What Remains: More MOVE remains found

Outside/In

NHPR

Society & Culture, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Nature, Science

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2024

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Just a few weeks after we released the What Remains series, news broke that the Penn Museum discovered additional remains of 1985 MOVE bombing victims in the museum. How did this happen? And what's next for the thousands of other human remains still in their possession? Producer Felix Poon knew just the person to talk to for answers. Featuring Rachel Watkins. MORE ABOUT “WHAT REMAINS” Across the country, the remains of tens of thousands of human beings are held by museums and institutions. Scientists say they’ve helped lay the foundations of forensic science and unlocked the secrets of humanity’s shared past. But these bones were also collected before informed consent was the gold standard for ethical study. 19th and 20th-century physicians and anthropologists took unclaimed bodies from poorhouses and hospitals, robbed graves, and looted Indigenous bones from sacred sites. Now, under pressure from activists and an evolving scientific community, these institutions are rethinking what to do with their unethically collected human remains. In this series from Outside/In, producer Felix Poon takes us to Philadelphia, where the prestigious Penn Museum has promised to “respectfully repatriate” hundreds of skulls collected by 19th century physician Samuel George Morton, who used them to pursue pseudo-scientific theories of white supremacy. Those efforts have been met with support by some, and anger and distrust by others. Along the way, Felix explores the long legacy of scientific racism, lingering questions over the 1985 MOVE bombing, and evolving ethics in the field of biological anthropology. Can the institutions that have long benefited from these remains be trusted to give them up? And if so, who decides what happens next? LINKS Read the Penn Museum’s statement about the latest discovery of additional MOVE remains at the museum. Listen to WHYY’s news report, Penn Museum discovers another set of human remains from the MOVE bombing. You can find our full episode credits, listen to our back catalog, and support Outside/In at our website: outsideinradio.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, this is Outside In producer Felix Poon.
0:03.4	I'm here with an update to our special mini-series, What Remains.
0:07.8	Just a few weeks after we finished our series, some big news broke.
0:12.1	The Penn Museum has discovered more human remains in its possession associated with the 1985 move bombing.
0:20.4	This is a news clip from NPR member. W.HYY's Peter Crimmons reported.
0:22.2	This is a news clip from NPR member station, W.HYY in Philadelphia.
0:26.3	Three years ago, after public protests, the Penn Museum returned what remains it had to the Africa family,
0:32.0	apologized, and promised to do an ongoing, comprehensive inventory of its holdings of human remains.
0:38.4	And now this week, more remains were discovered.
0:42.5	For those who listen to What Remains, this might sound like a bit of deja vu.
0:47.9	In the series, I reported that in 2021, the public learned the Penn Museum was holding the remains
0:53.6	of children who were murdered in the
0:55.6	1985 police bombing of the radical Black liberation group known as Move.
1:00.4	After public outcry, the Penn Museum said it returned, quote, all known move remains to the
1:06.0	Africa family, unquote.
1:08.0	This whole thing was a huge source of distrust in the museum, and critics were convinced
1:13.1	that the museum still had move remains in their possession. When I interviewed museum director
1:18.7	Chris Woods for the series, he denied this. Those remains remained here far, far, far too long,
1:25.7	and we returned all known move remains to the Africa family.
1:31.0	Move remains should not be in the museum, and, to our knowledge, they aren't.
1:36.6	So how is it that three years later, additional move remains were found in the museum?
1:46.0	I knew exactly who I wanted to talk to to get answers.
	...

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