The skeletal remains of more than 100 Moriori ancestors, the Indigenous people of Rēkohu – or the Chatham Islands – have been returned to the tribe from the UK, as part of the largest single repatriation of Moriori remains to date.
The ancestral remains, or karāpuna in Moriori dialect, were unceremoniously dug up by colonisers to be traded as curiosities and, for up to 100 years since, have sat in collections in London’s Natural History Museum and across Aotearoa New Zealand.
