Attitudes Towards Treatment and Return of Human Remains: a British Perspective

Attitudes towards treatment and return of human remains: A British perspective. Ratan Vaswani, Museums Association, United Kingdom

In recent years the presence, the treatment, the display of human remains in museum collections and their return to source communities have been the subject of intense debate and are part of an unfolding international political agenda. This agenda centres around redressing past wrongs in the treatment of colonial and imperial subjects and gaining parity with ‘whites’. There have been influential international agreements such as the Vermillion Accord passed by the World Archaeological Congress in 1989 and the UN Draft Declaration on Rights of Indigenous People in 1993. Trailblazing legislation has been passed in countries with first nations. Since 1990 under NAGPRA (the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act), what happens to the remains of native Americans has shifted in favour of their living representatives, away from scientists and museums. NAGPRA and similar laws have exerted a powerful influence far beyond the countries in which they apply. Three weeks ago, on 5 November, a Human Remains Working Group reported to the Minister for the Arts in the UK, making recommendations that may bring Britain into line with what may well be an emerging international regime, one in which native people take greater control from institutions in deciding what becomes of ancestral remains.

The recommendations[i] made to the UK government include these:

museums should be legally empowered, but not compelled, to relinquish human remains to claimant groups
a Human Remains Advisory Panel should be established to make recommendations to museums on issues such as treatment, use, safekeeping and return of human remains
museums should only hold human remains under licence
the privilege of licence to hold human remains should be underpinned by consent from and with due respect for the views of genetic or cultural descendants of the dead.

At the heart of the report and its recommendations is the issue of who controls human remains. Should it be museums as corporate entities? Staff working in them? A licensing authority? Should cultural descendants with no proven genetic link have the decisive word or should this be the privilege only of genealogical descendants? And what about the wishes of the dead themselves?

Interestingly there were no submissions to the Working Group in the UK on return of ancient Egyptian human remains to Egypt[ii]. This is despite the large holdings of such remains in some museums and the extensive knowledge we have of just how contrary it would have been to ancient Egyptian religious belief that the final resting place of the dead should be anywhere other than a private tomb. It may be the case that the best champions of the ancient Egyptian dead in museums are their visitors, often neglected stakeholders in the debate around human remains. Hugh Kilmister will speak more about this shortly.

The two most vocal participants in the debate, of course, have been, on the one hand, western researchers; on the other, representatives of indigenous peoples in North America, the Pacific and Australasia, from whom there have been increasing requests for return of ancestral remains. Indigenous groups have welcomed the UK report[iii]. But the research community has expressed great concern that the report may result in the loss to science of material it considers indispensable to humanity’s knowledge of itself, as indigenous groups rebury the bones.

One member of the Working Group that produced the report, Sir Neil Chalmers, Director of the National History Museum in London, has issued a Statement of Dissent[iv] in which he claims that if adopted the proposals for seeking consent from indigenous groups amount to the introduction of a regime of mandatory repatriation. He says that if museums can only hold human remains with consent from indigenous groups they will be forced rather than merely legally able to give them up, that such a situation is not in the best interests of science and therefore humanity. He says that indigenous communities alone cannot ultimately be trusted to make the right decisions about the remains of the dead.

Look, say the scientists, at fields such as physical anthropology, where research has often been led by developments in the UK, which has the advantage of holding very diverse collections that enable study of similarities and differences among and within populations across time[v]. Human remains have been used to improve understanding of cultural practices such as foot-binding and infanticide. Forensic anthropology, contributing to the identification of victims of crime or disaster, has made enormous gains from the comparative study of human remains in a variety of post-mortem contexts. Demographic studies have explored lifestyles, diet and seasonal food shortages and the effects of these on the age and gender balance of society. Studies of human remains have also illuminated population movements, intermarriage between peoples, historical contact, evolution and our diversity and unity as a species.

These are examples of how there are without question profound benefits for science from studying human remains held in museums and other institutions. Not to be able to undertake such study would, it is claimed, constitute violation of academic freedom. However, academic freedom is not the absolute right to study anything you wish in any way you wish. The principle that some research is unacceptable is firmly established by precedent such as treatment of results from Nazi experimentation on unwilling human subjects. Here it is generally accepted that the conditions of the research tainted the results so that they are not to be used. One of the premises of the report in the UK is that the circumstances in which material was gathered affect how it may legitimately be used. Just as without question there are benefits for science from studying human remains, many of them were without question acquired without respect for source communities or their beliefs and certainly without consent. There are well-documented cases of human remains that ended up in museums having come from desecration of the graves of oppressed peoples, theft, and occasionally, murder.

