Canadian museums set to return Maori heads, bones

New Zealand officials and Maori cultural representatives will visit museums in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia next week to reclaim bones, heads and other human remains collected as anthropological "curiosities".

The return will start on Monday at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec, where curators will hand over a Maori skull and jawbone taken from New Zealand in 1914 by Edward Ernest Prince, then Canada's top fisheries official, during a research trip, the Calgary Herald reported today.

Mr Prince donated the items to the museum before his death in 1936.

Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and the University of British Columbia also will be returning Maori bone to the delegation as part of what New Zealand High Commissioner Kate Lackey called a "forthcoming and sensitive" handling of a sometimes-thorny issue.

"It's a very positive story, not only from a historical and cultural point of view, but I think it is very indicative of the overall relationship between Canada and New Zealand - our similar values and respect for our First Peoples," Ms Lackey said.

"The response from Canadian museums has been enormously generous."

Many museums around the world have begun returning human remains to their countries and communities of origin. Bones, hair and ceremonial "grave goods" - religious artifacts sometimes buried with ancient aboriginals - were routinely collected from prehistoric cemeteries by 19th and early 20th-century scholars.

But some experts have argued that such artifacts have great scientific value, revealing key facts about cultural practices and even genetic data illuminating ancient diets and migration patterns.

Last year, a row erupted over the return of a mummified Maori head to New Zealand from a French museum in the city of Rouen: the French Government intervened to block the return, saying the head was part of France's national heritage.

In Canada, the Museum of Civilization's director of archaeology, David Morrison, said his decision to return the items to Maori was an easy one because their scientific value was low.

"We don't even know where in New Zealand they were collected," he said.

"The importance of these items would not be very high, since we don't really know anything about them."

Mr Morrison said the remains were to be returned to the New Zealand delegation on Monday following a brief Maori religious ceremony.

ROM officials were not immediately able to detail what remains would be returned to the New Zealand delegation during their visit to Toronto, scheduled for Wednesday.

UBC's Museum of Anthropology is scheduled to return its Maori remains the following week.

-NZPA