Background
Yagan was an indigenous Australian warrior of the Noongar nation who played a key part in early indigenous resistance to European settlement and rule around the area of Perth, Western Australia. He was shot dead by a settler in 1833, and his head was removed and sent to England for display in a museum.
By 1964, Yagan's head was badly decomposed, and the decision was made to dispose of it. The head was placed in a plywood box, along with a Peruvian mummy and a Māori head, and buried in Everton Cemetery's General Section 16, grave number 296. In later years, a number of burials were made around the grave, and in 1968 a local hospital buried 20 stillborn babies and two babies who had lived less than twenty-four hours, directly over the museum box.
For many years, members of Perth's Noongar community sought to have Yagan's head returned and buried according to tribal custom. An application for exhumation of the head was made in 1994, but it was refused because next of kin permission to disturb the remains of the twenty-two babies could not be obtained.
Read more about this topic: Exhumation Of Yagan's Head
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