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Inishbofin Islanders demand repatriation of remains held in TCD

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on November 19, 2022 – 9:01 am
Filed under Advocacy and Activism, Public Engagement

As of Friday last (November 18, 2022) 150 members of the Inishbofin community had signed a petition demanding the repatriation of the remains of thirteen islanders stolen from the burial ground on the island in 1890 and placed in a collection of anthropological specimens in the Anatomy Museum in TCD, where they remain in their original display cases.

Marie Coyne, Director of Inishbofin Heritage launched a repatriation campaign ten years ago after reading about the theft in an exhibition of ethnographic photographs held by TCD. In 2020, Coyne co-signed a letter to Paddy Prendergast, Provost of TCD, seeking the repatriation of the remains after he announced plans to ‘decolonise’ the college campus. Prendergast agreed that the remains should be returned but the college did a U-turn after a committee tasked with the redevelopment of the Anatomy Museum objected.

Behind the scenes negotiations continued, but little progress was made and in August 2022 a spokesperson for the “Old’ Anatomy Working Group confirmed that TCD School of Medicine was is ‘not in a position to support a request for deaccession of the crania and transfer to the possession of private individuals or historical interest groups’.

Two weeks later, community representatives and repatriation campaigners attended a meeting Provost Linda Doyle organised with members of the colonial legacies team and a decision on repatriation seemed imminent. It never happened and sources in TCD confirmed that Council of the university agreed with the School of Medicine.

TCD sent a delegation to the island in November for a public meeting with the community. The delegates outlined how the college intended to process the claim as part of the Trinity Colonial Legacies project and asked for the community to engage with the process. The community responded with a unanimous show of hands demanding the repatriation of the remains held by TCD and this was repeated as an emphatic mandate when the delegation refused to engage with proposals from the floor.

26 people attended that meeting although many more islanders could not be present because of a funeral and the timing of the meeting. It was decided to confirm the show of hands with a petition of the full community and the petition will be sent to TCD early next week. In the meantime, the Trinity Colonial Legacies project is finalising a process of public consultation and evidence gathering that it hopes will persuade the Board of the college to support the repatriation process in the face of continued opposition from the School of Medicine, even though they accept that they are asking the community to jump through hoops.

circle of texture grey back ground with the words www.curator.ie embossed on it. designed by Ciarán n Walsh

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“Head-hunting” in TCD: negotiations begin on the repatriation of the Haddon Dixon Collection.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on September 6, 2022 – 9:31 am
Filed under Curatorial Projects, Public Engagement
Group photograph showing PatO'Leary, St Finian's Bay, Cathy Galvin, journalist and poet, Pegi Vail, anthropologist at NYU, Ciarán Walsh, curator.ie, the main square in Trinity College Dublin ahead of a meeting with Provost Linda Doyle to negotiate the return and burial of the Haddon Dixon Collection, a collection of skulls stolen from community burial grounds in the west of Ireland in 1890 and held in the "Old" Anatomy Museum in the University.

The Haddon Dixon Repatriation delegation gathers in TCD ahead of a meeting with Provost Linda Doyle and her colonial legacies team. L-R: Pat O’Leary, St Finian’s Bay community representative, Cathy Galvin, journalist and poet, Pegi Vail anthropologist and film maker at New York University, and Ciarán Walsh, curator.ie.

A delegation from the Haddon Dixon Repatriation Project (above) met with Provost Linda Doyle’s colonial legacy team to begin negotiations on the return and burial of the Haddon Dixon Collection, a collection of 24 skulls stolen from community burial grounds in the west of Ireland in 1890 and currently held in the “Old” Anatomy Museum in the University.

Pat O’Leary opened the meeting by presenting the community perspective on the repatriation claim. Cathy Galvin read a statement on behalf on Marie Coyne, Inishbofin Heritage Museum, who initiated the claim in 2012. A large contingent of community representatives attended via zoom. Eoin O’Sullivan, Senior Dean in the School of Social Work and Social Policy, and Ciarán O’Neill, Ussher Associate Professor in Nineteenth-Century History, responded and the discussion that followed marked the commencement of a public engagement process that will inform a decision on the repatriation claim, which is expected in December 2022.

