Harvard Will Return Native American Hair Samples

Harvard College introduced Thursday that it’ll return hair samples collected within the Thirties from “700 Native American youngsters attending U.S. Indian boarding faculties. Many of those samples have the names of the kids whose hair was taken, in addition to their tribal affiliation. We estimate there are roughly 300 tribal nations represented within the whole of 700 youth.”

The announcement got here from Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

“We acknowledge that for a lot of Native American communities, hair holds cultural and religious significance and the museum is absolutely dedicated to the return of hair again to households and tribal communities,” mentioned the Peabody.

It added, “The Peabody Museum apologizes to Indigenous households and tribal nations for our complicity within the objectification of Native peoples and for our greater than 80-year possession of hair taken from their relations.”