Original subtitles

[pensive music playing]

The world is in shock.

[marc] August 31st, 1997.

On a night of tragedy...

[marc] if you were alive and old enough,

I promise,

You will remember where you were on this day.

[newsreader] diana, princess of wales, is dead,

And britain is in mourning.

The 36-year-old princess was killed

In a high-speed car chase in paris

Early Sunday morning, australian time.

[marc] newspapers, magazines,

They were all screaming with headlines.

But for one community here in perth

In western australia,

This day

Means something else entirely.

[pensive music continues]

[esandra] I remember going to the airport,

And there was just a wave of our people.

[polite clapping]

To see all the colours, red, black, and yellow.

You hear the cries,

And it's something you don't forget.

They lost their daughter, and we brought home our son.

[marc] there were hundreds of people wailing

In this very airport,

But, they weren't crying for a princess.

They were crying because something,

Someone, for years,

Had been missing.

[theme music playing]

[marc] in the days of the british empire,

Things were taken.

They usually ended up in museums and galleries

With polite plaques.

My name is marc fennell,

And this is the not-so-polite story

Of how they really got there.

[pensive music playing]

Welcome to perth, western australia,

Home to the indigenous noongar people

For thousands of years.

And this place is the beginning and the end

Of one of the wildest

Archaeological detective stories.

[hannah] when he turned his back...

[ted] he was shot by a young bloke.

[hannah] ...He thought were his friends.

[ted] the bullet went into the back of the skull.

[gunshot echoes]

[marc] this is the story of a leader

Who stood against an empire,

Only to find himself lost,

Right at the heart of great britain.

And that man is why I'm here to meet this woman,

Vanessa corunna.

-Kaya. -[marc] hello.

[marc] like a lot of noongar mob,

Vanessa can draw a bloodline

Right back to that warrior.

My connection to yagan is through my dad.

He'd be one of my grand-grand-grand-pops.

-Grandfathers, yeah. Yeah. -Yeah, right.

[solemn music playing]

[marc] yes, yagan.

Born in the late 1700s, yagan was a noongar leader

At a crucial time.

[indistinct chatter]

[marc] a time when the water brought pale-skinned visitors

To noongar land.

The british.

[music continues]

[marc] in the beginning, the noongar were welcoming.

But the settlers started carving up the land

As they saw it.

Suddenly, fences like this

Start popping up all around

As the british start dividing up the land like this.

Yeah, completely different.

They brought in laws that restricted our people

From actually going into places.

Yeah, look, I think it would've been very difficult

For our people because, you know,

We want to go into our country,

And hunt and do what we used to do.

-We know that's our land. -Mm.

Why can't we go in there anymore?

Who are these people?

[marc] and that is when the reality

Of colonisation, invasion,

Starts to be realised by everyone.

[vanessa] our people did put up a big resistance

Against this colonisation.

And then we see that

There is these early pockets of conflict

That take place, and killings.

[marc] if you go flicking through the records,

It seems like the first conflict

That's recorded, at least, by the british,

Is that noongar men take potatoes

From some of these british farms.

That, like, that's how they see this conflict starting.

That is so ridiculous.

I mean, the conflict started

When they came in and took the land,

That's where it started.

And you can't say that it started over a potato.

No way.

Settlers kill noongar people

For what they perceive to be trespassing and taking food,

Which, in yagan's noongar law, demands a response.

[vanessa] you know, with yagan, it was an eye for an eye.

And so, if someone in his clan group had been killed,

Then there was a need to give payback,

And...

And that happened.

[marc] when the british, at the time,

Write about yagan,

They call him an outlaw.

-Mm. -They call him a murderer.

They're labels that they've put on him,

But we know that what he did

Was the right thing for his people.

[marc] and so what did the british do?

[vanessa] well, they put out a price on his head,

Really, don't they?

[marc] by his law, noongar law, he's done right.

But according to british law,

Yagan now finds himself a criminal.

And so, you have this situation

Of two laws on one land with one man.

[marc] and that is why we're here.

[hannah] so we're headed to the old court house in perth.

This was the original courthouse,

And apparently also the first public building here.

