The Fight To Return Native Remains to Their Tribes

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News, Daily News, News Commentary, Politics

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2023

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The “Native American Graves and Repatriation Act” passed more than 30 years ago, with the goal of returning human remains, which were taken from native burial sites, back to their tribes. But museums and universities still hold the remains of thousands of people—UC Berkeley alone has nearly 10,000. Guest: Mary Hudetz, Propublica reporter focusing on tribal issues throughout the Southwest. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Amicus—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Make an impact this Women’s History Month by helping Macy’s on their mission to fund girls in STEM. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Pro-Publica's Mary Huditz has spent the last few months thinking about what it means
0:10.8	to be a collector.
0:13.2	Because museums all over the country have collections that mean a lot to her, collections of objects,
0:20.5	and collections of people.
0:23.7	Museums took our ancestors.
0:25.3	They took many people's ancestors, but they took the remains of Native Americans in
0:31.1	vast, you know, vast quantities.
0:39.0	Mary's a member of the Crow Tribe of Montana.
0:42.5	Growing up, she knew that museum curators and thrill seekers alike had pillaged Native
0:48.6	burial sites.
0:50.5	Sometimes bodies would be exposed and displayed.
0:54.6	In the 1800s, I think there was sort of a culture based on everything I read over the last
0:59.0	year of even amateurs going out and taking from grave sites and then, you know, going
1:06.1	to the museum to see if they wanted it.
1:08.9	Would you call them grave robbers?
1:11.0	In some cases, yes.
1:13.6	And thousands of remains are still with these institutions.
1:18.4	Yes.
1:22.4	Mary can rattle off these figures.
1:24.6	Harvard University houses the remains of more than 6,000 Native Americans.
1:29.4	Illinois State Museum has 7,000.
1:33.0	And the University of California Berkeley has even more, nearly 10,000.
	...

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