THE WASHINGTON POST on the Smithsonian's "Racial Brain Collection"

From Nicole Dungca and Claire Healy's 8-14-23 WASHINGTON POST article entitled "Revealing the Smithsonian's 'Racial Brain Collection'":

Most of the brains were removed upon death from Black and Indigenous people and other people of color. They are part of a collection of at least 30,700 human bones and other body parts still held by the Natural History Museum, the most-visited museum within the Smithsonian. The collection, one of the largest in the world, includes mummies, skulls, teeth and other body parts, representing an unknown number of people.

The remains are the unreconciled legacy of a grisly practice in which bodies and organs were taken from graveyards, battlefields, morgues and hospitals in more than 80 countries. The decades-long effort was financed and encouraged by the taxpayer-subsidized institution. The collection, which was mostly amassed by the early 1940s, has long been hidden from view. The Washington Post has assembled the most extensive analysis and accounting of the holdings to date.

The vast majority of the remains appear to have been gathered without consent from the individuals or their families, by researchers preying on people who were hospitalized, poor, or lacked immediate relatives to identify or bury them. In other cases, collectors, anthropologists and scientists dug up burial grounds and looted graves.

The Natural History Museum has lagged in its efforts to return the vast majority of the remains in its possession to descendants or cultural heirs, The Post’s investigation found. Of at least 268 brains collected by the museum, officials have repatriated only four.

The Smithsonian requires people with a personal interest or legal right to the remains to issue a formal request, a virtual impossibility for many would-be claimants, since they are unaware of the collection’s existence. A federal law mandates that the Smithsonian only inform Native American, Alaska Native or Native Hawaiian communities about any remains, leaving an estimated 15,000 body parts in limbo.

To read the entire article, click HERE.