In the 1860s, John Lord, a boundary survey naturalist, stole from a chief in the Fort Rupert area of British Columbia a culturally-shaped head of an Indian, who had been shot and decapitated in a raid, and gave it to the British Museum for comparison with other culturally-shaped heads. In 1888 the remains of Inakayal, a Mapuche chief in Argentina, were transferred from his deathbed to the collections of La Plata Museum. Those are just two representative examples[vi]. The belief that one cultural group has the right to display, to carry out research, to do as it will with the bodies of another cultural group is, it is implied in the UK report, a form of racism at odds with enlightened science and the spread of humanitarian values that underpin modern museums, modern anthropology.

The key questions asked by the report revolve around consent, including this one: Is the lack of original consent surrounding the acquisition of many human remains in museums merely a historical fact, presenting no barrier to their continued retention and use? The answer to this question may lie in two areas. First, museums broadening their notions of family to incorporate non-western views of kinship across generations, in order to determine who can rightly give and from whom family consent should be sought. Second, aligning museum practice with that in other public institutions. I will speak more about the first area later but I want now to look at what currently happens in UK museums and what happens in other domains, notably medicine. Existing museum practice is such that museums accept that close relatives of the dead have autonomy over their remains, a right to their possession, exclusive power to decide whether or not they can be displayed, whether or not research can be carried out on them. Educational and scientific interests become subordinate here, deferring to other values, just as they do in institutions other than museums.

Logical and ethical consistency demand that the debate about human remains in museums cannot, at least in Britain, be separated from debate about body parts held by other institutions. In Britain in the last few years it has been impossible to discuss treatment of the bodies of the dead without referring to a scandal that exploded into the national consciousness. At Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool, without parental consent, the bodies of babies were stripped of their organs, kept in jars, stored in cupboards and in some cases sold. Following the scandal the Chief Medical Officer in the UK proposed a statement of principles that the Working Group believe to be transferable to museums. These principles[vii] are:

respect (for people who have died and their families)
understanding (that love and feelings of responsibility remain after death)
informed consent (enabling fully informed choices to be made)
time and space (to consider what decisions to make)
skill and sensitivity (in dealing with those close to a patient or deceased person)
information (to improve understanding and decision-making)
cultural competence (ensuring that different attitudes to post-mortems, burial and use of organs and tissue are recognised)
a ‘gift’ relationship (shifting the emphasis from organ retention to organ donation)

Interestingly, whereas there is explicit reference here to ‘cultural competence’, there is no reference to the principle of respect for scientific research. Human remains are conceived of as more than solely biological residue, they are cultural and have cultural impacts. Regardless of value to science no museum should display, use or hold human remains contrary to the wishes of the deceased or their close relatives or genealogical descendants. Within the group there was unanimity on this principle[viii]. Within the group there was also, however, a revealing divergence of opinion. A minority believed that the paramount need for consent should not be extended to any person or group unable to demonstrate a direct family or genealogical connection. This section of the Working Group believed that the views of communities who claimed an interest in the remains should be heard but not necessarily outweigh consideration of the social and scientific benefits of their use in museums. The majority in the group took a different view: that strict focus on genealogy fails to recognise the diversity of views in non-western cultures about kinship and who in those belief systems can legitimately claim affinity with the living and with the dead. In other words, cultural competence, if it is to be applied as a principle, will oblige institutions to look case-by-case at particular cultures and belief systems to identify who is the equivalent of a family member in western society, with authority to give or withhold consent, and that such withdrawal will override the wishes of researchers. The equivalent to family members in western society may well be, in a non-western context, genealogically unrelated members of communities that consider themselves descendant from cultural ancestors.

No-one knows how far the proposals and recommendations of the Working Group will be adopted by the UK government, although some legislative change seems certain. The consequences of future legislation in the light of the report in terms of loss of material to science may not be as harmful as some observers have suggested. The proposals are, after all, less far-reaching than legislation such as NAGPRA in the US. Here, federally-funded museums are unequivocally obliged on request by both lineal and cultural descendants to repatriate native American remains and associated funerary artefacts. Whilst there has been conflict between scientists and indigenous groups, most controversially over Kennewick Man, NAGPRA has not led to the catastrophic depletion of museum holdings that were once predicted. Instead there has been a healthy accommodation of native rights in professional policy and procedures resulting in a more secure mandate for US museums to fulfil their public service and educational roles.

