Descendants of a Gweagle warrior shot, and possibly killed, by Captain Cook's marines when the explorer landed at Botany Bay on April 28, 1770, are incensed and insulted by the British Museum's refusal to return his weapons.
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Until late last month the shield and two of the spears used by warriors who opposed Cook's landing were on loan to the National Museum of Australia as part of the Encounters Exhibition.
They had been taken aboard the Endeavour 246 years ago after shots and spears were exchanged by the men and the British landing party.
Aboriginal leaders say the shield, which appears to have been holed by a musket ball, and the spears mark "first blood" in the frontier wars and make a mockery of later claims Australia was "terra nullius" and that occupation and settlement was a peaceful process.
On March 28, descendants of the Gweagle Clan of the Dharawal Tribe issued a statement of claim seeking the unconditional return of the weapons.
In a reply dated April 20, British Museum deputy director Jonathan Williams said that wasn't going to happen.
He did say that under the right conditions the shield may returned to Australia on loan.
"I understand your aspiration is to have the shield publicly displayed in Australia," Mr Williams wrote.
"For a further loan there would need to be a host institution that meets the loan conditions which is acceptable to all parties."
Rodney Kelly, six-times great-grandson of Cooman, the warrior who wielded the shield and threw some of the spears, was a signatory to the claim.
He said his clan's aspirations went way beyond another loan to an Australian museum.
"We are the living descendants of Cooman, our ancestor, to whom this shield did belong," he said. "We are the rightful owners and wish for the shield to come back into our possession."
While the hope is to one day have the shield and spears on permanent display on Gweagle Land (in Sydney), Canberra Aboriginal tent embassy representative Graeme Dunstan said they would be the perfect centrepiece for any exhibition at the Australian War Memorial to recognise the frontier wars.
"It [the shield] has come to us from the day the fight began," Mr Dunstan said. "The so-called victors took what they regarded as their spoils and wrote the story down. Their own words now condemn their actions."
Sir Joseph Banks, the Endeavour's botanist, recorded the incident in his journal.
"Two of the men came down, each armed with a lance of about 10 feet [three metres] long and a short stick, which he seemed to handle as if it was a machine to throw the lance," he wrote.
"Shaking their lances and menacing, [they] in all appearances resolved to dispute our landing to the utmost though they were two and we were 30 or 40 at least.
"They remained resolute so a musket was fired over them. .. A musket loaded with small shot was now fired at the eldest of the two [Cooman] ... It struck him on the legs but he minded it very little so another was immediately fired."
Cooman ran to his hut, about 100 metres away, and came back with the shield. The British, meanwhile, had come ashore.
"He immediately threw a lance at us and the young man another," Banks wrote. "Two more muskets with small shot were then fired at them on which the eldest threw one more lance and [they] then ran away.
Mr Kelly said although Cooman and his companion would have been very frightened, having never seen a European ship or encountered firearms before, they did their duty by their people bravely.
The Gweagle descendants had any legal grounds for their claim chopped out from under them by the then Labor government's passage of the Protection of Cultural Objects on Loan Act in 2013.
