IT is hard to believe, but it is only 40 years ago this year that Trucanini’s dignified end came when her remains, long displayed and then "stored" by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, were cremated and scattered at sea in a closed Aboriginal ceremony.

Trucanini’s traumatising life and final death covered a time span from the seeds of Tasmanian colonisation to the Whitlam-era government. Yet, and deservedly so, she is still both a whisper and a roar to remind us that the past is not another country, but a real place that we inhabit and experience now. In the same year of 1976, the Aboriginal Relics Act 1975 was assented to in Parliament and enacted.

While I understand that the times are always a’changing, there is something traumatising that the introduction of the Relics Act preceded Trucanini’s cremation only by a few months. The Relics Act uses Trucanini’s death in 1876 as the "cut-off" point for the things and objects that can be considered Aboriginal cultural heritage for protection.