The process of handling, analyzing and displaying human remains within museums and academic institutions became exponentially more complex after the dismantling of the South African apartheid in 1994. As governments and cultural groups from all over the globe petitioned for the remains of individuals housed within these institutions to be returned to their countries or peoples of origin for enactment of their cultural death rights, the process of analyzing said remains was challenged as disregarding their human rights. What was considered scientifically ethical and what was considered culturally ethical was not the same thing and certain methods used in analyzing human remains was seen by cultural groups as being in direct contradiction with the cultural practices of the individual being examined.
For example “bones estimated to be 9,300 years old were uncovered in the state of Washington. Since the bones make up one of the oldest and most complete skeletons ever found in the Pacific Northwest, they had the potential to yield important information about the lives and ethnic backgrounds of the first people to colonize America, however current U.S. law required they be handed back to the indigenous people of the area, the Umatillas. The likely outcome was reburial of the bones according to their customs and beliefs. Many anthropologists involved in the case believed that since the skeleton’s features do not suggest any close relationship to the Umatillas, it was inappropriate for the skeleton’s fate to rest solely with the Umatillas”. The surrender of such remains would of meant a loss of opportunity to analyze an ancient North American culture.
To help cull the mass numbers of petitions for the return of remains new policies were enacting, placing restrictions on which remains qualified for return, which petitions would be seen as valid and what the loss of remains would cost the academic community. In 1991, the World Archaeological Congress released its goals regarding indigenous peoples desire for artifact and human remains returns from museums and academic institutions.
They stated that it was necessary;
To acknowledge the importance of indigenous cultural heritage, including sites, places, objects, artifacts, human remains, to the survival of indigenous cultures.
To acknowledge the importance of protecting cultural heritage to the well being of indigenous peoples; To acknowledge that the important relationship between indigenous peoples and their cultural heritage exists irrespective of legal ownership;
To acknowledge that indigenous cultural heritage rightfully belongs to the indigenous descendants of that heritage;
To seek, whenever possible, representation of indigenous peoples in agencies funding or authorizing research to be certain their view is considered as critically important in setting research standards, questions, priorities and goals. “
The academic community was willing to listen to the claims for human remains returns from cultural groups however they were not willing to sacrifice progress and research to do so. As stated by Professor Phillip Tobias in The Life and Time of Sara Baartman The Hottentot Venus “not all people who have been dug up should be put back into the ground. Science would come to a stand still.” Instead a balance needed to be found.
In South Africa efforts were made to establish a community run museum on the site of excavations from which local people could grant scientists permission to study skeletal remains. Not all countries, however, were pushing for the return of their dead being held in museums and academic institutions. For example when “Egyptian citizens… called on their government to seek the repatriation of mummies.” Their petition did not gain the support of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, which has stated that it considered the remains well cared for in the particular institution concerned.
In situations when remains had been taken in unethical ways (methods outside the restrictions of anthropological and archeological practices such as grave robbing) museums and academic institutions strove to correct the injustice inflicted upon the remains, as was the case of the corpses of Klaas and Trooi Pienaar, originally from Gamopedi, in the Kuruman district. “Their ‘well-preserved’ corpses had been disinterred illegally from their graves on the farm Pienaarsputs on 4 October 1909… a few months after the Pienaars’ deaths from malarial fever. The corpses” were “sent out of South Africa after being ‘wound [with] white linen’ and forced into a barrel filled with two sacks of salt, after their knee joints had been cut. They” were “taken by sea to Europe, where they entered the world of racial science as museum artifacts of a primitive type. The collecting processes and classificatory systems of the museum of empire had denied them any biography or personhood other than what was granted through typology.” Upon the discovery of their identities and the manner in which they came into the possession of the Austrian Museum, the colleagues of the museum and Maria Teschler-Nicola began efforts to ensure the return of the remains of Klaas and Trooi Pienaar to South Africa. They received multiple ceremonies from both Austrian and South African officials to pay their respects. South Africa also reinstated the couple’s South African citizenship and they were then officially reburied on their former property on 12 August 2012.
Museums have evolved from their colonizing and racist beginnings and are becoming solely places of education, archiving the history of the world. To continue this evolution they need to adapt to an ever changing world, much like post-apartheid South Africa’s needed to rebuild itself after 1994. This transformation also means a new sensitivity to the remains housed in museums and academic institutions around the world, we need to remember a simple unifying fact. All human remains are and have always been human and as such they all deserve respect and to have their individual rights and cultural traditions recognized.
By, Alexis Cameron Ironside
18.D. Gareth Jones and Robyn J. Harris, “Archeological Human Remains: Scientific, Cultural, and Ethical Consideration,” Current Anthropology 39, no. 2 (April 1998): p. 254, doi:10.1086/204723.
19.D. Gareth Jones and Robyn J. Harris, “Archeological Human Remains,” p. 254.
20.D. Gareth Jones and Robyn J. Harris, “Archeological Human Remains,” p. 254.
21.The Life and Times of Sarah Baartman The Hottentot Venus, dir. Zola Maseko, 49 minutes 34 seconds.
22.D. Gareth Jones and Robyn J. Harris, “Archeological Human Remains,” p. 255.
23.Steven Gallagher, “Museums and the Return of Human Remains: An Equitable Solution?,” International Journal of Cultural Property 17, no. 01 (2010): p.78 , doi:10.1017/s0940739110000019.
24.Ciraj Rassool, “Re-storing the Skeletons of Empire,” p. 19.
25.Ciraj Rassool, “Re-storing the Skeletons of Empire,” p. 19.
26.Ciraj Rassool, “Re-storing the Skeletons of Empire,” p. 28.
27.Elizabeth Rankin, “Creating/Curating Cultural Capital,” p. 80.
