Originality
 The article is original in the sense that it describes the history of repatriation policy – as it pertains to human remains – in the Australian context. The paper also canvases some of the general Australian Aboriginal attitudes towards the repatriation of these remains from dispersed collections although these are not a large feature of the paper and could be expanded upon. 
<response>I don’t think that the attitudes of Aboriginal people can be expanded upon beyond the revisions to the text I have made without allowing the article to blow out to an unacceptable length </response> 
As a document of policy developments relating to the return human remains however it is a very useful document.
<response>noted</response>

Grasp of literature
 The author clearly has a good grasp of the relevant literature relating to this field. I have nonetheless noted that some of the extensive research published by Emma Kowal on the prospects of DNA testing, would be worth integrating. (Perhaps this paper would be a starting point: Kowal, Emma.“Genetics and Indigenous Communities: Ethical Issues.” (2015).
Obviously, this is a very large and contested issue and something that could be addressed little more here as human remains may be used in future studies. I suspect that there has been a change of thinking about this in recent years as studies are proving useful in terms of showing very long-term Ancestral connections to land.
<response>I have said a little more. There have been changes in thinking in some communities in recent times. But it is a stretch for reviewer A to suggest that that they are proving useful in proving very useful long-term connections. The recent review article by Collard makes this clear. As to unprovenanced remains in museum, earlier articles - notably by the folks at Griffith University (Wright, Lambert et. al.) - made claims that go beyond what is likely to be achieved.  As I have said Kowal’s contribution to recent discussion of Indigenous genomics has been to provide a much-needed call to ensure that Indigenous people get accurate information about what genetics can and can’t do. There’s a lot of temptation here to over-state what biogenetic technologies can do given the opportunities to get published in Nature, Science on the basis of these lines of research. If you want to see a serious example of where ambition has transgressed ethics, see http://michael-balter.blogspot.com/2019/12/bullying-racism-unethical-behavior-long.html</response>

The first paragraph on page 9 notes that in “last two years, there have been substantial repatriations, notably from German museums and university anatomy departments, as a result of negotiations between program staff and Australia’s Berlin embassy, and government ministers of several German states. However, communities with ancestors known to be in oversea collections have been distressed by the program’s budget and staffing leading to the return of remains from one institution at a time.” I would like to see some citations here to support this.
<response>I have referred the reader to the International Repatriation Program’s 2019 Fact sheet</response>

Page 13 features a quote from Lambert-Pennington, the beginning of this quote has been incorrectly cited. The original reads “Not unexpectedly, they generate conflicting discourses…”
<response>this has been addressed by revision</response> 

Level of scholarship
 I do feel as though the paper lacks critical depth and is primarily descriptive. The chronology of policy changes over the years is nonetheless very useful. I would suggest integrating some of the more theoretical work of scholars of the Australian State and its relationship to Indigenous peoples, such as Francesca Merlan, Jeremy Beckett and Philip Batty. Merlan’s ‘Beyond Tradition’. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 7, no. 1 (2006): 85–104, would be a good starting point and Batty’s‘White Men’s Redemption Rituals’ is a classic, critical take on the issues of repatriation policy in Australia.
<response>The article is descriptive given its aim of documenting salient aspects of the experience of repatriation since the 1990s. Given this history has yet to be documented. I have integrated Merlan’s reflections on liberal multiculturalism and the envisaging of Indigenous tradition as it strikes me that it helps highlights what has been an unhelpful tendency in government and policy circles to downplay the political and economic systems in which repatriation communities have become entangled in favour of a problematic tendency to see repatriation as promoting reconciliation through restoring religious communities.  The work by Batty that is singled out is hardly a “classic, critical take on repatriation policy.” It is short commentary concerning his experience of returning churingas to central Australian communities as a consequence of what is now widely agreed to be an ill-thought out initiative by Australia’s cultural ministers in the mid 2000s. It does not mention human remains and says nothing about policies in respect of domestic and overseas repatriations of human remains.
This said, Batty’s condemnation of the project he was involved in as fired by guilt and the desire for redemption - claims that comes dangerously close to aligning with the uninformed yet dangerously influential stance against repatriation maintained by Tiffany Jenkins over the past decade - has caused me to revise my article so as to pose the question whether there is some element of redemptive ritualism in how the International repatriation Program has been administered since the demise of ATSIC. </reponse>
 
