When a landmark exhibition of Indigenous objects opened at the British Museum earlier in the year it was met by a small group of protesters calling for the items to be returned to Australia.
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But the opening of its sister exhibition Encounters went ahead without a fuss, at the National Museum of Australia on Thursday, despite the issue of repatriation hovering over the artefacts.
La Perouse community leader Shayne Williams said it was "too simplistic" to demand the objects' return while so many big questions remained unanswered, especially where they would be kept in Australia.
After growing up hearing stories of spears and a shield Captain Cook took from his ancestors when he arrived at Botany Bay, the Gweagal elder began making inquiries about the objects in 2002.
But repatriation was never his aim; he just wanted to see them on display.
While Williams said the objects' return needs to be discussed further, he believes the fragile organic objects from his people only exist today because they were kept in the controlled museum environments in the UK.
"You can't take these artefacts home and hang them on your wall … it's ludicrous to even think that way," he said.
"Do you set up local keeping places so artefacts can go back to where they originally came from?
"It's unlikely the Australian government would fund an enterprise like that because in an economic sense it's too unwieldly and costly."
But his view is at odds with other Aboriginal groups.
The Gweagal shield is one of the many British Museum objects in Encounters not seen in Australia since it was collected in 1770.
The show brings together 151 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander objects held in the UK along with 138 contemporary items – many specially commissioned for the exhibition.
Artist Judy Watson, from Waanyi country in north-west Queensland, said the objects should be returned but if the British Museum wants to keep them they should be paying "rent" which could be used to fund the creation of new work from the communities.
It was an idea suggested to her by a British woman when she gave a talk in the UK while making artwork in response to the museum's collection for Encounters' accompanying art exhibition Unsettled.
"Your curators are going to die, the elders in the community are going to die, but the objects live on and they are full of life and will continue to live and breathe with culture," she said.
"If there was a trickle even of money coming back from the British Museum to particular communities that could be a life thread … that way there is a meaningful exchange and it's not all about what was taken."
Watson said there needed to be more recognition about how the objects had entered the museum's collection.
"There's a quote missing from Encounters that was in the British Museum exhibition … it talks about how the rainforest shields had blood on them because they were picked up after a massacre," she said.
"Were they [the items] exchanged, bought, stolen? They're the sorts of things people should be asking.
"It is a very strong emotional thing to see objects that could have your ancestors' hair woven into it."
Encounters and Unsettled are on at the National Museum of Australia from November 27 to March 28.
