For folks rightly appalled by this, know there are an estimated 500,000 Indigenous ancestors in museum collections throughout the US, and the same number or more in collections throughout Europe. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-museums-rushed-fill-their-rooms-bones-180958424/ …https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1287875428485492736 …
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There is also a smaller yet significant number of enslaved African remains who aren’t subject to federal law for repatriation—which is why the philidelphia museum move is important. But wouldn’t have happened without community advocacy.
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Also these remains aren’t prehistoric bones. Many of these are folks from the 1800s and later—the age of my great-great grandparents. There are also millions of Native funerary objects in collections too—grave robberies.
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The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which lays out how museums must work toward repatriating these ancestors home, wasn’t passed until 1990:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_Graves_Protection_and_Repatriation_Act …
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As someone who has worked and researched in museums, there is good work happening in these areas, but the heartache being steered away by a museum staffer from specific aisles or drawers in dark and dusty collections because they contain ancestors never leaves you. Horrific.
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Replying to @NativeApprops
The last Beothuk peoples were on display in a glass case in Scotland at the National Museum there and refused to repatriate until the federal gov’t got involved. I think they still refused to send back the “artifacts” that belonged to them. Terrible stuff, sickening.
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I suspect you know this already, it’s just so fucking galling. No respect.
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