WHAT KURIL DHAGUN MEANS.

In the Yuggera language of south-east Queensland, the word kuril refers to a small native marsupial associated with Kurilpa Point — the tongue of land at the confluence of the Brisbane and Meander valleys where the river bends westward beneath the Story Bridge’s shadow. Dhagun means earth, place, or country. Together, the phrase translates roughly as “kuril’s place”: a name that carries within it the idea that every piece of ground belongs to something, has a relationship, holds a story older than the institutions that have since been built upon it.

The name comes from the Yuggera language: ‘kuril’ refers to a native marsupial near Kurilpa Point, and ‘dhagun’ means earth, place, or country — together meaning ‘kuril’s place’. The State Library of Queensland borrowed this name for its own First Nations cultural space, opened in 2006, as an act of linguistic acknowledgement. But the concept it carries — of belonging, of objects that are part of a place, of knowledge that inheres in country — applies far more broadly than any single institution. It applies, in particular, to the collections held by Queensland’s oldest university.

The University of Queensland was established in 1909, at a moment when the systematic collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural objects by universities, museums and private individuals was widespread, often coercive, and rarely questioned by the collecting institutions themselves. Over the following decades, the university accumulated — through expeditions, gifts, fieldwork, and transactions that ranged from the consensual to the deeply troubling — a substantial holding of First Nations material culture. That collection now sits within its Anthropology Museum on the St Lucia campus, one of the most significant ethnographic holdings attached to any Australian university.

The question this article concerns itself with is not how the collection was built. It is what an institution does with that inheritance now — and what the act of return, incomplete and imperfect as it necessarily remains, says about the relationship between a major Queensland university and the communities whose cultural patrimony it holds.

THE COLLECTION AND ITS ORIGINS.

The UQ Anthropology Museum houses an astonishing collection of over 25,000 objects. These are not decorative items or curiosities in the Victorian sense. They are, properly understood, evidence of human thought, ceremony, social organisation, and ecological knowledge accumulated over tens of thousands of years. The collection includes material from across the continent and from the Pacific, built substantially through the fieldwork of university anthropologists in the mid-twentieth century, through the activities of missionaries and colonial administrators who donated items to the institution, and through a broader culture of acquisition that treated Indigenous material culture as data to be studied rather than heritage to be respected.

The Anthropology Museum’s early collections largely came from ethnographic expeditions and field research conducted by university academics, particularly in the Pacific region, as well as gifts from missionaries and colonial administrators. This was not unusual for Australian universities of that era. What distinguished UQ’s collection, over time, was its depth in Queensland material specifically — objects from communities along the Cape York Peninsula, the Gulf Country, the Torres Strait, and the river systems of south-east Queensland. Among the oldest items in the Australian holdings are wood carvings made by Wik peoples from Aurukun in Far North Queensland.

Among the oldest items are wood carvings made by Wik peoples from Aurukun in Far North Queensland, collected in the 1950s. While the makers are unrecorded, the works include representations of animals such as stingray, sea eagle, crow, bonefish and dingo. These pieces are early examples from the Aurukun carving movement, which evolved from traditional clay and pottery practices. The fact that the makers remain unrecorded is itself a document of the era’s collecting ethics: objects were acquired; the people who made them were not always considered worth naming.

Understanding how the collection was assembled requires confronting the specific history of Queensland, a colony and then a state whose relationship with its First Peoples was among the most coercive in the Australian federation. The Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 gave the Queensland government sweeping powers over Aboriginal lives, including control of wages, movement and, effectively, property. In this environment, the “collection” of cultural objects was never simply a neutral scholarly activity. It occurred within a system of imposed authority that made genuine consent almost impossible.

THE ETHICS OF CUSTODIANSHIP.

In modern times, the ethical considerations surrounding acquisition are paramount, especially for cultural heritage objects. The UQ Anthropology Museum is a leader in this area, adhering strictly to international and national guidelines for ethical collecting. This includes comprehensive provenance research to understand the full history of an object’s acquisition, ensuring that items were obtained legally and ethically.