Whatever the extent of adoption by the UK government of the Working Group’s report what will change will be the climate in which museums hold and use human remains. I will describe this changed climate by saying a little about some of the principles that the group hopes will inform museum practice[ix][x]. They are derived from the principles referred to earlier for good practice in retention of human organs in UK hospitals:

Unique status
Respect and reverence
Full evaluation
External reference
Consensus
Cultural Competence
Consent
Authority
Sympathy and Sensitivity
Candour and Communication
Rationality

Unique status and 2. Respect and Reverence

Museums have until recent times operated under an assumption inherited from the past that human remains, particularly those of indigenous peoples are mere ‘objects’. It is now generally and will increasingly be recognised that human remains are unlike any other category of material in museum collections. They are invested with social and cultural meanings. Any museum which denies, ignores or devalues those meanings will not be licensed or otherwise privileged to hold them. It is inconceivable that a museum in the UK would in the developing climate be allowed to hold human remains of well-known, particular named individuals, degraded in their lifetimes and in death in the way typified by: the Botswanan known as ‘El Negro’, whose remains were held in Catalonia; or Sara Baartman, whose remains were held at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. These remains were returned to Africa in 2000 and 2002 respectively.

3. Full evaluation, 4. External reference and 5. Consensus

Where once museums might have dismissed the stake that claimant groups had in decisions over human remains, it seems likely that their place at the negotiating table will increasingly be as secure as that traditionally enjoyed by scientists and researchers. Furthermore, decision-making will be increasingly subject to judgment informed by mediators and bodies external to and independent of the museum, including perhaps a Human Remains Advisory Panel, as advocated in the report.

6. Cultural Competence

Particularly when it was not an anthropological museum but a medical or natural history museum that happened to have in its collections non-western human remains the museum has too often made decisions based only on western assumptions about, for example, grief and bereavement. All museums will increasingly be expected to recognise that, for example, within some cultures feelings of bereavement and responsibility pass from generation to generation so that descendants removed in time remain outraged and distressed at the manner in which human remains were originally removed and handled.

7. Consent

There is a suggestion in the report of a hierarchy of levels of consent which museums should seek and base decisions on[xi]:

The express wishes of the deceased person, if known
The wishes of genealogical descendants, and wider social families, if known
The wishes of the cultural community of origin, if still in existence
The wishes of representatives of the country of origin, if exact provenance cannot be established

8. Authority

There is a particular problem for museums invited to deal with groups that claim to represent particular communities rather than the communities themselves. Have such groups conducted substantial and effective dialogue with the source community? The museum will be unable to act without a direct mandate. This will be a particular problem for museums with material from, for example, remote peoples, peoples whose lines of cultural continuity are unclear or those where a variety of groups contest the right to be spokespeople. At worst such a situation can lead to one tribe being pitted against another or scenarios where human remains are treated according to the ritual of groups which are geographically close but culturally distinct. An archaeological excavation at Thulamela in South Africa led to dispute between two local groups and a reburial later criticised for the erection of Christian crosses on the graves[xii].

9. Sympathy and Sensitivity

Museums will need increasingly to accustom themselves to the different approaches that different communities have to the time and space needed to resolve a problem. An example that highlights how even legislation sympathetic to indigenous groups may not lead to institutions displaying the right sensitivity is that of the controversy surrounding Kennewick Man in the United States[xiii]. In 1998 an Archaeologist in the state of Washington found remains radiometrically dated at 9,000 years old which displayed what he called ‘caucasoid’ features. Whilst the remains are of different stock from modern native Americans neither are they proof of ancient European settlement across all of North America. The remains are likely to have deep Asian roots, similar to those of the Ainu, but under NAGPRA this is immaterial. They predate modern European settlement and are therefore Native American. They were claimed under NAGPRA by the Umatilla nation who were widely represented as attempting to bury the truth about pre-historic white settlement of the hemisphere against the reasonable desire of scholars merely to establish facts. However, in trying to contact the Umatilla nation to request permission to study the remains, a Smithsonian osteologist allowed only two weeks for the tribe to respond to a letter. Receiving no reply, he and several colleagues requested an injunction to keep the remains from reburial. This escalated into a full-scale media and legal event. Control of the remains has been in court ever since, surrounded by acrimony on all sides. A more sympathetic and sensitive approach may have led to more co-operation in making the remains available and yielded better science.