UCLA's Fowler Museum returns 20 cultural objects to Australia's Warumungu community
LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- UCLA's Fowler Museum returned more than a dozen culturally important artifacts to Northern Australia.
A repatriation event was held Wednesday where museum representatives returned 20 objects of significant cultural importance to members of the Warumungu community of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, Australia, where the items originated.
The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, also known as AIATSIS, initiated the return of the items.
"It's very important that a lot of these artifacts are coming back for Warumungu people," said Michael Jones Jampijinpa, a senior Warumungu man, in a statement. "A lot of those artifacts that museums have went before us, and we didn't even see them."
The AIATSIS Return of Cultural Heritage program team has been working with Warumungu elders and the Fowler's collections team since March 2021 to identify the objects.
Ten of the items in the Fowler's collection were gifts from private collectors while the other 10 arrived via the Wellcome Trust.
According to UCLA, after Sir Henry Wellcome, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur and artifact collector, died in 1936, the trust dispersed his collection, with the Fowler receiving nearly 30,000 items from around the globe in 1965.
The objects include clubs, wirli or ngurrulumuru (fighting picks), marttan (knives), murkutu (sheaths), kupija (adzes) and a wartilykirri (a hooked boomerang).
"Museums have the responsibility to facilitate connections and cultural exchange," said Silvia Forni, the Shirley and Ralph Shapiro Director of the Fowler Museum, in a statement. "This involves not only showcasing the rich diversity of human cultures but also acknowledging historical injustices. The repatriation of ancestral objects is a crucial aspect of this process."
The Fowler Museum explores global arts and cultures, with an emphasis on Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Indigenous Americas. To learn more, click here.
