Kimberley artefacts sold at Perth auction spark cultural concerns

The sale of Kimberley Aboriginal artefacts at a recent Boorloo/Perth auction has prompted calls for the items to be returned to community, with cultural leaders saying ancient cultural materials should never carry a price tag.

McKenzie’s Auctioneers and Valuers held a “Tribal Artefacts and Arts Auction” last month, listing items from Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Western Australia’s Kimberley region. Among the lots were ‘Aboriginal Kimberley glass spear points’, sold for $600, and a hafted Kimberley point spear from Sunday Island in Bardi country, sold for $170.

Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre chief executive Peter Murray, a Walmajarri man, said ancient cultural items should not be valued in dollars. “You can’t put a price on ancient artefacts” Mr Murray said.

Mr Murray believes auctioneers should return such items to culturally safe places, including the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre in Fitzroy Crossing, where they could be cared for by the communities they belong to. The centre, known as KALACC, supports cultural maintenance work across the wider Kimberley.

The auction has reignited a long-running national conversation about repatriation, the trade in Aboriginal cultural material and the limits of provenance documentation. Many of the items offered for sale come without formal records of how they left community in the first place.

McKenzie’s Auctioneers responded to questions about provenance by saying many items had been passed down through generations and did not always come with formal documentation. The organisation also said local Aboriginal Corporations had on previous occasions purchased items they considered culturally significant from public auctions.

For Bardi descendant Irene Davey, the suggestion that communities should buy back their own cultural heritage is unacceptable. Ms Davey said the items belonged with the communities they came from. “Something that was taken from us, should be given back to us” Ms Davey said. “It’s really sad.”

The Bardi-Jawi people are saltwater Traditional Owners of country in the West Kimberley, including Sunday Island and surrounding waters. Spear points and other cultural materials carry deep significance and cannot be replaced by replicas alone.

Sector advocates say the situation highlights gaps in current heritage protection laws, which do not consistently restrict the private sale of historic Aboriginal material objects. Calls for stronger national repatriation frameworks have grown louder in recent years, with several Aboriginal Corporations arguing that sacred and ceremonial items in particular should be removed from commercial markets entirely.

The debate sits within a broader push for First Nations communities to determine how their cultural heritage is held, accessed and passed on. For many Traditional Owners, the issue is not only about the objects themselves but about the principle of self-determination and respect for cultural authority.