#  Addressing the Woodbury Collection 

 



##  Addressing the Woodbury Collection 

 

 

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 WARNING: This webpage includes information about trauma endured by Native American children in U.S. Indian Boarding Schools and other Indigenous individuals and ancestors in contexts of exploitation. If you are feeling triggered, here is [a list of resources ](https://boardingschoolhealing.org/self-care-resources/)from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.



 

##  Overview 

The Peabody Museum at Harvard stewards a collection of hair clippings from Indigenous people around the world assembled by anthropologist George Edward Woodbury in the 1930s and donated to the Museum in 1935. The vast majority are from North America, including clippings of hair from approximately 700 Native American children attending U.S. Indian Boarding Schools and approximately 100 First Nation and Inuit individuals from Canadian hospital contexts. Many of those clippings are associated with named individuals.

To support the return of hair clippings, this website makes available information on this collection, which includes the tribal affiliations of Native American individuals in the United States and Canadian First Nations and Inuit individuals whose hair was taken, as well as the sites of collection, including boarding schools, reservations, hospitals, and museums. The collection also includes hair collected from individuals in Asia, Central America, South America, and Oceania. Further information, including provenance, will be shared as soon as possible.

**The Peabody Museum is in the process of repatriating hair clippings. Repatriation in the United States is undertaken through the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Repatriation to communities outside the United States follows the Museum's** [**process for international returns.**](/international-and-domestic-returns)



 

## **The Peabody Museum at Harvard University is committed to the return of hair to families and Tribal Nations.**

The process for returns within the United States can be found under [Returns through NAGPRA](/wc-returns-nagpra).

The process for returns to Canada can be found under [International and Domestic Returns](/international-and-domestic-returns).



 

  [### Lists of Tribal Affiliations and Sites of Collection

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  [### Commitment to Return

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  [### About the Collection

 ](/about-woodburycollection) 

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  [### FAQ

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##  Acknowledgment 

**The Peabody Museum apologizes to Indigenous families, First Nations, Inuit, and Tribal Nations for our complicity in the objectification of Native peoples and for our more than 80-year possession of hair taken from their relatives.**

We recognize that for many Indigenous communities, hair holds cultural and spiritual significance. Hair is sacred and is filled with meaning and power. The dispossession of hair from Native Americans has caused spiritual and emotional harm to those individuals and their descendants.

It is impossible to talk about hair taken from Indigenous people and its possession by the Peabody Museum without acknowledging the ties between early anthropological practices and colonialism, imperialism, and scientific racism. Sites such as US Indian boarding schools and Canadian Indian hospitals were places of abuse, discrimination, and exploitation that enabled anthropologists, like George Woodbury and others, to collect and study hair taken from Indigenous people.

Collections such as this exemplify the ways in which physical anthropology has often turned people and ancestors into "study subjects" and "specimens." Now, it is the Museum’s responsibility to address that difficult history and its legacies within and outside the Museum through active collaboration with Indigenous families, First Nations, Inuit, and Tribal Nations.