Here's what a New York museum is doing to tackle 'painful legacy' of ancestral human remains

New York City, US

A prominent museum in the United States has announced that it would remove "human remains" from display, much of which were acquired in an era of imbalances of power, and used for promotion of debunked racial theories like white supremacy. The museum also condemned the "deeply flawed" practice of putting such things on displays. 

In a letter written on Oct 12, the New York's American Museum of Natural History president Sean Decatur told the staff: "Human remains collections were made possible by extreme imbalances of power." 

As per Decatur, who took up the position in April, many researchers in the 19th and 20th centuries used such collections to "advance deeply flawed scientific agendas rooted in white supremacy — namely, the identification of physical differences that could reinforce models of racial hierarchy". 

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The letter, published on its website, added, "Our Museum was the site of the Second Eugenics Congress in 1921, putting our institution’s civic and scientific authority behind a pseudo-scientific, racist, and xenophobic theory that was used to promote discriminatory policies. 

Decatur called the research "disturbing morally" and "flat-out wrong scientifically". 

Critics say that storing human remains has an educational value, but the museum president said in his letter that none of the items on display is so essential to the "goals and narrative" of the exhibition. "But at this moment, given the history of our human remains collections and how much we have still to learn, removal is the right course of action," the letter added. 

The announcement means the museum will now get rid of human remains, including the skeletons of indigenous and enslaved people who didn't end up in graves. The museum now is aiming to re-do its entire collection. 

In the statement, Decatur said, "We have the skeletal remains of approximately 12,000 individuals in the human osteology (skeletal) collection in the Division of Anthropology." 

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Decatur's statement revealed, "About 26% of the individuals in this collection are the skeletal remains of Native Americans from within the United States, with the remains of approximately 1,200 individuals housed at the Museum on behalf of the federal government and approximately 2,200 skeletal remains managed by our Cultural Resources Office according to the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)." 

The collection also includes the bodies of around 400 New Yorkers, which were apparently collected as recently as the 1940s. 

The remains are part of a "medical collection", whose bodies were initially given to medical schools.

The collection also has the bones of five Black adults unearthed from a Manhattan cemetery for enslaved people in 1903. 

The issue is not limited to the New York Museum.

Many US medical and anthropological institutions are also seeking to make amends for their controversial past practices, including the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, and the Peabody Museum at Harvard University.

The Penn Museum in Philadelphia issued an apology in the past over the Morton Crania collection containing Black and indigenous skulls. 

In the new policy guidelines, the natural history museum said that it will remove human remains, and improve the way they are stored. The museum will also look after greater resources for determining the origins and identities of remains. 

In his letter addressing the staff, Decatur wrote that “identifying a restorative, respectful action in consultation with local communities must be part of our commitment”. 

"From this painful legacy, it is our responsibility to develop a new ethical framework for our urgent work in this area, to study the history of the Museum, and step by step, to begin making concrete changes," the letter added. 

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