Ancient Nuclear Genomes Enable Repatriation of Indigenous Human Remains article

An interesting article (available here)

Ancient Nuclear Genomes Enable Repatriation of Indigenous Human Remains
(Joanne L. Wright, Sally Wasef, Tim H. Heupink, Michael C. Westaway, Simon Rasmussen,
Colin Pardoe, Gudju Gudju Fourmile, Michael Young, Trish Johnson, Joan Slade,
Roy Kennedy, Patsy Winch, Mary Pappin Sr, Tapij Wales, William “Badger” Bates,
Sharnie Hamilton, Neville Whyman, Sheila van Holst Pellekaan, Peter J. McAllister,
Paul S.C. Taçon, Darren Curnoe, Ruiqiang Li, Craig Millar, Sankar Subramanian,
Eske Willerslev, Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, Martin Sikora, David M. Lambert)
Science Advances  19 Dec 2018:
Vol. 4, no. 12, eaau5064
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aau5064

Abstract
"After European colonization, the ancestral remains of Indigenous people were often collected for scientific research or display in museum collections. For many decades, Indigenous people, including Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians, have fought for their return. However, many of these remains have no recorded provenance, making their repatriation very difficult or impossible. To determine whether DNA-based methods could resolve this important problem, we sequenced 10 nuclear genomes and 27 mitogenomes from ancient pre-European Aboriginal Australians (up to 1540 years before the present) of known provenance and compared them to 100 high-coverage contemporary Aboriginal Australian genomes, also of known provenance. We report substantial ancient population structure showing strong genetic affinities between ancient and contemporary Aboriginal Australian individuals from the same geographic location. Our findings demonstrate the feasibility of successfully identifying the origins of unprovenanced ancestral remains using genomic methods."

Tingha Cemetery Burials and the AUS-KOORI Mailing List

Back in November 2003 I added the following entry to correspondence referring to Tingha burials on the AUS-KOORI mailing list

"Tingha Cemetery Burials by Paul Mackett
Burials at the Tingha Cemetery, New South Wales are listed at the following site
http://guyra.local-e.nsw.gov.au/community/13/1037158961_23481.html
 
Some or all of the following are recorded for each burial Section, Row, Lot, Surname, Christian Name, Age,  Burial Number, Date of Death. The date range is approximately
1886 to 1999.
 
There are 1537 burials recorded as follows

Section , My interpretation , Graves
 
Ang/SA , Anglican/Salvation Army , 340
Old Ang, Old Anglican , 155
Cath , Catholic , 108
Old Cath , Old Catholic , 70
Uniting , Uniting  , 47
New Gen , New General , 227
O Abor , Old Aboriginal , 171
N Abor ,  New Aboriginal , 90
Unsect ,  , 328
No Section ,  , 1

The document can be downloaded from the above site as a Word document."

As this URL no longer exists you can access the document here .

Ngajurlangu - 'Me Too'

An interesting article titled "Ngajurlangu - 'Me Too'" by Jacinta Nampijinpa Price appeared in the Summer 2018 edition of Meanjin. An edited version appeared in the Weekend Australian dated December 1-2, 2018.