Members of a remote Indigenous community have travelled to Europe to bring back dozens of sacred items sold to a German researcher more than 50 years ago. Stone knives, shields and spear throwers are among the objects that have been returned to representatives of the Warlpiri community of Yuendumu at a ceremony in Frankfurt.
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00:00In Australia's Red Centre, the remote town of Yundamu is 300 kilometres north of Alice
00:10Springs. Fifty years ago, a German researcher visited the community to capture Walpree culture
00:16on film and left with dozens of sacred items and cultural objects.
00:23It doesn't belong to everyone. It doesn't belong to anyone from that side of the place
00:29Half a century later, Jamie Hampton from the Walpree Project tracked the missing items
00:35to Frankfurt.
00:36Hey, is this Bernhoff speaking? Yes, this is Jamie.
00:40The late German researcher's son, who joined him on a visit to Yundamu, had them in his
00:45personal collection.
00:47Bernhoff remembers a lot of those conversations his father had with those elders and because
00:52of that he'd always wanted to eventually give these objects back to the community.
00:58That time has now come.
01:01It's been a long journey for the Walpree Project and it's good that we're going to bring our
01:12ancestors' objects back.
01:14We're doing it for our children, like our elders have done it for our generation.
01:21Now a team from the Walpree community are making the 14,000 kilometre journey to Germany
01:28to bring the sacred objects back home.
01:38Half a world away, here at Frankfurt's Senckenberg Museum, the long journey home for these sacred
01:43objects begins.
01:46The collection includes stone knives, spear throwers and shields.
01:56It's mixed emotions from being excited, emotional, feeling complete. They're not just objects,
02:06to us they're part of our ancestors, part of our DNA.
02:10The community will also be given around seven hours of video footage filmed in Yundamu in
02:15the 1970s.
02:18They mean much more to them than they do for me. When they reconnected to the objects,
02:26it was no question this had to be done and I'm happy we did it.
02:32For the Walpree community, these items don't just unlock a piece of history, they offer
02:38the opportunity for future generations to connect with their culture.
02:43It's not just for us, it's men, it's women, it's young people that are now saying, we've got to do more of this.
02:50The objects will be temporarily stored at the South Australian Museum until a cultural
02:55centre in Yundamu is finished. Once there, their journey home will be complete.