Aboriginal islanders reunited with their 'stolen' history

More than a century ago, a leading British anthropologist visited the Torres Strait Islands, off the northern tip of Australia, and stole away with more than a thousand of the inhabitants' most important artefacts.

Yesterday, five of the islanders, all artists inspired by the stories of their ancestors, came face to face with their lost culture for the first time at a university museum in Cambridge, where the material has been stored for 100 years.

The artists, who are believed to be the first islanders to see the archive, recognised photographs of their grandparents and even great-grandparents amid the collection of carvings, fish-hooks, shells, masks and artwork at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

David Bosun, 28, one of the artists, said: "It's very exciting to actually come and see these things. We've only heard about them before."

The haul was removed from the islands in the 1890s by Professor Alfred Cort Haddon, one of the founders of anthropology as a discipline at Cambridge University. He believed the Torres Strait islanders' culture was under threat, partly because of the influence of missionaries working there.

Yesterday's visitors conceded that much of the material may have been destroyed without Professor Haddon, but Mr Bosun said it would be good if some of the artefacts were now returned to the islands.

Elders on the Torres Strait Islands have worked hard to preserve their culture through story-telling, dancing and cooking. But the young artists have decided to set up a studio to try to incorporate the traditional designs and stories of cannibalism, sorcery and creation myths into a contemporary art form, the linocut print.

Their trip to Cambridge was organised by the Rebecca Hossack Gallery in central London, which is hosting the first British exhibition of the islanders' contemporary work, starting tomorrow.

Dr Amiria Salmond, a curatorial assistant at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, said: "A lot of the material is still around today because of [Professor Haddon's] collecting trip.

"It is stuff that no longer exists on their islands. It was a culture in the process of an enormous amount of change."