A First Nations community has been left in distress after their ancestors’ human remains and other historical artefacts were removed from a burial site because of a housing development in Adelaide. Their concerns come as several other sacred Aboriginal sites have been desecrated across Australia.
The Gawler River in the north of Adelaide was said to be “a native burying place” of the Kaurna people by coloniser-slash-explorer Captain Charles Stuart in an 1839 expedition of South Australia.
Almost two centuries later, in April this year, the burial site — which is in modern day Riverlea Park (previously called Buckland Park) — was found by Walker Buckland Park Developments. By then, the corporation was two years into its $3 billion housing development plan.
The plan involves the building of at least 12,000 homes over the next two decades, according to Guardian Australia, with some homes already built and housing residents.
When the remains and artefacts were first found, work was stopped and local native title group Kaurna Yerta Aboriginal Corporation was called in to relocate them.
The remains were exhumed and stored in a shipping container on-site until a decision on where to bury them is reached, and the whole ordeal has greatly distressed the local community who want their ancestors left to rest in peace.
“The community’s preferred position was that the ancestors remain in their burial ground and not be removed from Riverlea,” KYAC chairperson and Kaurna Elder Tim Agius said in October.
“However, under the circumstances and with the support of Kaurna Elders, we have made the difficult decision to respectfully exhume the remains to ensure their protection.”
Since then, Agius has expressed concern that while building developments continue to spread, so will the threat to historic Indigenous sites.
“The community are upset. This is something that’s been imposed on us because of colonisation on Kaurna land,” he said.
“Riverlea is not going to be the last. This will happen again.”
Kaurna actor and activist Natasha Wanganeen called for the remains to be reburied where they were found and development stopped. She even held a rally in October to protest the removal.
“We’ve cared for this place for hundreds of thousands of years,” she said at the time, per SBS News.
“It is so heartbreaking to watch this go down, to be here alive today to watch the rest of my culture destroyed by these developers and the people that are supporting that.”
She suggested the site was one of a massacre, though SA Premier Peter Malinauskas has since disputed this and asserted that archeologists believe the burials took place before colonisation.
“Apparently, the way that the burial has taken place is consistent with practices well before colonial times,” he said.
“But that does not change the fact that there is a degree of significance to the burial site.”
Kaurna man and former state director of Aboriginal affairs Ian Carter has also aired his doubts about the site’s precolonial history.
“We don’t bury them like that. As far as I know, we don’t have group burials like a cemetery,” he told the Advertiser.
Wanganeen is organising a petition to have the ancestors returned to where they were buried, and in the meantime wants an investigation into the burial and whether or not the remains are the result of a massacre.
Construction is currently paused given the area is now an Aboriginal heritage site, but The Walker Corporation has applied to the state government for authorisation to continue its development.
Image: Walker Corporation
