TRADITIONAL CUSTODIAN MAJOR SUMNER HOLDS BOX CONTAINING ABORIGINAL REMAINS IN MANCHESTER, 2003-07-29 (photo)

Major Sumner, a traditional custodian from the Ngarrindjeri nation in South Australia, holds a box containing four skulls of Australian Aboriginies at a ceremony at Manchester University, July 29, 2003. The Manchester Museum handed the skulls back to a delegation of Aboriginal elders on Tuesday following an agreement between the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action (FAIRA) and the University of Manchester for their repatriation after they were brought to the UK 100 years ago. The remains will be returned to their traditional homelands in the State of Victoria and to a sacred keeping place in the Australian Capital Territory as part of a worldwide campaign by indigenous peoples to retrieve body parts plundered from graves in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Pictures of the month July 2003 REUTERS/Ian Hodgson ASA