Commitment to Return
The Peabody Museum at Harvard University is committed to the return of hair to families and Tribal Nations.
In September 2022, the Museum began contacting US Tribal Nations to repatriate hair clippings to lineal descendants and Tribal Nations. On November 30, 2022, after review, the Department of the Interior informed the Museum that the collection is subject to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). We are working with the Department of the Interior’s National NAGPRA Program on implementation of the NAGPRA process with respect to the Woodbury Collection. The Museum and the Department are committed to a partnership with the aim of a respectful, effective, and efficient returns process, while still following the requirements of the regulations.
The current process for repatriation can be found under Returns through NAGPRA. The process for returns to International Indigenous communities can be found under International and Domestic Returns Beyond NAGPRA.
In our efforts to bring light and transparency to this history, we acknowledge that sharing this information has the potential to reopen wounds and retraumatize Indigenous people.
There is a painful link to difficult histories of colonization that created exploitative contexts in which hair could be taken from Indigenous people to then be possessed by researchers and museums. The history of this collection and its use for anthropological study are entangled with settler colonial systems of dispossession and assimilation in locations such as US boarding schools and Canadian Indian hospitals.
If you need support, there are several options available to you. The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition has a list of resources for US Indian boarding school survivors and family members in need of assistance. Indigenous peoples across Canada can call the the Hope for Wellness Help Line 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for counselling and crisis intervention at 1-855-242-3310 or connect to the online chat at hopeforwellness.ca.
Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced the Indian Boarding School Initiative in 2021, stating that, “... the legacy of Indian boarding schools remains, manifesting itself in Indigenous communities through intergenerational trauma, cycles of violence and abuse, disappearance, premature deaths, and other undocumented bodily and mental impacts.”
In May 2022, the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report was published, noting that the Federal Indian boarding school system consisted of 408 Federal schools across 37 states or then-territories, including 21 schools in Alaska and 7 schools in Hawaii established between 1819-1969.
The report clearly states the suffering and abuse that occurred in the Federal Indian boarding school system, including:
The Federal Indian boarding school system deployed systematic militarized and identity-alteration methodologies to attempt to assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children through education, including but not limited to the following: (1) renaming Indian children from Indian to English names; (2) cutting hair of Indian children; (3) discouraging or preventing the use of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian languages, religions, and cultural practices; and (4) organizing Indian and Native Hawaiian children into units to perform military drills (page 7, emphasis added).
The hair clippings collected and accumulated by George Woodbury, in collaboration with Federal agents, boarding school administrators, and others, are a part of this history of abuse. The return of hair back to lineal descendants and Tribal Nations supports the goals of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition to address historical and intergenerational trauma and encourage continued mourning and healing for survivors and their families.
In September 2024, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) apologized for its role, and the role of the medical profession, in past and ongoing harms to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples in the Canadian health system. The apology was published along with a summary of harms caused by the Indian hospital system that demonstrate the racist, colonial, and paternalistic attitudes toward Indigenous Peoples, including:
The Indian hospital system embedded systemic racism and discrimination in the Canadian health system by fostering racial segregation and conditions where Indigenous patients received substandard and unsafe care. Patients were subjected to abuse, experimental treatments and forced and coerced sterilization. ...Medical experimentation was conducted on Indigenous children in residential schools, including studying the effects of malnourishment and withholding necessary care. Medical experimentation was conducted on Indigenous adults, including studying the effects of nutritional interventions and testing experimental tuberculosis vaccines and treatments. ...Inuit were forced to relocate to tuberculosis sanatoriums far from their homes, without community support, without their informed consent and against their wishes. Many patients died and their remains were never returned home. Indigenous women, some men and two-spirit people underwent forced and coerced sterilization outside the Indian hospital system.
Indian hospitals in Canada served as sites of segregated medical treatment during tuberculosis outbreaks and treated Indigenous patients as subjects of medical and nutritional experiments, including the collecting of hair clippings as specimens for anthropological research. Instead of a place of healing, hospitals often became places of additional trauma for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities.