An ugly chapter of human trafficking and black-market trading of body parts in Western Australia has been laid bare, with the return of 14 sets of human remains that were sold to Germany more than 100 years ago.

Key points: A museum in Germany has returned 14 sets of human remains to Australia

A museum in Germany has returned 14 sets of human remains to Australia The remains were of Aboriginal pearl divers and had been sold to the museum by a Broome pearler in 1894

The remains were of Aboriginal pearl divers and had been sold to the museum by a Broome pearler in 1894 Autopsies of the remains found wounds to the head and trauma to the ears

Autopsies done on the skeletons revealed head wounds and malnutrition, giving an insight into the cruel conditions endured by Aboriginal Australians forced to work on vessels known as pearl luggers in the 19th century.

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this story contains images of people who have died.

The remains of an estimated 2,000 people are yet to be returned, with a number of institutions around the world still holding on to skeletons of Australian people decades after the hording of morbid relics fell out of fashion.

Aboriginal elders say they are sick of being "on a waiting list" to be able to bury their relatives.

'We needed to bring them home'

Yawuru cultural leader Di Appleby in Leipzig, Germany, to collect the remains. ( Supplied: Kim West )

In mid-April, Dianne Appleby and six other Yawuru and Karajarri people from sunny Broome donned coats and beanies and embarked on a 26,000-kilometre journey to retrieve the bones of their ancestors.

Records show the skeletons were sold by a wealthy Broome pastoralist and pearler to a museum in Dresden in 1894.

"It was a horrible thing that was done," Ms Appleby said.

"We needed to bring them home, so it's an emotional and a stressful journey we're going on."

On a chilly morning in Leipzig, where the remains ended up in storage at the Grassi Museum of Ethnology, the group was taken to a row of white boxes containing the stolen skeletons.

Yawuru cultural leader Neil McKenzie talks to academics in Leipzig, Germany. ( Supplied: Kim West )

The women wailed as the smoke of smouldering Conkerberry leaves, brought over from the Kimberley, filled the room.

Men knelt and quietly cried over the boxes of bones, the theft of which has come to symbolise the brutality of 19th century frontier Australia.

"They must have regarded us as savages or animals for them to do such things," Yawuru elder Neil McKenzie, who oversaw the ceremony, said.

"We feel sad and unbalanced … and it is really disappointing for us that we still can't bring all of our old people home."

The remains were flown to Perth where they will remain in storage until a memorial and suitable storage space can be built in Broome.

Skeletons for sale

A smoking ceremony is conducted in Leipzig, Germany. ( Supplied: Nyamba Buru Yawuru )

The bones were caught up in a lucrative 19th century trade in human body parts, in which skeletons from Australia were highly prized.

"People were collecting thousands and thousands of Aboriginal remains from both graves and recently deceased people and sending them to overseas collectors," Michael Pickering, who heads the Indigenous Repatriations Unit at the National Museum of Australia, said.

"At the time there was this growing development in the theory of social evolution, and collectors were seeking examples of what they called 'different races', the idea being that different intellectual features and cultural features would be reflected in remains.

"Because of that, there was a thriving collecting process, with remains being sent to scholarly contacts overseas, and people collecting them as macabre novelties as proof of their trips."

The remains are unloaded at the Western Australian Museum in Perth. ( Supplied: Nyamba Buru Yawuru )

Indigenous academic Lyndon Ormond-Parker, from the University of Melbourne, said about 1,500 skeletons had been returned to Australia in the past 30 years.

"However we estimate there are still over 2,000 individuals held at overseas institutions, so that gives an idea of the scale of the removal of Aboriginal people from Australia," Dr Ormond-Parker said.

"There is still some resistance from institutions about returning them.

"For example, the University of Cambridge has a large collection of ancestral Aboriginal remains, so the Australian Government has been working closely with our High Commission in London to have negotiations with that institution around returns of individuals from that collection."

The Yawuru and Karajarri group are pleading with the Natural History Museum in London to fast-track the release of the skull of warrior Gwarinman, whose name was written on the exposed bone by the men who trophied it.

They say the museum has agreed to hand over the skull and other human remains held in its collections, but no date has been set.

Autopsy evidence

Aboriginal prisoners wear riji (carved pearl shell) in Broome in about 1910. ( Supplied: Freney Collection courtesy Broome Historical Society )

Examinations done on the 14 skeletons returned from Germany offer a rare insight into the brutality of frontier Australia, and in particular the Western Australian pearling industry.

Birgit Scheps-Bretschneider, from the Grassi Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig, organised the autopsies.

"We had forensic anthropologists looking at the injuries on the bones, telling about the violence, telling about the probable cause of death," she said.

"And we found a group of people that had injuries that showed they were beaten down, that they survived the injuries, and they were taken to do diving jobs."

Sarah Yu, who has researched the involvement of Yawuru people in the Broome pearling industry, said the injuries reflected the harsh working conditions endured by Aboriginal people forced to dive for pearl shell off pearl luggers.

"These remains totally reflect the traumatic and violent nature of the early pearling industry in Broome. At the time it was a lawless place, it was a frontier and [some pearlers] were a law unto themselves," she said.

In the early days of pearling, Aboriginal men, women and children were used to dive for shell. ( Supplied: National Museum of Australia, courtesy Herbert Basedow Collection )

"These were young people, they died young, and in every aspect of their bodies were signs of trauma.

"They've all got trauma to their ears, likely linked to diving for pearl, and they've got wounds on their heads, where they'd been struck, and the teeth showed signs of malnutrition."

She said the 14 people were most likely rounded up by "blackbirders", who traded in human labour.

For the descendants of the divers, their return brings relief but renewed grief.

"It's so disappointing that we have to be put on a waiting list when these remains, these people, should never have been taken from their home in the first place," Mr McKenzie said.

"The audacity of it … I mean they sold these things, these remains, they made a profit from it. That is a terrible thing."