CNN —A British university has given back four spears taken more than 250 years ago from an aboriginal community in Australia by explorer Captain James Cook. Trinity College Cambridge permanently repatriated the spears to the La Perouse Aboriginal Community at a ceremony Tuesday, according to a joint statement from the college and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), which supported the move. “The spears were pretty much the first point of European contact, particularly British contact with Aboriginal Australia,” said Ray Ingrey, director of the Gujaga Foundation, a research organization working in the La Perouse community, in the statement. The resulting British colonization of Australia resulted in the introduction of foreign diseases, displacement, and massacres against the aboriginal people. National Museum of AustraliaSome members of the La Perouse Aboriginal Community are direct descendants of those who crafted the spears, according to the statement.

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