IN a token of rural reconciliation, an Aboriginal breastplate has been handed back to the traditional owners of Mungalla Station, the Nywaigi people, Ingham, more than 50 years after it was found.
A ceremony was held on the property on Monday this week.
The breastplate was found by previous owner of the property, Alan Atkinson, when he was a boy in the 1950s and kept in his family ever since.
Emblazoned with the name “King Bill of Mickleburgh”, the breastplate (see inset) was given to a member off the Nywaigi Tribe in the late 1800s recognising him as a leader of his people.
It was also symbolic of the recipient’s service to the white property owners.
In the 1890s King Bill was taken to America and Europe as part of the Barnum and Baileys Captive Lives Exhibition. He was abandoned in England.
In 1898 he was repatriated back to Townsville and it is believed he died in the Ingham area.
Manager of Mungalla, Jacob Cassady, said there were both positive and negative aspects to the ceremony.
He said the negative side of it was that it reminded his people of the servitude they were forced to give to the white settlers but it also represented an important era of Aboriginal history.
*Full story in this week’s North Queensland Register, out Thursday.
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