Prime Minister Helen Clark has welcomed a Chicago museum's decision to return 14 150-year-old Maori heads to New Zealand.
The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago announced during Miss Clark's visit to the city that after years of negotiations with Te Papa the remains would be repatriated.
Miss Clark told NZPA that the Government had given money to Te Papa to negotiate the return of remains such as shrunken heads as well as other Maori treasures held in collections around the world and it was good to see some results.
Now the museum had made the decision it would be up to Te Papa and other interested parties to negotiate the return of the remains.
Culture and Heritage Minister Mahara Okeroa said curator of Pacific Anthropology at the museum, John Terrell, said it had been considering returning the items for about three years but the board made the decision only on Monday.
The remains had been acquired at the end of the 19th century when different values had been in place about such issues and no records had survived about their origin.
"We don't know who they are, in most cases we don't even have a clue. But the reality is they need to go home," Mr Terrell told Fairfax media.
The repatriation of the remains of Maori ancestors overseas is highly controversial. The Marischal Museum at the University of Aberdeen earlier this year handed over nine tattooed heads from its huge collection of Maori exhibits to a New Zealand delegation.
The smoked heads -- known as toi moko -- joined more than 100 others at Te Papa's repositories while researchers try to identify where they came from. Te Papa was made an agent of the Government in 2003 to repatriate remains and other Maori relics.
Mr Okeroa said he was grateful for the decision. "With the returning of this sacred taonga it will be a time of sad reflection on the journey these ancestors have taken but also a sense of joy that they will be finally returning home," he said.
On return the items would be kept in Te Papa's wahi tapu section until research was done into their tribe or iwi so they can be repatriated.