New Zealand herald News: Japan's indigenous Ainu battle for return of ancestors
Japan's long marginalised and little known indigenous people, the Ainu, are engaged in a protracted and symbolic struggle to have the remains of their ancestors brought home. The results of a one-year survey released by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology this year revealed that the bones of over 1,600 Ainu individuals are being stored at 11 different universities across the country. The remains were taken from Ainu grave sites primarily in Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, but also from the Sakhalin and Kurile Islands (now part of Russia) between 1873 and 2011 for anthropological research, especially on the skulls. At the centre of the controversy is Hokkaido University, which is holding the majority of the remains - those of 1027 individuals - and a lawsuit has been filed against the university by a group of Ainu from the Kineusu kotan seeking to have the bones returned. Kotan means both village and tribe in the Ainu language, an...