But provenance research, however diligent, runs into the limits of the historical record. Many of the objects in Queensland’s institutional collections arrived without documentation adequate to trace their origins. The absence of written records is itself a consequence of the collecting culture: when institutions did not consider it necessary to record the circumstances of acquisition, they left future curators and communities with little to work from. The question of what an institution owes in the absence of clear provenance is, for this reason, among the most difficult in contemporary museology.

The University of Queensland recognises the value and the importance of preserving, revitalising, and strengthening Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, including the continued promotion and practice of cultural heritage matters. The University also acknowledges that Indigenous people are the Traditional Owners of their Ancestral Remains and cultural heritage and that the historic removal of remains and objects by universities, museums, and private collectors, particularly in instances of theft or coercion, was culturally inappropriate and part of a larger narrative of dispossession and injustice.

That acknowledgement, contained in UQ’s formal policy on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ancestral Remains and Significant Cultural Objects, represents a significant institutional statement. It is worth pausing on it. The university is not equivocating: it names theft, it names coercion, it places the removal of objects within a larger narrative of dispossession. This is not merely legal language. It is a reckoning, written into the governance of a research institution, with a history that universities spent most of the twentieth century declining to examine.

As an act of restorative justice, repatriation of Indigenous Ancestral Remains and significant cultural objects contributes to healing and promotes more dignified relations between Indigenous communities and collecting and research institutions. That framing — repatriation as restorative justice — is significant. It positions the return of objects not as a discretionary generosity on the part of the institution, but as a form of redress: an act that belongs to the language of rights and remedy rather than to the language of institutional benevolence.

WHAT REPATRIATION REQUIRES.

Repatriation is not a single event. It is a process, and in many cases a decades-long one, that involves identifying what is held, establishing provenance, consulting with communities, navigating competing claims, and then managing the physical return of material in ways that are culturally appropriate. In practice, this means that the return of a single shield, or a set of ceremonial objects, or — most gravely — the ancestral remains of an individual, may require years of careful, relationship-based work before the physical transfer can take place.

The care, handling, and possible repatriation of Indigenous Ancestral Remains and significant cultural objects will be undertaken in ways that are compatible with relevant Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander traditions, customs, and ceremonies. This includes gender specific traditions, customs, and ceremonies where these traditions, customs and ceremonies are known, can be ascertained, or have been advised by the relevant Traditional Owners.

The legislative framework in Queensland provides a foundation for this work. The University will take reasonable steps to transfer applicable Indigenous Ancestral Remains and significant cultural objects as soon as practicable to Traditional Owners or the State as appropriate under sections 17(2) and 19(2) of the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (Qld) and the Torres Strait Islander Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (Qld) and in consideration of any advice from the appropriate Australian government agency and relevant Indigenous communities. These Acts, passed in 2003, marked a significant moment in Queensland’s legal relationship with its First Peoples: they formally recognised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ownership and custodianship over ancestral remains and secret sacred material.

The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 and the Torres Strait Islander Cultural Heritage Act 2003 provided the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ownership and custodianship over their Ancestors and Secret Sacred Material. For collecting institutions, the passage of this legislation created formal legal obligations where previously only ethical and relational ones had existed. The university’s repatriation policy sits within this legal framework, but its ambitions extend beyond mere compliance.

The harder challenge is in the details. Between 1870 and 1970 the remains of many beloved and respected Ancestors were collected, not only by Queensland Museum but other institutions and individuals as well. It was not only Ancestral Remains that were collected; Burial Goods and Secret and/or Sacred Objects were also taken and were often used for scientific study — a practice that, by any contemporary ethical standard, constitutes a profound violation of the dignity of the dead and the cultures of the living. The work of identifying and returning these remains, often from multiple institutions across multiple countries, is painstaking and emotionally significant for communities still awaiting the return of their ancestors.

THE ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM AND LIVING CULTURES.

What the UQ Anthropology Museum has also done, in recent years, is to move beyond the static model of the ethnographic collection — objects behind glass, labelled and fixed — toward something more dynamic: an institution that engages with the communities whose cultures are represented within its walls, and that understands the collection as a living relationship rather than a closed archive.

