The National Museum of Australia will hand back the remains of hundreds of South Australian Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal people today.

The remains were collected from grave sites more than a century ago by Adelaide coroner William Ramsay-Smith, whose practices were criticised at the time.

The museum's repatriation unit will return the remains to tribal representatives in a special ceremony in Canberra this morning.

Museum spokesman Martin Portus says it is the largest collection of remains to be handed back in Australia's history.

"The 18 large boxes of some 300 remains of Aboriginal people will be trucked back to Camp Coorong near Meningie in South Australia, where on Thursday they will be welcomed back to country in a no-doubt very emotional ceremony involving fire staged by the Ngarrindjeri people," he said.

The Ngarrindjeri collection includes remains from the Australian Museum in Sydney and from a collection recently returned from the Royal College of Surgeons in London.

In a statement, the chairperson of the Ngarrindjeri Heritage Committee, Tom Trevorrow, said: "The wrongs of the past are the inheritance of the present.

"The unbelievable acts of stealing, desecration, abuse and genocide upon our people will never be forgotten."The return of our old people to their true resting places is a significant step but only one step in the continuing journey for justice that the Ngarrindjeri must travel."