[marc] dr hannah mcglade

Is a noongar woman and human rights lawyer.

My interest is aboriginal justice,

And that's what I've done

Using the law any which way we can

To fight for aboriginal justice.

[marc] for hannah, the story of yagan

Has been misrepresented for a very long time.

Hi, welcome, hannah. I'm natasha fenner.

-Hi, I'm marc. Nice to meet you. -Hi, I'm...

[marc] historian natasha fenner is opening up archives for us.

[natasha] okay, I've pulled out some documents

For you both today to have a look at.

[marc] and these pages reveal,

Really, a war with yagan

And those closest to him at the heart of it.

[clamour]

The violence between the british

And these noongar men escalates.

Yagan's brother is killed,

And his father, midgegooroo, is captured by the british.

[natasha] and they blindfold him,

Tie him to the door,

And he's executed by firing squad

By the military.

Yagan does hear of his father's death,

And he vows to take revenge.

[hannah] I think in this story that I'm reading here,

Yagan has said, basically,

That he has speared three white men,

And he's saying, my brother was killed,

His father was killed.

He's doing what he had to do by aboriginal law.

[marc] what actually happens to yagan in the end?

There was a bounty put on his head.

He came across two young men that he knew,

Some settlers,

And he was friendly to them.

[marc] they were two teenagers, boys.

[hannah] and I never forget this growing up,

We don't forget this.

When he turned his back,

That's when they took the opportunity

To shoot him in the back.

And for yagan, who was a warrior,

It's shocking that he was killed

In such a cowardly way.

[pensive music playing]

[marc] but in the end,

The british didn't just take yagan's life.

They took something else.

[birds crying]

[hannah] his body was violated.

His head was paraded around the colony.

And it was really to send a strong message

Of who were the superior race--

Apparently, the white colonists--

And to send a message to the noongar people

Not to resist, not to fight as yagan did.

[marc] yagan's decapitated head

Became a brutal trophy for the british.

But where exactly were yagan's remains taken?

That is a mystery

That would take over a century to solve.

[marc] the mystery of the missing head

Of the indigenous leader yagan

Might never have been solved at all

Were it not for the obsession of one person.

-Hello. How are you? -Hi.

Good, thank you. You want to come in?

[marc] this is esandra colbung.

Her dad was noongar leader ken colbung.

[marc] so where does yagan and ken's story intersect?

[esandra] probably even before my time.

[both laughing]

I would say.

I grew up just hearing about yagan constantly.

It's always been a part of my upbringing.

Yagan's always been that part.

[indigenous-style music playing]

[marc] ken spent decades

Amassing any information or records

On what happened to yagan's head.

It was actually 30 years of voluntary research

That he'd done, specifically, to find yagan.

I believe that the spirit of his old father

Or one of his relatives could be inside of me,

And I'm, probably, I'm the reincarnation

Of that spiritual being.

[marc] it's decades.

It's decades of his life

That he's dedicated to this.

Was there a sense that yagan's remains would never come home?

Like that, that they just would never find it?

I think there was a little bit of it.

But... My dad being who he was,

Would never let that up.

It was something that he just saw and he visioned,

And that was it.

[marc] but ken wasn't alone in his quest.

He had help.

Back in the 1990s,

Cressida fforde and lyndon ormond-parker

Were two researchers living in london.

And that's when they were put in contact with ken.

[cressida] ken had a big file.

Like, he'd been doing his work

As much as he possibly could,

Using all these ways that were available to him.

And he never wavered from his search for yagan.

[marc] and that search paid off

When one day, ken colbung got a crucial piece of evidence.

A british newspaper clipping.

[cressida] a clipping saying that yagan's head

Had been on display

At the surgeon-antiquarian thomas pettigrew's house

In london.

[marc] just months after his death,

Yagan's head reportedly appears

In a house of an english doctor,

This thomas pettigrew.

It was brought to pettigrew and the uk

From western australia

By a lieutenant, robert dale.

[cressida] lieutenant dale,

Who was trying to sell yagan's head,

And as part of that, he had given it to pettigrew,

Really as a "do you want to buy?"

[marc] this surgeon, thomas pettigrew,

Is one of the weirder figures in british medical history.