At the University of Queensland’s Anthropology Museum, the theme of reconciliation is explored through exhibitions that draw on the collection’s deep holdings. The museum’s 2025 Reconciliation Week exhibition, titled ‘Stories through time: Living cultures, enduring connections,’ is one example of this orientation. The exhibition highlights how generations of Indigenous Australian and Pacific peoples have preserved cultural practices through objects, stories and relationships.

As an integral part of UQ’s School of Social Science, the museum actively supports anthropological research, providing scholars with direct access to material culture for detailed study and analysis. In recent decades, the museum has emerged as a leader in ethical museum practice, particularly regarding Indigenous collections, repatriation, and collaborative curation.

The concept of collaborative curation matters here. It represents a departure from the model in which university experts interpret objects for a general audience, toward a model in which community members are involved in determining how their cultural heritage is represented, who can access it, and under what conditions. On the role of museums in reconciliation, one Ngugi museum aide said change must be led by institutions themselves: “I definitely think that reconciliation itself is in the hands of the institutions and for white people to do better. Being able to come in, interact, repatriate and even reclaim things — it’s definitely in the hands of institutions to be at the forefront of that.”

The point is worth dwelling on. It places the responsibility for change squarely within the institution, not in some diffuse social process or gradual cultural shift. Museums — and universities — have the agency to act. The question is whether their internal cultures, their governance structures, and the commitments of their leadership are equal to the task.

LIBRARY, LANGUAGE AND THE BROADER COLLECTION.

The Anthropology Museum is not the only part of UQ that holds First Nations heritage material. The university’s library system — particularly its Fryer Library — is the custodian of significant primary source collections bearing on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge, history and culture.

The UQ Library is privileged to be custodians of primary source materials containing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges and languages. These special collections are utilised for teaching via object-based learning classes. This teaching function — bringing students into direct contact with original material — is one way in which the collection serves a living educational purpose. But it also raises questions about how access is governed, whose protocols determine who may handle or view particular items, and how the cultural load on Indigenous staff and community members is managed when their knowledge is called upon to contextualise material that was never meant to be held in university archives.

The special collections are utilised for teaching via object-based learning classes within the Fryer Library. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services and collections team, special collections librarians and academics work together to provide a multisensory learning experience for students. In doing so, cultural collections are explored to expand knowledge and understanding of Indigenous knowledges and perspectives within a safe and welcoming learning environment.

Language, too, is part of the collection. UQ has in recent years positioned itself as an institution that takes Indigenous language revitalisation seriously — bringing a new discipline of Indigenous Language Revitalisation into the University, the first such program in an Australian university. The new Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Language Revitalisation program was developed by an Indigenous-led team at The University of Queensland, and the first student intake commenced in Semester 2, 2024. Languages are, in a real sense, the most intimate form of cultural heritage — and their revitalisation, like the repatriation of objects, involves returning something that was suppressed or lost during the colonial period back to the communities to whom it belongs.

With the Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022–2032) underway, community-led Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages revival and revitalisation projects can be found across Queensland and nationally. UQ’s program sits within this national and international movement, and draws on the archival and collection holdings within its own library to support the work of language revival.

INSTITUTIONAL COMMITMENT AND ITS LIMITS.

Any honest account of UQ’s relationship with First Nations heritage must also acknowledge the limits of what institutional goodwill and formal policy can achieve. Universities are not neutral. They are embedded in the same settler-colonial society that created the conditions under which cultural objects were taken in the first place. Their funding structures, their governance, their physical presence on country — all of these reflect a history that cannot be resolved simply by repatriation programs and reconciliation action plans, however sincerely pursued.

UQ’s Indigenous engagement work is underpinned by a recognition of the enormous contributions that Indigenous peoples and perspectives bring to universities and an understanding of the transformative power of higher education for individuals and communities. This work encompasses all of the University’s operations — teaching and learning, research, engagement and enrichment, and its physical and operating environments.

UQ launched its initial Reconciliation Action Plan in 2019, which helped develop relationships with stakeholders and pilot strategies for achieving its commitments. In 2024, it launched a new ‘Stretch’ RAP to expand and develop those initiatives. The university hopes to enable Indigenous excellence by crafting strategies that last and introducing performance indicators that matter, including Indigenous employment, research, procurement, cultural education, Indigenising the curriculum, and RAP governance.

