Ainu Ancestral Remains, Long Held in Australia, Returned

On Saturday, May 6th, an Ainu delegation hailing from Japan entered Melbourne Museum in Australia for the fulfillment of a long-awaited promise. Said vow had been made some six years ago, but the controversy the promise concerned was far older. In 2017, then-ambassador to Japan Richard Court told the Ainu Association of Hokkaido that two Australian universities had agreed to the return of ill-gotten indigenous Ainu remains. The ancestral artifacts, consisting of four sets of Ainu skulls, had been sent to Australia for purported research purposes nearly 100 years ago. The Ainu people are <a href="https://unseenjapan.com/colonization-of-hokkaido/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">the indigenous inhabitants of Hokkaido</a>, which is now Japan’s most northern main island. The Ainu are also indigenous to the <a href="https://unseenjapan.com/sakhalin-island-japan-russia-native-population/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">neighboring large island of Sakhalin</a>, as well as <a href="https://unseenjapan.com/renewed-tension-in-the-southern-kuriles-amidst-ukraine-war/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">the Kuril chain</a>, both now held by Russia but with <a href="https://unseenjapan.com/karafuto-japan-lost-prefecture/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">a long history of contested ownership with Japan</a>. As an indigenous people group with their own isolate language and unique culture, the Ainu have long been subject to academic and scientific interest from their colonizers. In the early 20th century, this often took the form of invasive studies, sometimes involving the harvesting of blood under false pretenses, grave robbing, and more. Such desecrations were so offensive to local communities that there were cases of Ainu throwing their bodies over graves in order to block Japanese researchers from disinterring them. [1] <a href="https://unseenjapan.medium.com/ainu-ancestral-remains-long-held-in-australia-returned-1a9f7fd2b202">Click Here</a>