The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre has expressed outrage after ancestral remains were delivered to its office in brown paper bags. The incident has also drawn a strong reaction from the government, which stated it is "deeply disappointed" and is considering whether revisions are necessary to the coroners' rules to prevent such occurrences in the future.
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00:00Two years ago, a leg bone was found at a beach in Tasmania's southeast.
00:08Last week, it and other human remains were dropped off at the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre.
00:14A police officer had walked in off the street and handed over brown paper bags containing
00:19the remains of the bodies of our ancestors.
00:22Nala Mansell says there was no warning from the coroner's office about the delivery of
00:28the ancestral remains.
00:30This is our family members, so to have to go through that trauma of having the remains
00:37of someone, a relative, dropped off in a brown paper bag is just so disrespectful.
00:45The leg bone was found at Carlton Beach near Hobart in 2022.
00:50The other remains were found on Tasmania's remote west coast near Low Rocky Point in
00:552016.
00:57In his findings, the coroner says it was only through recent forensic testing and radiocarbon
01:02dating that it became clear they were Aboriginal remains, because the bones were more than
01:07a thousand years old.
01:10The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre says it should have been advised about the discoveries when
01:15the bones were first found.
01:17The Greens say the handling of the situation has been appalling.
01:21It is a stain on our government and the institutions of the government that an act like this would
01:28still occur today.
01:30The Tasmanian government says it's seeking advice about the appropriateness of existing
01:35provisions in the Coroner's Act.
01:37I've been deeply saddened to hear of the reports of how that situation was managed.
01:45I don't think any of us in our communities would find that in any way acceptable.
01:51Plans are now underway for a cultural burial of the ancestral remains.
01:56The coroner's office declined to comment.