Should rare Australian Aboriginal artefacts held by the British Museum, and now exhibited in Canberra temporarily, be returned to their place of origin?
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The objects were collected during a painful, and for many people, shameful period between 1770 and the 1930s. Many of the 151 objects on display at the National Museum of Australia have not been seen since they were taken from Aborigines.
A conference beginning on Wednesday at the museum will lift the lid on many raw issues which have provoked vocal activists against colonial collections and caused stress for many other people, said organiser and Indigenous adviser at the museum Margo Neale.
"We are facing it head on," Ms Neale said
"This time the museums themselves are joining in the discussion, to try and work out together, what do we do about this? How can we join forces for ongoing obligations to this materials?" Ms Neale said.
The museum's former director Dawn Casey and speakers from the British Museum, United States, Canada, Scandinavia and New Zealand will debate the way ahead for Indigenous communities and museums holding colonial collections.
"It doesn't matter what side people come down on in this discussion, as long as it is presented with respect to engage others in a conversation," Ms Neale said.
A senior curator at the museum, Ms Neale said at times repatriation of artefacts did not mean the physical return of objects, nor did all Indigenous people want them returned.
"They want to have authority over material, and access, but are not necessarily in the position of caring for the material," Ms Neale said.
Keynote speaker Richard West, the founding director of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, will speak on the merits of repatriation of human remains.
He believes this has changed museums in America from the traditional temple on the hill into a forum for conversation, debate, and controversy.
"Speaking as a person whose own Southern Cheyenne community was deeply affected by repatriation and the return, in particular, of ancestral human remains, I can promise you that personally it was deeply, deeply affecting and profoundly reconciling," said Mr West.
"The wrenching inhumanity of having the remains of ancestors sitting for a century in a box on a museum shelf at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History finally ended."
Ms Neale said recognition is growing within Indigenous communities of the value of holding objects in a museum.
"Yes it is a sore point, that's why we want the sore points to be raised as well. Because sometimes whatever side of the fence you sit, sometimes people are not aware of a whole lot of facts that may be generated," she said.