A Reconciliation Action Plan is a framework, not a settlement. It establishes commitments and accountability mechanisms, but it does not resolve the underlying questions of sovereignty, custodianship, or the relationship between a powerful research institution and the communities it claims to serve. The value of such a plan lies in whether it is treated as a living document — one that evolves as relationships deepen, as repatriations are completed, as community voices gain weight within institutional decision-making — or whether it becomes a form of managed legitimacy that allows the institution to claim progress without undergoing substantive change.

UQ, to its credit, has moved beyond merely acknowledging past wrongs toward articulating a formal ethical and legal framework for action. This policy articulates the University’s ethical and legal responsibilities for managing Indigenous Ancestral Remains and significant cultural objects. Where applicable and possible, the University supports the repatriation of Indigenous Ancestral Remains and significant cultural objects to communities with traditional and familial links to that heritage. That phrase — “where applicable and possible” — leaves room for ambiguity, and communities awaiting the return of objects or remains are right to watch how those words are interpreted in practice.

COUNTRY, PERMANENCE AND THE RECORD THAT ENDURES.

There is a thread that connects the Yuggera concept of dhagun — earth, place, country — with the work of institutional repatriation, and it is the thread of permanence. Cultural objects carry within them a relationship to a particular country. They were made in a place, by people of that place, and their meaning is inseparable from that origin. When they are removed, that relationship is severed — physically, even if not entirely in memory or spirit. When they are returned, something of that relationship is restored. Not perfectly. Not completely. But materially, and with meaning.

This is why the act of return is so much more than a bureaucratic transfer. First Nations Aboriginal Peoples and Torres Strait Islanders continue the process of requesting the return of their Ancestral Remains and associated material to their rightful home back on country. The language of “home” is precise here: these objects, and these remains, are understood not as property in the Western legal sense, but as kin — as entities with a country to which they belong.

The University of Queensland occupies a distinctive position in this landscape. It is Queensland’s oldest university, an institution founded at the beginning of the twentieth century in a moment of colonial confidence, and it has accumulated over that century a heritage collection that reflects all the contradictions of that era. It now operates under a formal commitment to repatriation, under Queensland and federal legislation that recognises Indigenous custodianship, and under a Reconciliation Action Plan that commits it to measurable progress. What it holds — in its Anthropology Museum, in its Fryer Library, in its archival collections — is part of the cultural patrimony of Queensland’s First Peoples, held in trust during a period of profound institutional reckoning.

For those seeking to understand where UQ stands in its relationship to First Nations communities, the collection is perhaps the most concrete available evidence. Objects do not lie. They carry their histories in their materials, their forms, their provenance — however imperfectly documented. And the decisions that institutions make about how to care for them, who to consult in doing so, and when to return what should never have been taken, are decisions that shape the character of those institutions in ways that no marketing document or strategic plan ever fully captures.

In the longer arc of Queensland’s civic identity — one that the onchain namespace uq.queensland is designed to anchor in permanent, verifiable form — the university’s relationship with First Nations heritage is not a footnote. It is a central chapter, and one still being written. The civic record of an institution includes not only its discoveries and its rankings and its architectural inheritance, but the choices it makes when history places difficult obligations in its hands.

The concept of kuril dhagun — of a place that belongs to something, of country as a living relationship rather than a neutral substrate — offers a useful lens for reading those choices. Every object in the UQ Anthropology Museum has a dhagun: a country, a community, a set of relationships that preceded its arrival in a university collection and that persist regardless of where it currently sits on a shelf. The work of repatriation is the work of recognising that relationship, and of acting upon it — not as a favour, but as an obligation that follows from the most basic acknowledgement of what those objects are.

That acknowledgement, once made formally and in writing, cannot easily be unmade. It becomes part of the institutional record — part of what the university means, and what it owes. In an era when civic institutions are seeking ways to make their commitments durable and legible across time, this form of institutional memory matters. uq.queensland exists, in that same spirit, as a permanent onchain record of UQ’s civic presence in Queensland: a layer of identity that does not expire, does not drift, and holds its reference point steady against the passage of time. The repatriation record, too, must be held that way — not as a policy that can be quietly wound back, but as a commitment embedded in the institution’s identity for as long as the institution endures.