Return to Country: genomics and the repatriation of ancient Aboriginal Australians

Indigenous people worldwide continue to struggle to repatriate the remains of their ancestors held by national and international organisations. After European settlement of Australia in 1788, Aboriginal Australian remains were deposited in museums worldwide. Many of these remains have no known provenance, making their return to Indigenous custodians difficult. Hence, we sequenced ten nuclear genomes and 27 mitogenomes from ancient pre-European Aboriginal Australians (up to 1,540 yr BP) and compared them to 100 high-coverage contemporary Aboriginal Australian genomes from 12 geographic locations. We report substantial ancient genetic structure showing strong affinities between ancient and contemporary individuals from the same geographic locations. Our findings demonstrate the feasibility of identifying the origins of unprovenanced ancestral remains using nuclear DNA, thereby enabling their return to their rightful communities.

全球原住民群体仍在为索回被国家及国际机构留存的先祖遗骸而不懈抗争。1788年欧洲殖民澳大利亚之后，澳大利亚原住民先祖的遗骸被运往全球各地的博物馆收藏。其中多数遗骸已无明确溯源信息，导致其难以归还至原住民管护群体手中。为此，本研究对10例古代欧洲殖民前澳大利亚原住民（年代最远可达距今1540年）的核基因组与27例线粒体基因组进行测序，并将其与来自12个地理区域的100例高覆盖度当代澳大利亚原住民基因组进行比对。本研究揭示了显著的古代遗传结构特征，即同一地理区域的古代与当代原住民个体之间存在极强的遗传亲缘关系。本研究结果证实，利用核基因组DNA鉴定无溯源信息先祖遗骸的来源地具备可行性，从而可推动这些遗骸归还至其所属的原住民社群。