Berghahn Books has just provided me with a typeset copy of my book on Haddon, which is due out in September as the fifth volume in the series on Anthropology’s Ancestors edited by Aleksandar Bošković. Details are available on the Berghahn website, and I discuss the choice of title and other aspects of this project in my Ballymaclinton blog.
Inishbofin community representatives and repatriation campaigners met with Eoin O’Sullivan and Ciarán O’Neill of TCD last night (28 March 2023), and agreed in outline arrangements for the return and burial of ancestral remains held in the Haddon Dixon Collection; in accordance with island traditions and community archaeology guidelines.
The remains will be handed over to the community at a ceremony in TCD and taken by an undertaker to Galway before being transferred by boat to the island, where they will be buried on Sunday 16 July 2023, one hundred and thirty three years to the day after they were taken.
It seems that this will serve as a model for the return and burial of the remains taken from St Finian’s Bay and Oileán Árann.
It’s been a long and, at times, difficult process, but the motto of the cooperative movement in Ireland is ní neart go cur le chéile (with unity comes strength) and we thank all of our supporters. This would not have happened without them.
We also thank Andrew O’Connell of the Provost’s Office in TCD. His intervention was a turning point in our negotiations with TCD. We especially thank Eoin O’Sullivan and Ciarán O’Neill, who got the deal across the line. Also, thanks to Mobeen Hussain and Patrick Walsh of the colonial legacies project TCD.
Marie Coyne and Ciarán Walsh
on behalf of the
The Haddon Dixon Repatriation Project
Marie Coyne, Inishbofin Heritage Museum.
Dr Pegi Vail, NYU, anthropologist, filmmaker, and community representative Inishbofin.
Cathy Galvin, poet and journalist.
Deirdre Casey, Comhlacht Forbartha an Gleanna (St Finian’s / the Glen).
Niamh Cotter, anthropologist, geographer, and community representative, Inis Mór, Árann.
René Gapert, independent forensic anthropologist.
Dr Fiona Murphy, Anthropologist.
Máirtín Ó Conceanainn, community representative, Inis Mór, Árann.
Pádraig Ó Direáin, community representative, Inis Mór, Árann.
Pat O’Leary, Comhlacht Forbartha an Gleanna (St Finian’s / the Glen).
Ciarán Walsh, curator and anthropologist.
Inishbofin Community and Friends
Inishbofin Development Company
Tuuli Rantala, Community development Co-Ordinator
Tommy Burke
Ryan Lash
Pauline King
Aoife King
Every person who attended the public meeting on Inishbofin on 4 November 2022, those who signed the petition on Inishbofin and online, and made submissions to TCD on our behalf.
Eamon Ó Cuiv TD
Deaglán O’Mocháin, Dearcán Media.
Ana Ivasiuc, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures.
All the journalists who covered the story in the media.
Teampall Cholmain 2023 – 1890
A composite photograph of St Colman’s Monastery, showing Marie Coyne’s 2014 recreation (left) of the photograph of A. C. Haddon’s original (right), recording the location of the skulls (bottom right corner) he and Dixon stole under cover of darkness on 16 July 1890. Haddon also recorded the scene in an identical sketch in his journal, and that sketch illustrates a vivid account of the theft.
Marie Coyne, 2022, St Colman’s Monastery and burial ground.
It is expected that the board of TCD will decide today (22 February 2023) to return to Inishbofin the ancestral remains Haddon and Dixon stole in 1890.
We were unable to achieve the return of the Árann and St Finian Bay remains as part of this deal, but there is now a procedure in place in TCD to submit claims in respect of these remains:
It should also be stressed that this document focuses specifically on the Inishbofin case though it has potential relevance for future requests from other communities of origin in Ireland seeking the return and reburial of other human remains in the Haddon/Dixon collection including those collected from Finian’s Bay, Co. Kerry and the Aran Islands as well as other human remains’ collections at TCD.
It’s been a long campaign (link to AJEC blog) that is now drawing to a close, and, on behalf of everyone involved, I thank you for all your support and work.
I suspended work on my Ballymaclinton blog while writing my book on Haddon for Berghahn Books, but the announcement that the Trustees of the Hunterian Museum in London have withdrawn the skeleton of Charles O’Brien – an Irish giant known publicly as Charles Byrne – from public display brought the resumption of blogging forward by a couple of weeks.
The ethics of such displays were an important part of my research and the subject of a previous blog on Cornelius Magrath, another Irish giant. It seemed like a good time to resume blogging and An Irish giant, 24 stolen skulls, one colonial legacies project and a slave owner named Berkeley is the first of a new series of blogs that feature aspects of my recent research and current activism.
Preview:
Brendan Holland in the Anatomy Museum TCD during the filming of The Giant Gene for BBC. Photo Chris Nikkel. Chris Nikkel and Brendan Holland filmed part of their documentary The Giant Gene in the museum and a key question for Holland, as a contemporary Irish giant, was whether he would like his bones to go on public display like Magrath in Dublin and O’Brien in London.
What does the removal of the skeleton of Charles Byrne from public display in London mean for Trinity College Dublin with regard to its retention of 24 skulls stolen from community burial grounds in Inishbofin, the Aran Islands and St. Finian’s Bay, Kerry? The repatriation of these remains has become a test case for the colonial legacies project initiated by Prof Ciarán O’Neill in 2020 and the question now is whether the issue of human remains in collections in London and Dublin tells us anything about the impending judgement on Berkeley’s involvement in slavery. …
The statement issued by the Board of TCD in relation to Inishbofin is welcome for the fact that the Board finally considered the question of what to do with stolen human remains held by the college. However, the statement falls far short of the islanders’ petition seeking the immediate return of the remains of their ancestors and it is clear that TCD is determined to deal with this as a matter of de-accession by request rather than repatriation by right, ignoring all the evidence submitted to TCD in recent weeks by the repatriation project and its supporters.
A spokesperson for TCD has confirmed to media sources that a decision has not been made to return the skulls. TCD is busy trying to spin this as a major advance in its plan to deal with colonial legacies, but the decision merely restates the blocking strategy the School of Medicine adopted in August. All the rest is spin and the colonial legacies project looks incapable of getting its agenda adopted in the face of opposition. We will continue to press for the immediate return of the remains.
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.
