The Antiquity of " Stolen Goods " !

The ownership of a bark shield on display in The British Museum raises an interesting question that goes back two hundred and forty nine years.   That was the time when the barque Endeavour was moored offshore from a New South Wales beach, and its captain - James Cook - came ashore accompanied by some of his officers and several armed Marines acting as bodyguards.

That must have been an interesting tableau.  They were confronted by several naked indigenous inhabitants of this new country who were armed with spears and shields.   The Englishmen wore colourful clothing that must have been totally confusing in this first confrontation between the new world and the old.

We can only guess how things developed where no common language existed to aid communications but we know that one of the Marines fired his musket and the musket ball pierced the shield of one of the natives.  This first experience of gunfire must have been frightening.  The native holding the shield was not injured, but he dropped it and fled.   It was picked up by an Englishman, taken back to the Endeavour and eventually found its way into a display case at the London museum.

Now a relative of the man who dropped that shield is in London and he is demanding that it be given back.  Rodney Kelly is a Dharawal and Yuin tribal man from New South Wales and he claims the shield belonged to " Cooman ", who was his great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather.

The British museum is not having sympathy with this claim that the shield is "stolen goods ".   The articles on display from the days when the British empire spread across the world are protected by British law and contains many items hotly disputed by the original colonies from which they were taken.

Similar claims were more successful when they involved the bones of native people put on display on the other side of the world from their home.  The remains of several Tasmanian native people were returned and given a proper burial in their tribal homelands but other specimens are still in dispute and involve claims from many world countries.

If nothing else, the statute of limitations must come into this claim for a stolen shield.   We can hardly expect the police to investigate a crime from two hundred and forty nine years ago and decide whether the owner abandoned it or whether it was seized illegally by intruders making an armed incursion.

That British arrival is termed an invasion by many indigenous people but it must be judged by the custom that was prevalent at that time.   The countries of Europe had advanced both the design of ships and the mastery of navigation to allow them to sail distant oceans and they claimed countries that they discovered.  The era of acquisition covered both north and south America, Africa and Australia and a lot of little islands in between.

We will probably still be arguing over who owns that shield another two hundred and forty nine years from now !