Dartmouth College says it has found the partial skeletal remains of 15 Native Americans housed in its anthropology department
Shannon O’Loughlin, chief executive of the Association on American Indian Affairs, a national group that assists tribes with repatriations, called the practice racist.
The remains, in its teaching collection in Silsby Hall, were discovered in November, following an audit spearheaded by Jami Powell, curator of Indigenous art at Dartmouth’s Hood Museum. “For me as an Indigenous person, it’s always important in my work that I treat these ancestors with the utmost care and respect and that an essential part of my function is helping them return home,” Powell said.
“Nobody had really taken the time or the effort to fully document what we had. This was around a time where our whole discipline was beginning to reflect a little more deeply on what it meant to be in the care of, or caring for human remains,” said DeSilva, the anthropology department’s chairman. The college is also working to repair the relationship with Native students and alumni, starting with a March meeting in which Hanlon apologized. The school also worked to accommodate Native students who were uncomfortable going into Silsby. Many Native Americans believe it is taboo to speak about the dead or be near them.
Shawn Attakai, co-president of the Native American Alumni Association of Dartmouth, said he was disappointed about the discovery and sad about the possibility that they could be from his own Navajo Nation, where he is a tribal lawyer. But Attakai also said he was not surprised.
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