Etched in Bone

Jacob Nayinggul, a senior elder from Gunbalanya in Arnhem Land, is dealing with the disturbing reality that bones of his ancestors were stolen from burial caves. They were taken in 1948 by a scientific expedition and shipped to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. When, after years of argument, the Smithsonian agrees to repatriate the bones, the community faces a new challenge. Fearful that the ancestors’ spirits were wrenched from their country and taken overseas, Nayinggulbrings harmony to the landscape by creating a new type of ceremony that will put the spirits to sleep in the land where they were born.