Darwin's body snatchers

This program looks at the export trade in Aboriginal skeletons, skulls and body parts rife during the nineteenth century and which continued up until 1940. Anthropologists and museums influenced by the work of Charles Darwin sought these remains for scientific study and museum exhibition. Australian doctors, scientists and supposedly respectable citizens may have colluded in both grave robbing and “killing to order”, to fulfil the European demand for the supply of Aboriginal bodies, which were treated as commodities. The program looks at shifts in museum policy and the efforts by groups such as the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre to have these remains repatriated from overseas institutions back to Australia for proper burial by their descendants.