Our Research

The RRR archive was built through two major projects: Return, Reconcile, Renew: understanding the history, effects and opportunities of repatriation and building an evidence base for the future (2014-2018) and Restoring Dignity: networked knowledge for repatriation communities (2018-2020). These projects have been funded by the Australian Research Council and partner organisation contributions*. Both have responded to questions identified by the Australian Community Partner Organisations: the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre (KALACC), the Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority (NRA), and Gur a Baradharaw Kod Torres Strait Sea and Land Council (GBK). RRR has an international team and benefits from expertise in First Nations organisations, universities, research institutions, government and museums.Return Reconcile Renew (RRR) commenced in 2014.

Its overall aim is to raise awareness and understanding about repatriation and assist repatriation practitioners and researchers in their efforts to bring Old People home. This website and the digital archive that sits within it is a major output of RRR and is in continual development. You can acces the website here.

*In addition to the Community Partner Organisations the project involved the Australian National University, University of Melbourne, The University of Queensland, University of Technology Sydney, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Office of the Arts (Australian Government Department of Regional Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sports).

New Publications

The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation: Return, Reconcile, Renew
Edited by Cressida Fforde, C. Timothy McKeown, Honor Keeler

This volume (56 chapters), published March 2020 by Routledge brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous repatriation practitioners and researchers to provide the reader with an international overview of the removal and return of Ancestral Remains.  

Contributions by INCF staff:

Ngarrindjeri repatriation: Kungun Ngarrindjeri Yunnan (listen to Ngarrindjeri speaking).  Authors: Steve Hemming, Daryle Rigney, Major Sumner, Luke Trevorrow, Laurie Rankine Jr, Shaun Berg and Christopher Wilson (Ch 7)

Returning to Yarluwar-Ruwe: repatration as a sovereign act of healing.  Authors: Steve Hemming, Daryle Rigney, Major Sumner, Luke Trevorrow, Laurie Rankine Jr and Christopher Wilson (Ch 46)

Available from Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group

Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation (GMTOAC) has a vision to achieve sustainable economic development to enable it to support the Gunditjmara People’s continuing connection to Gunditjmara Country and to fulfil its obligations to Country as Traditional Owners.  The Hub is engaging with the GMTOAC to support its work to build on existing elements providing a platform for economic planning for the next five years.

This project explored ‘statutory authorities’ as a possible response to First Nations’ need for pluralist governing structures through which they can exercise land jurisdiction, fulfil responsibilities to Country and manage relationships with settler-colonial governments.  The final report will be available from the AIATSIS website in the coming months.

Through this project a strategy was developed to guide the effective engagement between Indigenous fishing interests and management agencies responsible for Commonwealth fisheries, which has applicability to appropriate state and local level processes.  The strategy is centred on the principles representation and consultation, 2-way capacity building and collaboration and co-management.

Working with key partners this project developed and successfully trialed a methodology that supports the translation of Ngarrindjeri  Yannarumi assessments into water resource risk assessments articulating points of connection between the Ngarrindjeri Yannarumi assessment process and the water risk assessment process.  Learn more ...

Collaborating with two Aboriginal nations - the Gugu Badhun Nation in what is now Queensland and the Nyungar Nation in what is now Western Australia - that do not have existing governing structures and mechanisms this projects investigates an element of Indigenous nation building (INB) that has not been explored in Australia or elsewhere.  Learn more ...

This project aims to re-conceptualise heritage from a standpoint of reconciliation. In doing so, it will generate new understandings about how heritage and its management can contribute to reconciliation processes. The project combines Aboriginal, Maori and Western intellectual traditions in order to advance theoretical understandings of heritage and to examine its reconstructive power. Learn more ...

OCHRE (Opportunity, Choice, Healing, Responsibility, Empowerment) is the NSW Government's community-focussed plan to transform the working relationships between government and Aboriginal people.   Jumbunna was engaged by AANSW to evaluate whether the drafted OCHRE Practice Principles reflect Aboriginal standpoints, critiques and philosophies, along with relevant best practice policy developments, as revealed through relevant academic and grey literature.

The repatration of Ancestral Remains is of great significance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and many other Indigenous peoples worldwide.  An extraodinary Indigenous achievement, repatration has been the single most important agent of change in the relationship between Indigenous peoples, museums and the academy over the past 40 years.  This project built on the foundational work of the 2014 - 2017 ARC Linkage project Return, Reconcile, Renew in developing a national and international resource for repatriation research and practice, developing an Indigenous data governance framework to ensure ethical data management, analysis, sustainability and intergenerational transfer.  Learn more ...