Harvard has remains of nearly 7,000 Native Americans and enslaved black people in museum collection

A leaked report has revealed that Harvard University is in possession of the remains of nearly 7,000 Native Americans and about 20 enslaved people. 

The draft was put together by a committee over the past year in an attempt to parse out how the university would handle its ties to America’s legacy of slavery.   

The university announced in April that it was setting aside $100million for an endowment fund and other measures to close the educational, social and economic gaps that are legacies of slavery and racism. 

The ‘unfinalized’ draft report was leaked this week by The Harvard Crimson.  

Evelynn M. Hammonds, the chair of the committee expressed disappointment over the leak. A professor of African American studies and the former dean of Harvard College, Hammonds called it ‘irresponsible.’ 

A leaked report has revealed that Harvard University is in possession of the remains of nearly 7,000 Native Americans and about 20 enslaved people, many of them held in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (pictured)

The remaining DNA is currently being held at the university’s Warren Anatomical Museum

She also referred to the document that got out as an ‘outdated version that does not reflect weeks of additional information and committee work’.

Evelynn M. Hammonds, the chair of the committee expressed disappointment over the leak. A professor of African American studies and the former dean of Harvard College, Hammonds called it ‘irresponsible’

Hammonds contends that the final report will feature DNA analysis, display and ethical stewardship of human remains and more detailed proposals in terms of what to do with the remains.  

Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow said in 2021 when he founded the committee that the school’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and Warren Anatomical Museum’s hold the remains of over 22,000 individuals.  

‘We know much about some of these individuals because they were accompanied by detailed records of their unique experiences, but others were afforded no biographical information,’ Bacow said in a statement at the time. 

‘The latter circumstance is a testament, in some cases, to the status of individuals at the times of their deaths or to the standards under which their remains came to be collected.’

Dr. Henry Louis Gates – the host of Finding Your Roots and a prominent academic – is one of the members of the committee

Professor Jane Pickering is another member of the 16-person committee to determine what to do with the remains

The committee was formed after the Peabody Museum conducted a review following protests that claimed they had not fulfilled legal duties requiring institutions to catalogue their various Native American artifacts and remains. 

It features some fairly well known academics, including Henry Louis Gates Jr., Philip J. Deloria, and Randall L. Kennedy. 

All museums are required to do so under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

The committee, within the draft report, suggested that ‘descendants’ of the remains should be consulted as to what to actually do with them, though not necessarily the reparations money.  

They defined descendants as either literal family members or the communities that the Indigenous or enslaved peoples come from.  

‘The best outcome of provenance research would be identification of lineal descendants but, if that is not possible, research should aim to ascertain descendant or affinity groups that have a direct social, emotional, family, or place-based connection to the individual, that is people who feel a direct responsibility or interest in the individual themselves,’ the draft report says.

The remains could either be given in a direct transfer to descendants, buried at an appropriate ceremony or gifted back to those communities. 

The April report that suggested the $100million ‘reparations’ fund laid out a history of slaves toiling on the campus and of the university benefiting from the slave trade and industries linked to slavery after slavery was outlawed in Massachusetts in 1783 – 147 years after Harvard’s founding.

The report also documents Harvard excluding black students and its scholars advocating racism.

Harvard University is setting aside $100million for an endowment fund and other measures to close the educational, social and economic gaps that are legacies of slavery and racism, the university´s president has said (file photo)

Bacow (pictured) said in April that a committee would explore transforming the recommendations into action and that a university governing board had authorized $100 million for implementation, with some of the funds held in an endowment

While Harvard had notable figures among abolitionists and in the civil rights movement, the report said, ‘the nation’s oldest institution of higher education … helped to perpetuate the era’s racial oppression and exploitation.’

The report’s authors recommended offering descendants of people enslaved at Harvard educational and other support so they ‘can recover their histories, tell their stories, and pursue empowering knowledge.’

Other recommendations included that the Ivy League school fund summer programs to bring students and faculty from long underfunded historically black colleges and universities to Harvard, and to send Harvard students and faculty to the institutions known as HBCUs, such as Howard University.

In his email, Harvard President Bacow said a committee would explore transforming the recommendations into action and that a university governing board had authorized $100 million for implementation, with some of the funds held in an endowment.