First Nations ancestors make journey home to Australia from Grassi Museum in Leipzig

The Grassi Museum in Leipzig returned the remains of six Aboriginal men and women held in the museum's collection at a ceremony on November 17.

Federal Member for Macquarie Susan Templeman represented the Australian Government at the ceremony in her role as Special Envoy for the Arts.

The Labor MP said the remains of many First Nations Australians were separated from their country and sent to museum collections overseas in the 19th and early 20th century.

The ancestors who were returned in November are from the Gannagal, Awabakal, Woromi and Mutthi Mutthi communities.

"We hope that in bringing these ancestors back to their Country to finally rest in peace, we also bring some peace to the soul of our nation," said Ms Templeman.

Kumarah Kelly, CEO of the Awabakal Aboriginal Land Council in the Hunter region in NSW, said taking part in the ceremony "was just incredible, indescribable really".

"I definitely didn't count on being as emotional and moved as I was... We were filled with so much emotion, from sorrow to a sense of joy that this was finally happening," she said.

Ms Kelly was tasked with returning a male ancestor from Newcastle, whose remains were sold to the museum in 1902.

"We don't have a lot of information about the remains but we do know that it's most likely he's a middle aged to elderly man," she said.

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Birgit Scheps-Bretschneider, Curator at the Grassi Museum, has been working on the repatriation process since 2015 when she became responsible for the anthropological collection of three ethnographic museums in Saxony.

She said the formal ceremony on November 17 was the culmination of careful process that involved meeting with the First Nations representatives privately and holding cleansing ceremonies in small groups.

"We wanted to restore dignity and respect to the ancestors whose remains had once been shipped to Europe. From the members of this [latest] delegation... we learned how to conduct the handover in a dignified and appropriate way."

The ceremony attracted widespread media coverage in Germany which Dr Scheps-Bretschneider hopes will provide the impetus for the repatriation of more First Nations ancestors.

"This has given new momentum to the discussion about more returns and the necessity of provenance research," she said.

"There are still more than 100 Australian ancestors in German collections and the echo of this return, with an honest 'sorry' from our Minister of Art and Tourism, will encourage the institutions to follow up."

Back in Australia, Kumarah Kelly said the process to find a final resting place for their Newcastle ancestor will now begin.

"It's up to us and our community... to find a protected keeping place so we can bring him home and re-bury him," she said.

Since 1990, more than 1,600 Indigenous ancestors have been returned to Australia.