Two Moriori ancestors (Karāpuna) have begun their journey home from the National Museum of Australia at a special handover at the cultural institution on Tuesday.

Flora Mitchell, the oldest known member of the Moriori people, who lives in Queensland was one of the guests at the ceremony, as was New Zealand High Commission to Australia’s Andrew Needs.

The ancestral home of the Moriori people is Rēkohu and Rangihaute (Chatham and Pitt Islands), to the southeast of New Zealand.

The karāpuna were handed over to representatives of the Hokotehi Moriori Trust, Belinda Williamson and Jared Watty, at a special ceremony at the NMA on 11 February.

It is the culmination of two years of collaboration between the NMA, Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand (Te Papa) in Wellington and the Moriori community.

The karāpuna were transported to Te Papa to be held in the museum’s wāhi tchap (sacred repository), alongside around 512 Kōimi T’chakat Moriori currently held by the museum.

The karāpuna  will remain there until Moriori determine the time is right for the ancestors to be returned to Rēkohu and Rangihaute.

Ms Williamson said she felt at peace, healed, reconnected and joyful.

“Joy that we’re at this point that they’re coming home,” she said.

Ms Williamson said it was one of the most important things the trust did to represent their people; to return their karāpuna home.

“It is an absolute honour and privilege,” she said.

Te Papa repatriation researcher Susan Thorpe said the Moriori were an “inconvenient truth in the history of the Pacific”.

She said there were myths around the indigenous groups’ extinction.

“There were many myths that existed. Because they were people of peace, they were deemed to be in some way  inferior,” Ms Thorpe said.

“To be a peaceful person is to show enormous strength. But Moriori, the other indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand most people know about the tangata whenua Māori (a Māori phrase that means “people of the land”).

“But the Moriori were the first settlers of the Chatham Islands. They arrived as the Māori did directly to Aotearoa.”

Ms Thorpe said her role was to research who they were, how the group left the island, who took them, and their physical provenance.

Te Papa head of repatriation Te Herekiekie Herewini said their role in repatriation was to bring all Māori and Moriori ancestors that are outside of NZ, back home.

NMA First Nations outreach manager and Menang/Nyungar woman Shona Coyne said she was relieved and joyful to see the ancestors returning home.

“As a First Nations person working here at the NMA, I really deeply understand what it feels like to have your ancestors displaced and want them home,” Ms Coyne said.

“That’s something we’ve all been fighting for; for a number of years.

“So, we can connect and relate with our Māori and Morori kin very well on a number of occasions.”

Ms Coyne said the sharing of cultures at the ceremony on 11 was a great reflection of what First Nations’ mobs could do together.

“We know how to speak the same language, we understand what each other wants,” she said.

“We understand there’s a delicate nature to it, but also, a coming together.”

The ceremony included an exchange of the Australian Aboriginal, Māori and Moriori cultures including a smoking ceremony, tikane (customary protocols), karakii (incantations) and rongo (song).

Speeches at the ceremony acknowledged the long history of collecting and looting indigenous remains by museums and academic institutions from the late 1800s to the 1930s, as well as the period of repatriation that began through the leadership of indigenous leaders in Australia and NZ in the 1980s.

The karāpuna returned in the ceremony, who were identified as Moriori through handwritten inscriptions, were originally part of the former Australian Institute of Anatomy’s holdings (now the National Film and Sound Archive building).

They have been with NMA since 2022 when they were returned by the Australian National University.

Cultural gifts were exchanged at the end of the ceremony which wrapped up by all three parties signing a document transferring the ownership of the karāpuna.

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