Stolen Tasmanian Aboriginal artefacts are finally home. But there’s a catch: they’re only on loan

Some of the Aboriginal cultural artefacts that have been returned temporarily from overseas museums and collections for the taypani milaythina-tu: Return to Country exhibition at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Photograph: Rosie Hastie

In 2014, pakana woman Zoe Rimmer left the British Museum in tears after viewing a 170-year-old kelp water carrier taken from lutruwita/Tasmania in their collection. As she cried, the seed of a big idea was planted: how could she get the rikawa, and other Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural artefacts sitting in institutions across the world, home?

“Seeing our ancestral belongings in a storage facility in the British Museum was quite emotional,” says Rimmer, who until recently was senior curator of First Peoples art and culture at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG).