The burial ground in northern Adelaide was named Wangayarta and was created specifically to rebury Kaurna ancestral remains being returned from Museums and universities. Today the Wangayarta Memorial Park continues with the second repatriations of Kaurna Aboriginal ancestral remains held by the State Government in the South Australian Museum.

The Kaurna community will rebury ancestors disturbed from three western suburbs council areas in Wangayarta’s western mound.  The mound was prepared for the ancestors during Wangayarta’s co-design process. During community workshops, people talked about the changes across the Adelaide landscape that make it difficult for the Kaurna ancestors to be reburied back in their original burial locations. In response to this challenge, Uncle Moogy Sumner spread soils from all over Kaurna Country across the area during construction as a way of allowing all ancestors to be buried in the soil of their Country. In Uncle Moogy’s words, this ceremony brought ‘land that the ancestors walked across’ back to them.

"If you rebury our ancestors into the place where they came from, someone is going to come and dig them up again because they want to put something else there... another building, another railway track, another road. But at Wangayarta, no one is going to go there and disturb them Old People, they're here to rest now," Kaurna Elder, Uncle Moogy Sumner explained.

"It's another chapter for our people, in doing the right thing with our ancestors, I'm so blessed to be a Kaurna Elder woman to be put in this position and to help other communities in getting ready for their reburials," added Kaurna Elder, Aunty Madge Wanganeen.

Support for Kaurna led archival research was provided by the University of Adelaide and the Commonwealth Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications. The Commonwealth department has also supported the reburial preparations and ceremony.

The South Australian Museum is the custodian of approximately 4,500 Aboriginal ancestral remains and is actively working with Aboriginal communities all over Australia to return all the old people to Country in community led respectful ways. The Kaurna Wangayarta project is an exemplar of what could be achieved with other Aboriginal communities in the future.

The Kaurna community has been on an extraordinary journey over the three years to create Wangayarta, where they will rebury their ancestors who were disturbed by the development of the Greater Adelaide Area.  Wangayarta memorialises the challenge, fortitude, and generosity of Kaurna People in sharing this repatriation with everyone, so that together we learn our history and share the truth.