Indigenous Australian shell dolls let out for children’s play at UK museum

Twelve dadikwakwa-kwa given to Manchester Museum on condition they are not permanently kept behind glass

They represent a “beautiful friendship” that defies preconceptions, spanning 9,000 miles with a complicated, 70-year history. The 12 dadikwakwa-kwa shell dolls, traditionally used to teach kinship, literacy, numeracy and about women’s health – have been given by the Indigenous Australian Anindilyakwa community to a UK museum on one condition – that children play with them once a year.

The relationship between Europe’s museums and the countries and communities where items were taken from has been replete with controversy in recent years. But Manchester Museum cemented a bond with the Anindilyakwa community, the traditional owners of the land and seas of the Groote archipelago in the Gulf of Carpentaria, off the northern coast of Australia, by returning 174 objects in 2023.