He used to throw private parties in the 1800s

Where he unwrapped egyptian mummies for science.

Now, pettigrew had yagan's head studied in detail,

But as for buying it...

So pettigrew clearly didn't want to buy yagan's head,

Or didn't want to buy it for the amount

-That dale was wanting. -Right.

So then the question is, where is dale?

[marc] thanks to family diaries,

They find that dale ends up in the city of liverpool.

But does he bring yagan's head with him too?

He couldn't sell the... Yagan's head.

What's he going to do with it?

So then the first obvious thing is,

You give it to the local museum.

[marc] that would be the liverpool museum,

And so off cressida went to go ask around there.

[cressida] I was talking with

One of the curators at the time,

And this wonderful woman said, "well, actually,

I think we buried some remains in the 1960s

In the local cemetery.

Let me go and pull you the file."

And in that file, there was correspondence,

Administrative correspondence in the 1960s,

About the need to bury the head of yagan,

Chief of swan river, in the everton cemetery.

It was pretty extraordinary. [laughing]

-A pretty extraordinary moment. -What goes through your head

When you see that, when you finally see this name?

I was blown away.

I was like, "oh my god, I've got to tell ken."

I think I ran out of the museum

And I went to a, you know,

'cause there was no mobile phones.

I went to a phone box with it,

And my coins, you can imagine.

It was just joy all around,

Just to see how dad reacted just with that.

But it's a sense of relief,

Of, we're getting that little bit closer.

-Mm. -To getting him home, and...

The healing process for everyone really, you know?

[pensive music playing]

[marc] but in everton cemetery,

Liverpool, England,

There's no gravestone for a yagan.

No map.

And cressida has no leads.

[cressida] we decided that the only thing to do

Was actually go and talk to the gravediggers.

-How'd that go? -I knocked on the door

Of a... [laughs]

Of a pre-fabricated office.

They were temporarily in, and I said,

"can I talk to the...

Can I talk to whoever's in charge,"

Or something like that.

And I said, I said, "look,

I'm looking for a museum box

That was buried here in the 1960s."

And he went, "oh, you mean the two aboriginal heads

And the peruvian mummy, cressida."

And I went, "yes. I do actually."

And he said, "yeah, I know exactly where they are."

-What?! -Yeah, yeah.

And I think he either went out

Or he had in his office a grave plan,

So this is the working plan that the gravediggers use.

And he took it out, and

Annotated on the side of the grave plan was,

"buried in grave number 296."

And I was completely, you know,

"oh my gosh. This is..." I don't know.

I'm speechless. I don't know how to...

I don't know how to... It was extraordinary.

[marc] but the thing is,

When they did find where he was buried in the uk,

He wasn't buried down there alone.

[sombre music playing]

[marc] missing for decades,

The head of the indigenous leader yagan

Has been found in a british graveyard.

But there's a problem.

[lyndon] when yagan was buried,

It was a pauper's grave,

And, of course, they buried other people.

You weren't just buried by yourself.

There was stillborn babies that was buried above yagan.

[reporter] the problem is, it's now beneath the bodies

Of 22 babies who died at birth,

And some families have refused permission

For the remains to be moved.

[lyndon] then hence became a long process

Of trying to lobby the british government

For an exhumation licence.

We know that the end of the road is near

And that we will return with yagan's head to australia.

The british government refused the exhumation licence request

Because there were these stillborn children buried.

Ken, he was using all of his skill

To speak at the highest levels to state that

This was an incredibly important thing that would happen.

Yagan's head must return to australia with me,

And I'm not going to leave without it.

[esandra] and that's who dad was.

He made sure that if he was going to

Follow through with a task, he did it.

[marc] ken actually tried to get permission

From the families of all of those stillborn babies.

Ultimately, to no avail.

But what if there was another way?

[bright music playing]

They decide to access the grave from the side,

And use survey equipment to sense the metal hinges

Of yagan's box, and then extract him.

[cressida] and they started very early in the morning,

I think about four o'clock in the morning.

They emptied the grave next door.

Then, they began retrieving the box,

And then found yagan.

[marc] they did a forensic report, and weirdly,

Thanks to thomas pettigrew's skull studies of yagan,

They could confirm they'd finally found him.

