Submitted by Paul Daley on
Australian authorities ask museum in Philadelphia to remove images of skull from website as Anzac’s identity believed to be confirmed
Australian authorities have intervened swiftly to have removed from public view the skull of an Australian Anzac soldier killed in action on the western front in 1917, whose head was removed after death and made into an American museum “specimen”.
Submitted by Paul Daley on
The skull of an Australian soldier who was killed 100 years ago this week is on display in an American museum. But who is he, and why is he there?
Australia likes to refer to its battlefield dead, especially in the first and second world wars, as “the fallen” whose bodies, if found, were “laid to rest” in picturesque, peaceful cemeteries of blonde statuary and rosemary bush.
Submitted by Paul Daley on
The National Museum, itself situated on an ancient corroboree ground, is telling an Indigenous story which words have failed
The shortcomings of the English language are never more apparent than when it is used to translate Indigenous Australian beliefs, customs and culture. So it follows that English-style museums – which is to say, most Australian ones – also often fall short.
Museums of bricks and mortar are largely antithetical to Aboriginal repositories of material and lived culture – community, country, story (in every form) and memory.