Trinity asked to return 11 more skulls from stash of up to 500 human remains
College’s colonial past under scrutiny as report reveals extent of graverobbing
UNEASE within Trinity College Dublin (TCD) over its past colonial connections is growing after it emerged the university holds almost 500 human remains sourced from across the globe.
Last week, the Irish Mail on Sunday revealed how Ireland’s oldest university is coming under mounting pressure to return 13 skulls that were stolen from a graveyard in Inishbofin in the late 19th Century.
Calls are also being made to return a further 11 skulls that were taken from the Aran Islands and St Finian’s Bay in Co. Kerry, around the same period.
A report by the Trinity Colonial Legacies project team has revealed Trinity ‘holds in excess of 484 human remains sourced from various parts of the globe, including Burma, Nigeria, Thailand, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, and a number of Pacific Islands.’
University representatives will meet with Inishbofin islanders this month, who are campaigning to have the lost skulls returned to their rightful burial place. However, the private TCD analysis, titled, ‘The Working Paper of Human Remains from Inishbofin’, indicates the furore over the stolen skulls is just the tip ‘of a very big iceberg’, according to one university source. The report states: ‘Trinity played an important role in the circulation of knowledge and in the development of contemporary race science.’ But it concedes: ‘Collections of human remains were often acquired in ways that are not only problematic for modern sensibilities but were also illegal at the time. Many human remains were taken by stealth and by digging up sacred burial grounds and graveyards. Human remains were also collected from victims of colonial negligence and violence, including skulls of those who were executed or died from diseases in captivity (like in Rangoon jail) or as a result of famines.’
The report recognises how ‘museums and other cultural institutions in Britain, Ireland, and elsewhere have begun the process of returning or repatriating human remains back to descendant communities’.
It notes how the college previously returned Maori remains ‘to descendant communities’ in what was described as a ‘gesture embodying the ethical paradigm shift in the approach to studying anatomy introduced in the 20th Century’.
The report adds: ‘It is important for us to recognise this and ensure that our present-day policies and actions match the highest ethical standards developed by institutions working in a very different global context.’
The report also notes how, in the US, the Smithsonian Institute and the University of Pennsylvania ‘have led the way by either returning or interring human remains previously on display in their museum collections’.
Commenting on the controversy over the stolen Inishbofin remains, one senior college source said, ‘This could catch fire very quickly’.
Unease is also growing within the college over the ongoing presence of a memorial to Andrew Francis Dixon, the Trinity academic who, along with Alfred Cort Haddon, stole the skulls from Inishbofin in 1890. There is a memorial to Dixon on the front entrance of the Lloyd Building on the university’s Dublin city-centre campus.
Fianna Fáil Galway West TD Éamon Ó Cuív has urged Trinity to return the skulls to the west of Ireland without delay.
A petition by all 170 Inishbofin islanders, demanding the return of the skulls, was sent to Trinity last year. Local historian Marie Coyne said: ‘They’re our ancestors, they should be allowed to rest in peace. They deserve respect.’
‘This is just the tip of a very big iceberg’