Smithsonian task force: Return human remains
Museum urged to streamline process for Native peoples and to begin effort that includes other groups not mandated by federal law
The remains of tens of thousands of individuals taken by the Smithsonian Institution without consent should be proactively returned to their families and communities, a task force convened by the world-renowned museum complex has concluded.
If adopted into policy, the recommendations outlined by the 15-person task force would represent a historic shift for the Smithsonian, significantly broadening its repatriation efforts.
The recommendations, released Wednesday, follow a Washington Post investigation that revealed the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History holds more than 30,700 sets of human remains, largely taken from graveyards, battlefields, morgues and hospitals in more than 80 countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The collection includes 254 human brains housed in a storage facility in suburban Maryland, most of them taken from people of color to further now-debunked theories on racial differences.
While the Smithsonian is mandated under a 1989 federal law to offer to return the remains of Native American, Native Hawaiian and Alaska Native people to their descendants and communities, the legislation is silent on all other remains, leaving thousands of body parts in limbo.
But in Wednesday’s report, the task force proposed that the Natural History Museum establish a new staff that would be responsible for returning remains that are not covered by the federal law — a policy experts say could prompt other museums worldwide to follow suit. The report also recommended streamlining the process for returning Native American remains and providing additional funding for that effort.
The task force — made up of Smithsonian officials and outside experts — called the collection an “unfortunate inheritance, a racist legacy that burdens the Smithsonian and prolongs this injustice.”
“While much of this collecting of human remains was done by curators and individuals long dead, it occurred at the Smithsonian and relied on the Smithsonian’s resources, reputation, and influence,” the task force wrote. “The original intent of collecting these human remains was morally abhorrent, because it sought to prove the superiority of white people and their descendants to Native Americans, African Americans, and others through scientific means that are now thoroughly discredited.” Officials said the policies laid out in the report could be adopted by this fall. Kevin Gover, a co-chair of the task force and the Smithsonian’s undersecretary for museums and culture, said the report reflected a drastic change in the way the Smithsonian has grappled with human remains that were collected during a different era.
“We inherit what our predecessors did at the Smithsonian, and that means we also inherit the obligation to doing what we can to put things right,” said Gover, a former director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and a citizen of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. “This institution is now 177 years old, and like any institution of that age, we have a lot to answer for on matters of race,” he added.
The Post last year examined the grisly legacy of Ales Hrdlicka, who led the physical anthropology department at the U.S. National Museum, the precursor to the Natural History Museum, for most of the first half of the 20th century. Hrdlicka believed in white superiority and amassed thousands of bones and other body parts at the museum to further his theories on the anatomical differences between races.
The Post found the museum had failed to return the vast majority of human remains in its possession, and that families and communities were required to formally petition for their return, even though many had no idea they had relatives with remains in the collection. As of December, museum officials had returned or offered to return more than 6,300 sets of human remains — the vast majority belonging to Native Americans, as required by federal law.
In response to the Post’s reporting, Lonnie G. Bunch III, the Smithsonian’s secretary, published an op-ed apologizing for the way the institution had collected human remains and said his goal was to return as many remains as possible.
According to the new report, around half of the individuals whose remains are still stored by the Smithsonian are Native American and 2,100 are African American. Almost 6,000 of the individuals are named, “either in full, partly, or by their initials.”