The Australian city of Hobart voted Monday evening August 15 to remove a 132-year-old statue commemorating a politician who stole the skull of an Aborigine from a morgue.
Hobart Mayor Anna Reynolds said it was "
part of the truth process
" about the history of Tasmania, a state where the Aboriginal population was decimated by disease and violence after Europeans settled.
The City Council has spoken out for the removal of the statue of William Crowther, ruler of Tasmania in the late 1870s. A surgeon by trade, Crowther in 1869 mutilated the body of a deceased Aborigine, William '
King Billy
Lanne, removing his skull and replacing it with another person's.
The theft took place as part of a dispute between two scientific societies, who both wanted to claim the right to study the remains of Lanne, considered at the time to be the last Tasmanian Aborigine.
The theft was committed in the context of a dispute between two scientific societies, which both claimed the right to study the remains of Lanne, considered at the time to be the last Aborigine of Tasmania.
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The offense outraged many at the time and prompted new laws requiring family consent before any medical experimentation.
But less than ten years later, William Crowther was elected premier.
Anna Reynolds believes that the decision to unbolt the statue of the surgeon aims to not give importance "
to this person, who is a symbol of racism and this science of racial classification
".
“
This unfortunate rhetoric about erasing history is truly extreme
,” she lamented in an ABC radio interview.
A new work will be commissioned to replace the statue, which will be kept, said the city councilor.
“
She will not be torn down, she will be treated with respect
“, she assured.
Prior to this debunking, the Museum of Tasmania apologized to the state's Aboriginal people for its role in the exhumation and desecration of indigenous remains, primarily to serve the now discredited racial sciences.
Until 1947, the museum publicly displayed the remains of Lanne's wife, Truganini, expressly against her last wishes.
