San Diego Museum Of Man 'Decolonizing' Collection Of Human Remains

Speaker 1: 00:00 At one point or another, many of us have been to a museum with human remains on display, whether it was the remains of the 500 year old Peruvian child at the San Diego Museum of man or Egyptian mummies and a traveling exhibition. Museums like the Museum of man are now putting more thought into whether or not they should be displaying these remains. Joining us to talk about this in San Diego, Union Tribune, senior reporter Peter row. Peter, welcome. Thanks for having me. So tell us about what the Museum of man calls the willows. What is it? Speaker 2: 00:30 The willows is something I've only been told about, uh, haven't been able to see it and neither will you. Uh, this is something that's kept out of sight from visitors and also from researchers is a climate controlled room. It's on the second floor. It's about 700 square feet or about the size of a one bedroom apartment and it contains the remains of somewhere between 5,000 to 8,000 individuals. Now, some of these are just bone fragments, uh, but summer skeletons, there are about 20 complete individuals and there are a number of mummies Speaker 1: 01:07 and those remains that are now in the willows were previously on display. Why did the museum decided to stop showcasing them? Speaker 2: 01:14 What happened was about five years ago, the museum began reconsidering its policies regarding human remains and they were being pushed by a number of sources. Uh, there's a, uh, a movement afoot within museum circles right now called decolonizing. It's reconsidering how they obtained and then how they display these human remains. So if you go back to the beginning of the Museum of man, it's over a hundred years ago. At that time it was common for anthropologists and others to pick up remains in various countries, uh, sometimes with permission of the local authority sometimes without bring them back and show them off. And in some ways there's a certain paternalistic attitude here, oh, where it was primarily a European or American researchers showing off the somewhat or supposedly primitive peoples, you know, to the amusement or the, uh, the enlightenment of the audience. But most of this was done without any kind of permission from the cultures involved. And so this is what decolonizing is about, is bringing into the museum and into the discussions about exhibits, these people that people whose ancestors were being put on display. Speaker 1: 02:42 I mean, so these remains were stolen. Speaker 2: 02:44 Yeah, I asked that question of Ben Garcia, who's the deputy director at the museum who's in charge of kind of this effort. And he, he bristled a little bit and said, actually as far as he knows all of the remains that the museum were taken legally, but you know, what was legal at that time. And in certain countries, that's kind of a broad definition. So there may not have been much. Um, well, what would we, would regard as, as a legal process today. Speaker 1: 03:15 And you mentioned you've never seen the willows. How did you find out about it? I actually Speaker 2: 03:21 was visiting the museum, you know, just as a tourist. Uh, I was looking around for things to take my grandkids to see when they were in town. And I, I'd always enjoyed the museum. And I remember it as a boy being struck by the mommies. Uh, so I went looking for the mommies. And what I found was a sign that said that a six individuals had been removed from display in keeping with the museum's new policy. And it said [inaudible] they're now being stored with 5,000 or more other, other bodies. And, and that number just kind of struck me as like, holy smokes, you know, they've got 5,000, 5,000 dead bodies in the museum. It's not really, you know, 5,000 dead bodies. Because as I say, many of these are represented just by a bone or a bone fragment. Speaker 1: 04:12 Hmm. So then what's the museum's new policy on displaying remains? Speaker 2: 04:16 The new policy is they're not going to be displaying remains on last and until they get permission from the descendants or representatives of the descendants culture. Uh, so there are committees primarily of the Kumeyaay locally, uh, who meet with museum officials and talk about displays, talk about shows. They're also trying to repatriate remains, they're identifying remains that do belong to the Kumeyaay tribe. And then deciding how best to basically to rebury them. Speaker 1: 04:51 And the San Diego Museum of man isn't the only institution going through this process. Talk to us about that. Speaker 2: 04:56 Yeah, that's correct. Um, at least say this is a movement, the decolonizing movement that kind of gained steam with the publication of a book called decolonizing museums. Oddly enough, Amy Lonetree, who's a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz wrote the book. Uh, it's been very influential. A number of museums have picked up on this, including some of the Smithsonian museums on their, kind of reconsidering how they, how they handle this. This also coincides with the rise of museums run by native American tribes. So if you go on some of the larger reservations, you'll find these museums. And of course they are at the forefront of doing the, the decolonizing work. Speaker 1: 05:43 And some of these remains and artifacts are from local Indian tribes. As you mentioned, one of the concerns with displaying them is that it's showing the group as being from the past is if they don't exist. Uh, can you talk to us about ways the museum is Speaker 2: 05:58 now trying to combat that perception? Yeah. That, that's something that came up in a, an earlier story I did too, about kind of the rise of the local tribes and their influence in the broader culture, you know, outside of the reservation, um, in the councils of government and chambers of commerce and museums. That is that the tribes are saying, listen, for decades, if not centuries, the dominant culture is kind of treated Indians as if they were something that we used to have when in fact the tribes, although quite small and much smaller than they used to be, still are out there, still are, are real flesh and blood people who have flesh and blood people interests and issues. Uh, and so they want to be involved and they want very much to be able to tell their own stories. So that's a big part of it is that the museum is trying to repair some kind of frayed relationships. And the, the tribes themselves, uh, want to be part of the process so that they can, they can have a voice in how their stories told. I've been speaking to San Diego Union Tribune, senior reporter Peter row. Peter, thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure, Jane.