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From: Charles6@aol.com

Last August, 1998, I learned from Paul Canning a gay Internet activist in Australia about an Australian group Kumarnarank (sp?), a legal fund for defending Aboriginal rights to keep an Island in the Torre Straits sacred to women and to stop the development of a vacation resort by developers.

I wrote the head of Kumarnarank and offered an artifact (churinga stone) that I had inherited, telling them that they could sell it to pay for legal defenses.

My churinga stone turned out to be too sacred to sell, and Mr. Kingsley Palmer, the Deputy Principal of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Studies stated that the object could cause enormous distress and even pose a danger if viewed, even accidentally, by those who are not traditionally allowed to see it.

Palmer contacted the head of the National Museum of Australia and they suggested that I send the object to the Central Land Council in Alice Springs as they have a repatriation program in place. I sent the object to the CLC. The director, anthropologist Sean Calderwood of the CLC will soon be having consultations with the senior Aboriginal law men and Aboriginal Traditional Owners and he will return the object to the Traditional Owners.

I have contacted the American Indian Ritual Object Repatriation Foundation in New York and they have asked for permission to write about my giving the object back to the Aboriginal tribe in their newsletter.

Kindest regards,

Charles Merrill
Citizens Against Discrimination
828 685 9673 (Western North Carolina)