Photograph showing a sign that reads "Inishbofin, Haddon & Dixon." Visible in the background are a series of skull wrapped in plastic and stored on shelves in a glass-fronted cabinet, one of the display cases in the "Old " Anatomy Museum in Trinity College Dublin.

Decolonising public spaces in Ireland: a practical contribution

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on April 15, 2021 – 1:21 pm
Filed under Anthropology | Curatorial Projects

Ciarán Walsh’s latest post on RTÉ Brainstorm (14|04|2021) summarises a long campaign to repatriate 24 skulls stolen in 1890 from burial grounds in the west of Ireland by agents of the Anthropological Laboratory in Trinity College, Dublin.

Read: The case of the missing skulls from Inishbofin


The colonial legacies of universities and museums have become an issue, especially culturally sensitive material like human remains in anthropological collections that were tainted by colonial violence and scientific racism.


www.rte.ie

Skeletons in the cupboard: anthropology and the diversity debate

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on November 24, 2020 – 7:24 pm
Filed under Curatorial Projects
https://www.tcd.ie/library/berkeley/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/cropped-P7015055.jpg

Cultural diversity in universities has been pushed to the top of the agenda by the Black Lives Matter movement and TCD has taken the its first steps towards a decolonised campus … maybe.

College authorities are considering renaming the Berkeley Library because Berkeley was a slaver: he enslaved four people on his plantation in Rhode Islands in the 1700s. Decolonising the campus will involve more than renaming a building or two. It may involve dismantling the Anthropological Collection in the ‘Old’ Anatomy Museum in line with international calls for the decolonisation of museums that hold culturally sensitive material.

Alfred Cort Haddon and Andrew Francis Dixon stole thirteen crania from a burial ground on Inishbofin Islands and TCD acquired the skulls in 1892.

The Anthropological Collection in TCD holds 24 crania stolen from burial grounds in the west of Ireland in 1890, making it one of the most culturally sensitive collection in the context of calls for western museums “to return objects looted in the violent days of empire.” (The Guardian).

Watch this space!

Is this the most important photographic archive in Ireland? www.curator.ie launches the ‘Irish Headhunter Project,’ May 2012.

Comments Off on Is this the most important photographic archive in Ireland? www.curator.ie launches the ‘Irish Headhunter Project,’ May 2012.
Posted by Ciaran Walsh on April 25, 2012 – 10:51 am
Filed under Art, Exhibition, Heritage

Ciarán Walsh, www.curator.ie, launches the 'Irish Headhunter Project,' May 2012, the most important photographic archive to come into the public domain in Ireland in a long time. Co-curator Dáithí de Mórdha. In association with Trinity College Dublin, The Blasket Centre, Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhóir, Justin Carville, Ciarán Rooney and Séamas Mac Philib, The National Museum of Ireland - Country Life. Supported by the Office of Public Works and the Heritage Council.

 © The Board of Trinity College Dublin

 

www.curator.iepresents the ‘Irish Headhunter Project,’ an exhibition by Ciarán Walsh and Dáithí de Mórdha

 

in association with

Trinity College Dublin, The Royal Irish Academy, Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhóir / The Blasket Centre,  Mairéad Ní Ghallchóir (Áras Éanna, Inis Oírr, Árann), Jane Maxwell (TCD), Tim Keefe (TCD), Justin Carville (IADT Dún Laoghaire), Ciarán Rooney (FILMBANK Colour Management) and Séamas Mac Philib, The National Museum of Ireland – Country Life.

Funded by the Office of Public Works (OPW) and The Heritage Council.