The paper would also be strengthened if the author engaged with the history of colonisation in a more robust way. At the moment the processes of colonisation are presented in a generic form and do not give enough attention to the regionally diverse experiences that people have had with settler-colonisation. For example, on page 10 (para 2) the author discusses in very general terms a process of dispossession, resistance, removal/protection, religious conversation, ‘destruction of language, life-ways and cultures.’ This is very broad sweeping description and while yes, each of these did occur at different places at different times, they did not occur everywhere and effect everyone in the same ways. There are large parts of Australia where people did not experience such wholesale theft of land, where languages are still spoken as the primary language and where classical ritual and religious life (although attenuated and changed) continues. The experiences in the Western Desert, Central Australia and Arnhem Land, for example, contrast greatly with the experiences of people in say Tasmania or Queensland. Greater care should be taken when dealing with these complex historical and social experiences/histories so that they not reduced by the discourse of pan-Aboriginalism.
 <response>I have provided more fine-grained summary of dispossession in response to this criticism; but it is misleading to say that there were “large parts of Australia” where people did not suffer as those in southeast Australia, southern Western Australia and Tasmania did. These geographically large areas had relatively few people compared to the continent’s temperate regions - and people escaped the fate of those in the latter regions because they were found to have little or no exploitable value. However, I think my main point stands: where there was dispossession and colonial subjugation it has often been difficult and distressing to fulfil obligations to the repatriated dead. </response> 

Page 13 (last para) includes a discussion of the Donald Thompson collection. This needs to be more clearly explained. Were these remains first made the property of University of Melbourne? As I understand it, the Thompson collection was housed at the Melbourne Museum via an agreement with the UoM? Also, the timeline needs better clarification here. What happened between 1930 and 1980? Who made the demands to repatriate the remains? Also ‘the state’s traditional owners’ referred to – are these Victoria Aboriginal people? Why would the remains be returned to them? This just needs clarification.
<response> I have clarified this section of the article to answer these questions</response> 
More also needs to be added at the conclusion of this section to wrap up these Arnhem Land experiences. This goes to my above point above about there being diverse experiences across Australia. The general tone of the article however seems to be weighted towards the experiences of eastern Australia. Here we have an example where the collecting of human remains involved the complicity of Yolngu people. These agencies and interests are not easily defined by broad-brush statements on colonialism and as such I feel as the overall tone of the article should reflect these different engagements with repatriation in light of this.
<response>This puts me in mind of the argument that Howard Morphy has repeatedly made in response to my work over the past 20 years - and which I have taken on board in various essays and my 2017 book.  As I have maintained, Indigenous complicity in scientific collecting occurred, but it was rare.  In the confines of this essay I can do no more than refer the reader to my earlier work on this point. Moreover, my purpose in discussing these Yolngu remains was to point out how repatriation can threaten to revive old enmities - which more often than not have had their origins in land ownership disputes. Hopefully my revisions to this section of the article meet the criticisms put above without being obliged to go into greater historical depth</response>

 Contribution to the field of museum studies
 The author makes an important contribution to the field through their argument that communities struggle with having access to land to re-bury their Ancestors. This is an extremely important point, as many of the communities in south-eastern Australia have limited freehold titles. It is important those working in museum understand these larger social issues and how the impact upon the repatriation of remains.
<response> I am glad to see the reviewer sees my stressing this point</response>

 Matters of clarity style and presentation
<response>I I have revised to address the points raised by Reviewer A under this heading</response> 

 Reviewer B
 Originality
 The paper provides a good and useful overview of the repatriation of
 human remains to Australia from overseas in recent decades. The author
 explains that he/she was originally involved in this topic through a specific
 request (p.2), and refers to other moments of research engagement: 'In 2016 I was shown' (p.6). What is not clear is the overall nature of the writer's involvement in the topic -- how the history set out in the paper is known to him/her. This needs to be clearer because the history set out is not extensively referenced and reads as a personal account at some levels.
</response>I have explained the nature of my engagement</response> 

In particular the conclusion is written as advocacy, 'this will be a welcome development' (p.14). If the paper is a form of advocacy, more than an analysis, perhaps that needs to be clearer in the way the paper is introduced.

<response>As often happens, the conclusion to the article was weak. It has been substantially rewritten in the light of my thinking about overseas repatriation policies and practices since the end of ATSIC after considering the recommended articles by Merlan and Batty. </response>
Grasp of relevant literature
 The focus of the article is on the repatriation of Indigenous Australian human remains from overseas institutions and as such the referencing is good. Wider referencing to repatriation literature (or to literature about national-level returns of human remains) is not necessary in this context, but it would be helpful if the title made it clear that the focus is on international returns, and also on human remains.
<response> I have changed the title as recommended</response>

Level of scholarship
 The paper is a good quick survey account, but would be strengthened if the author explained his/her own positioning in relation to this material/topic.
<response>In my revisions I have (hopefully) achieved this. </response>
 
Contribution to the field of museum studies
 The paper is a useful survey from a clear position. There is a strong argument in the paper about how much Australian Government policy impacts on repatriation processes, this could be argued in more depth, perhaps.
<response>I have tried to do this in my revisions, but I am not sure more can be said without going into finer grained historical depth at much greater length</response>