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A Tasmanian aboriginal group is suing Britain's Museum of Natural History to keep it from conducting tests on bones, teeth and skulls taken from the island, saying Monday that the experiments would desecrate the corpses.
The museum agreed last year to return the bones - mostly obtained during the 1940s - to Australia, but indicated it wanted first to run tests on them, as they represented some of the few remaining pieces of objective data about the region's original inhabitants.
The Tasmanian Aboriginal Center, which has been awarded custody of the remains, said any tests on the bones would defile the remains of victims of genocide.
The museum said would meet with the aboriginal group, but that it would continue to fight the suit, which goes to court on Thursday.
The museum wants to measure, photograph, X-ray and make casts of the bones, along with drilling and shaving off microscopic bits of material from the teeth and skulls to extract genetic material.
SOURCE:
Physorg.com
Originally posted by Byrd
Actually, Marduk, the problem was that they didn't have enough legal clout to rescue the remains of their ancestors. The treatment of Native Americans by the European immigrants was horrific... but was a cakewalk compared to what happened to the Australian Aborigines.
Originally posted by iori_komei
I've honestly gotten sick and tired of groups like this, science is
more important tha there silly religion or cultural beliefs.
That said, I do think they should get the bones back, but the
scientists should be able to conduct the tests.
Comments, Opinions?
They would never dare to do these experiments to the human remains of Jews or Roma or Scots or Manx Islanders," the center's lawyer, Michael Mansell, said in a statement. "They intend to mutilate our ancestors without our consent."
"Tactics for hunting down Tasmanians included riding out on horseback to shoot them, setting out steel traps to catch them, and putting out poison flour where they might find and eat it. Sheperds cut off the penis and testicles of aboriginal men, to watch the men run a few yards before dying. At a hill christened Mount Victory, settlers slaughtered 30 Tasmanians and threw their bodies over a cliff. One party of police killed 70 Tasmanians and dashed out the children's brains."