 

 

Ciarán Walsh, www.curator.ie, launches the 'Irish Headhunter Project,' May 2012, the most important photographic archive to come into the public domain in Ireland in a long time. In association with Trinity College Dublin, The Blasket Centre, Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhóir, Justin Carville, Ciarán Rooney and Séamas Mac Philib, The National Museum of Ireland - Country Life. Supported by the Office of Public Works and the Heritage Council.

 

 

Introducing

Charles R. Browne, the Irish ‘Headhunter’

 

How did one explain the presence of a primitive (white) race living in the back yard of the United Kingdom – at the height of the British Empire? Scientists based in Trinity College Dublin attempted to do just that by documenting the physical characteristics and habits of  communities in the remotest parts of Ireland. Starting in Aran in 1891, they moved along the west coast and finished up in Carna in 1900. The whole thing was recorded by Charles R. Browne and his associates on a new generation of portable cameras using plates and rolled film, the latest in photographic technology at the time. They took more than photos however, they were the Irish ‘headhunters.’

Alive or dead the head of the Irish native was at the centre of all of their research, cranial capacity (brain size) and physiognomy being regarded as the key to unlocking the mystery of the origins of the Irish race. Specimens – the skulls of dead islanders – were collected and lodged in the Museum of Comparative Anatomy in TCD. Live heads were also taken … with a camera. These anthropometric portraits were contextualised with photographs of “the occupations, modes of transport, and habitations of the people, also several of the antiquities of the district, and a set of views showing surface of land and nature of coastline, etc.”

‘Charles R. Browne The Irish Headhunter’ exhibition will present in exhibition, for the first time ever, the photographs collected by Charles R. Browne. These are held in the Research Collection and Manuscripts Library of Trinity College Dublin. They have been scanned and reproduced especially for this exhibition and it is the first time most of them will have been seen in public.

This is probably the most important photographic archive to come into the public domain. It is supported by written reports – ethnographies – that are held in the Royal Irish Academy. Browne’s archive is singular in terms of its depiction of life on the west coast of Ireland in the 1890s. The anthropological inquiry – and the headhunting – that motivated it is one of the best kept secrets in Ireland.

Information: Ciarán Walsh +353(0)872370846.

 

 

Ciarán Walsh, www.curator.ie,Philip Lavelle, 1894, a photograph from the Irish Headhunter Exhibition, curated by Ciaran Walsh." The Irish Headhunter project is an exhibition of photographs collected by Charles R. Browne between 1891 and 1900. They are held in the Research Collections and Manuscripts library in Trinity College Dublin.It is presented in association with Trinity College Dublin, The Blasket Centre, Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhóir, Justin Carville, Ciarán Rooney and Séamas Mac Philib, The National Museum of Ireland - Country Life. Supported by the Office of Public Works and the Heritage Council.

meet the Irish Headhunters

 

The photographs are reproduced with the permission of the Board of Trinity College Dublin.

The Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy are published with the permission of the Royal Irish Academy ©RIA.

 

The ‘Headhunter’ project has been made possible with financial support of  the

Office of Public Works (OPW) and

The Heritage Council (Education and Outreach Grants 2012).

 

Ciarán Walsh, www.curator.ie, launches the 'Irish Headhunter Project,' May 2012, the most important photographic archive to come into the public domain in Ireland in a long time. In association with Trinity College Dublin, The Blasket Centre, Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhóir, Justin Carville, Ciarán Rooney and Séamas Mac Philib, The National Museum of Ireland - Country Life. Supported by the Office of Public Works and the Heritage Council.


 

 

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    • Blogging resumes on Ballymaclinton: An Irish giant, 24 stolen skulls, one colonial legacies project and a slave owner named Berkeley.
    • Is the TCD statement on the stolen skulls of Inishbofin a missed opportunity?
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Latest News



Blogging resumes on Ballymaclinton: An Irish giant, 24 stolen skulls, one colonial legacies project and a slave owner named Berkeley.



Is the TCD statement on the stolen skulls of Inishbofin a missed opportunity?



Inishbofin Islanders demand repatriation of remains held in TCD



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