[esandra] that's actually at the grave site.

[marc] that's the grave site?

That's the grave site for yagan.

Wow.

Yeah.

[ken] I feel grateful,

I feel happy,

And I'm awaiting now

To take him back

To all the other members of the tribal groups,

Who will also now be so happy.

[marc] a delegation of noongar elders

Travelled to the uk to escort yagan home.

And among them was one woman.

Mingli mcglade, who, as it turns out,

Is the mum of hannah mcglade.

-Hi, mum. Marc's here. -[marc] hello.

Good to see you.

Mum's like this nice old lady now,

But this is not the mum that I knew at that time.

I'm sorry. She was fierce.

-Yeah? -And determined and very strong.

[marc] so, when you first came in contact

With yagan's remains after over a century,

What did you do?

[mingli] well, I'd taken sand from

About near the area where he was buried,

And took it to london

And put it on his head

And said, "this is your country."

[marc] mingli held him until the moment

They walked through those gates at the airport.

[hannah] that was another

Incredibly momentous occasion

Of hundreds of noongars at the airport.

[polite clapping]

[esandra] seeing them come through the gates

With the box and the buka and that,

It was a pretty overwhelming time for everybody.

I guess it was a sense of relief.

Because we've brought him back and he's at rest now.

He can be at peace.

Before, there wasn't any peace.

[marc] with the return of yagan to noongar country,

The job of holding him until he was finally buried

Fell to the wilkes family.

This is ian and his father, ted wilkes.

[ted] and when I brought him up for the burial that final day,

I remember touching him and going into the swan river,

And putting my hand into the water and saying,

"yagan's back. Hey, yagan's back everybody."

I saw things that were just a little bit different

On that morning,

And we buried him there that day.

[esandra] sadly, my father didn't get to see that

Because it was only six months prior that we lost him

From when we buried yagan.

-After all this... -[esandra] yeah.

He didn't get to see him reburied.

No, no, which was quite sad,

But, you know,

I know that their spirits would've been connected

Somewhere along the line.

[esandra laughs]

[marc] why do you think he took that, I guess,

That mission, and took it so seriously,

And kind of committed to it?

Like, what was it about him?

[esandra] I think probably because of where he came from.

[marc] yeah.

[esandra] so, as a child,

He never knew his father.

He never got to meet his mum.

He lost his mum when he was a baby.

So, he's always understood and learned from that,

That the importance of keeping those cultural connections.

It was one part of him that he never let go,

Even though he was taken from it,

He'd always hang onto it and ensured that part

Was still within him.

[river water running]

[calm music playing]

[marc] there used to be this saying,

"the sun never sets on the british empire."

And, in a sense, it's true.

The impact of the events here, the pain of it,

It never really ends.

Instead, it reverberates throughout history,

Through families,

Through generations.

And yet, today on the mouth of that river

That brought so much unwelcome strife,

Noongar people still stand.

[trevor] I'm quite privileged to stand here with you

And welcome you to this country,

And hoping you have a safe journey on our country.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[sticks clicking]

[man singing in indigenous language]

[soft music playing]

[trevor] at the end of the day, it's our job,

Sharing the culture.

It's who we are.

That's why we survive,

And we'll always survive.

[marc] I have spent months all over the globe

Tracing stolen histories.

And it's easy to forget that

There are just some things

You can't take from a people.

[vanessa] it's really hard to capture in words

Of what it means to be a colonised person.

To be born a colonised person.

But even though I, we, are colonised,

We didn't give our land away,

And I still feel that strong sense

Of connection to my country.

They can't take that from me.

The genocide has not been complete.

We're here today, we're different,

But we're still, fighting, we're still speaking up,

Still caring about our people too.

[vanessa] having an ancestor like yagan

Spurs me on to be proud of who I am.

My country knows me, and I know my country.

That strength of my culture, what I carry in me,

Is in my blood.

It can't be colonised.

[soaring, inspirational music playing]

-[sticks clacking] -[chanting]

[inspirational music continues]

[trevor] we, as a race of people,

Must stand up.

We must take note of yagan and stand up and fight.