the aim to eventually be displayed at a purpose-built Museum in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire”.

However, in reality, the destination of these spears is still being resolved by ongoing discussions between the La Perouse Local Area Land Council, the National Museum of Australia, the University of Sydney and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, MAA’s Director Prof Nicholas Thomas told Returning Heritage.

Thomas also confirmed MAA has been working to make the spears, gifted to Trinity College, Cambridge by the Earl of Sandwich in 1771, accessible in the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney while discussions concerning their ongoing exhibition in Australia continue.

Ownership of the spears, shields and other artefacts collected by Cook on his first landing at Kamay Botany Bay in 1770 continues to fuel emotions - at both ends of the globe. 

Describing himself as a descendant of Cooman, a Gweagal man present at Cook’s landing on April 29, 1770, Rodney Kelly has been campaigning for the return of four Gweagal spears in Cambridge, plus the so-called Gweagal Shield in the British Museum, for several years. However, despite receiving support from the Parliament of New South Wales, his formal application to the MAA in 2016 was rejected.  The Museum’s management committee was concerned by the absence of a clear proposal for their future housing and conservation, as well as the lack of any commitment by a “competent Australian institution” to care for the spears on their return.

Kelly, who’s been hosted at MAA a number of times and is described by Thomas as "thoughtful and sincere”, continues to campaign for their return. 

However, the MAA’s report also highlights Kelly’s lack of consultation with accredited representatives of the Gweagal people. According to Noeleen Timbery, Deputy Chairperson of the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council, “no one who decided to throw their support behind the campaign bothered to check whether the Gweagal Clan or any other Aboriginal person with a continuous connection to Botany Bay agreed with this approach”.  

Kelly has neither represented the La Perouse community nor has that community ever supported his campaign. Timbery also suggests that Kelly’s assumption it might have been Cooman that met Cook on that day, “is nothing more than an assumption at best”.

Timbery is just as committed as Kelly to seeing the objects stolen from their ancestors back on Gweagal territory. But she believes making public protests is not always the best approach. The MAA also believe that engagement in constructive dialogue is a more appropriate model for negotiating repatriations, an approach reflected in their current statement supporting the return of Benin Bronzes in the Museum's collection.

If nothing else, NITV’s news report suggests the Australian media and others who’ve supported Kelly’s campaign should invest more in their due diligence, establishing the views of those community representatives who continue to live and work where Cook first landed.

After this was written.....

The three Gweagal spears from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge were exhibited at the Chau Chak Wing Museum in May 2022, the first time they had returned home since they were removed more than 250 years ago.

Photo: After a drawing by Sydney Parkinson, who sailed with Cook on The Endeavour

Courtesy of ABC