The History of Racialised and Structural Violence and Unethical Objectivity in Anatomical Collections and a Movement Towards Legislation and a Radical Humanism in Anthropology

By Anna Moles, Associate Editor for Bioarchaeology

On May 20th, the Wenner-Gren Foundation hosted a panel discussion, “Skeletons in the Anthropological Closet”: Museum Collections and the Demand for Principles of Accountability. This was designed to discuss the ethics of museums obtaining and continuing to retain collections of human skeletal remains of individuals who did not consent to having their bodies used for such purposes. 

This event was organized by the Association of Black Anthropologists, Anthropology Southern Africa, and the Center for Experimental Ethnography. It was hosted by Deborah Thomas (Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania). Justin Dunnavant (Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at Vanderbilt University and Co-founder/President of the Society of Black Archaeologists) moderated the discussion with expert panellists, Rachel Watkins (Associate Professor in biocultural anthropology with an emphasis on African American biohistory and social history and the practices and histories of US American biological anthropology, American University), Chip Colwell (Editor-in-Chief, SAPIENS, a digital anthropology magazine of the Wenner-Gren Foundation with a PhD in Anthropology from Indiana University), Carlina de la Cova (Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of South Carolina, working on the biological and skeletal impact of social marginalization), Ciraj Rassool (Senior Professor of History and Director of the African Programme in Museum and Heritage Studies, University of the Western Cape), and Michael Blakey (NEH Professor of Anthropology, Africana Studies, and American Studies, and Founding Director of the Institute for Historical Biology at the College of William and Mary).

This was a powerful discussion that highlighted many shocking truths which in many cases where not new discussions but facts that go back decades. Yet without the legislation now being advocated, the actions that need to take place from these discussions have largely not moved forward. The recent article by Dunnavant, Justinvil and Colwell (2021) in Nature (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01320-4) discusses the incident that formed the basis of the abstract for this event which was the recent discovery that the skeletal remains of Tree and Delisha Africa, two Black girls killed in a US police bombing in 1985, might have been held in a university collection and studied for years by researchers, without the permission from their family. This being just the latest incident in a series of discoveries of the mistreatment of African American human remains in university collections, the article proposes legislation on African American skeletal remains in collections similar to what has gone before for Native American human remains. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nagpra/index.htm) was enacted as Federal law in 1990 and recognises that human remains of any ancestry "must at all times be treated with dignity and respect". This article and panel discussion make it evident that there remains a need for an African American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

While the discussion largely focused on the state of affairs in the US, Professor Rassool, who has written and edited several books about museums and public culture, brought a South African perspective to the table with stories of the defilements that occurred under apartheid, including the illegal disinterment of bodies and the unethical inclusion of the remains of people oppressed in life in anatomical and museum collections. Only recently has there begun to be policy development on human remains, with repatriation and restitutions.

The discussion highlighted the objectification of individuals, who’s stories had been forgotten as they were studied as isolated skeletal elements. The panellists advocated for a ‘radical humanism’ approach to anthropology which disrupts the predominant conceptualisation that anthropology as a stable, knowable, liberal subject, recognises the many ways that humans and non-humans are entangled, and centres justice, equity, and the reduction of harm as key aims of the anthropological project.

The event is available to watch on Vimeo on the Wenner-Gren bloghttp://blog.wennergren.org/2021/05/webinar-5-20-21/

A related upcoming event is the virtual conference, Settler Colonialism, Slavery, and the Problem of Decolonizing Museums, organised and hosted by the University of Penn Museum, which will take place October 20-23, 2021 https://decolonizingmuseums.com/