Cambridge University has returned four Aboriginal spears that were brought to the United Kingdom when Captain James Cook and his crew first came into contact with an indigenous community in Sydney upon arriving in Australia in 1770.
The wooden spears, which have between one and four points, were returned to the Aboriginal community of Kamay (in the suburb of Botany Bay, south of Sydney) in an emotional ceremony held the day before at the Wren Library at Trinity College, Cambridge. , according to a statement from the Australian National Museum.
"Many of the families of the La Perouse Aboriginal community are descended from those who were present during the eight days that the Endeavor was anchored in Kamay in 1770," Noeleen Timbery, representative of the Local Council of La Perouse Aboriginal Land.
The so-called Gweagal spears, whose return to their traditional owners was agreed last year, were taken on April 29, 1770 by James Cook and Joseph Banks at the time of first contact between the crew of the HMB Endeavor and the indigenous people of Kamay. A year later, these spears were gifted by Lord Sandwich to Trinity College, Cambridge University, where he studied, shortly after the arrival in England of Cook and the crew who accompanied him aboard the ship Endeavor on his voyage across the Pacific.
These objects are the only remaining legacy of the 40 spears that Cook and his British soldiers looted in April 1770 from the camps of the Gweagal people of the Kamai community, which encompasses what is now known as the suburb of Botany Bay, in the southeast of Sydney, according to the National Museum of Australia.
The four spears were temporarily displayed at the National Museum in Canberra in 2015 and 2020 as part of two exhibitions about the encounter of Aboriginal people with colonizers and since then the institution has worked on the return of Aboriginal heritage to its traditional owners.
