It has been one year since my staff and I wrote to Tribal Nations with the difficult news of a collection of hair clippings taken from Indigenous people around the world. The collection was amassed by anthropologist George Edward Woodbury in the early 1930s and donated to the Museum in 1935. Particularly distressing is that approximately 700 clippings came from named children and adults then at U.S. Indian boarding schools. More details of the collection, including historical documentation, can be found on our ...

On Thursday November 10th the Museum will be releasing information from a collection that is associated with Native American children in U.S. Indian Boarding Schools and other Indigenous relatives. This collection contains hair samples assembled by anthropologist George Edward Woodbury between 1930 – 1933 from across the world and donated to the Museum in 1935. The vast majority were taken from living people, including clippings of hair from approximately 700 Native American children attending U.S. Indian Boarding Schools. Many of these samples have the names of the...