The families of an Aboriginal man shot and killed by police at Uluru 90 years ago, have finally laid his remains to rest at the base of the rock in a deeply emotional ceremony, with his descendants calling for an apology and compensation from governments and police.
The partial remains of Pitjantjatjara man Yukun were repatriated to the place where he was shot and killed in 1934 by mounted constable Bill McKinnon.
In a ceremony on Thursday, Yukun’s remains were carried to the site by representatives of the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide who offered their apologies for the past practices of taking and storing Aboriginal remains.
A solemn file of around a hundred mostly Anangu [Aboriginal people] passed the box containing Yukun’s remains, which was draped in the Aboriginal flag. Many wept during an hour-long service in which family members spoke and sang in Pitjantjatjara.
Addressing the service on behalf of the University of Adelaide, the dean of the university’s dental school, Prof Richard Logan, said the keeping and use of Aboriginal remains for research and teaching “was entirely wrong” and the institution was sorry.
“In saying this, I recognise it does not undo the wrongs of the past nor remove the need for healing processes to occur,” Logan said. “We deeply regret the situation that confronts the current generation of Aboriginal leaders and the decisions you have been asked to make about the return of your ancestors’ remains.”
In August 1934, Bill McKinnon was sent to investigate the killing of Aboriginal man Kai Umen near Mt Connor.
A few weeks into the search, McKinnon and his Aboriginal trackers, Paddy and Carbine, came across Yukun and five other men who were hunting. The men were travelling from the west, and were highly unlikely to have been involved, but were questioned and detained.
A week later they escaped and Yukun was shot by Paddy. Two men were recaptured, but the four others, including a badly wounded Yukun, headed for the sanctuary of Uluru.
Trackers found Yukun sheltering in a cave about 40 metres up, near the Mutitjulu waterhole. McKinnon told a subsequent board of inquiry that he shot Yukun from a distance and brought him from the cave. He died from his wounds several hours later and they buried him there.
But the historian Mark McKenna, who spent years investigating the incident for his book Return to Uluru, found McKinnon’s journals in his daughter’s Brisbane garage in 2019. In those, the constable admitted he had fired to hit Yukun, contrary to what he told authorities at the time.
A 1935 board of inquiry investigated the incident, ultimately exonerating McKinnon. But the board exhumed Yukun’s remains and one of its members, Dr JB Cleland, took them to Adelaide. At some point later, his remains were stored at the University of Adelaide, and later the SA Museum.
Prompted by McKenna’s book, a forensic search was made, but only Yukun’s skull could be located, in 2019.
It was laid to rest in a deep but narrow grave, close to the site where he died in 1934.
Yukun’s extended family said that while they were glad to be able to receive him home, they were saddened and deeply shocked – and want the government to offer them justice and an apology.
“It is really hard,” Joy Kuniya, Yukun’s great-niece said. “We feel it really deeply. We are focused on justice. It would cost billions to pay us compensation to the family to forget about it.
“The policeman came with his gun and shot him in cold blood. He was hiding more evidence. He was maybe thinking, I am working for the government, and if I am going to tell the truth I am going to be punished for it, so he has been lying all the way.”
The family learned only recently that Yukun’s remains had been languishing in institutions for 90 years.
“My understanding is … they buried him and then they came back and dug up his bones, which is really, really sad for us. We are disappointed and cross,” Kuniya said.
Her aunt, Margaret Poulson, agreed: “That man, the policeman, was working for the NT government or the federal government so the government should wear the blame for this.”
Abraham Poulson said they understood the parallels with the treatment of Aboriginal people by police today.
“The law, the white man’s law, is still covering us like an umbrella in our remote community, our Indigenous culture,” he said.
“It is the same from many, many years ago. They got law and rights, and now police are still doing stuff around Australia.”
The ceremony was attended by McKinnon’s great-nephews Alastair and Ross and Alastair’s wife Ruth, who said they were “overwhelmed” at the generosity of the Anangu families, who came up after the service to hug and thank them for attending.
McKenna said it was “incredible” to see the impact of his research for the families involved.
“To be here again is overwhelming, the significance of the whole story for the families, but also just incredible as a historian to be able to follow this right through to this moment,” McKenna said.
“And I keep feeling the whole thing is just bigger than all of us. Trying to take it all in is really going to take some time.”
