Monthly Archives: January 2022

In the fall of 1999, The New Yorker published a short piece about a twenty-three-year-old writer who had just released her first novel, in England. Zadie Smiths White Teeth was due to be published in the U.S. in the spring of 2000kicking off the millennium with a bang. White Teeth, a gentle satire of migration and cultural identity, concerns, among other matters, Nazi eugenics programs, the eschatology of Jehovahs Witnesses, the DNA of mice, and a militant group called Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation, or KEVIN, the piece, by Kevin Jackson, observes. Smith writes like an old hand, and, sometimes, like a dream. It can be immensely pleasurable, years later, to revisit the initial discovery of new talents and works of art, the people and projects that gave a decade its own flavor and Zeitgeist.

Sign up for Classics, a twice-weekly newsletter featuring notable pieces from the past.

This week, were bringing you a selection of piecesa culture review, of sortsthat capture the creative pulse of the early two-thousands. In Dont Look Back and New Frontiers, Anthony Lane explores the mind-bending machinations of Michel Gondrys Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the spare poignancy of Ang Lees Brokeback Mountain. (Brokeback Mountain, which began as an Annie Proulx story in these pages, comes fully alive as the chance for happiness dies. Its beauty wells from its sorrow.) In Flesh on Flesh, John Updike reviews Atonement, Ian McEwans majestic novel of unfulfilled love. (The frail, moist flesh, mutilated in war, corseted and shamed in peacetime, and subject, in the long view, to swift decay, gives this intricately composed narrative its mournful, surging life.) In Living Pains, Sasha Frere-Jones considers Mary J. Bliges accomplished career as she releases her eighth studio album. In Under the Spell and Counterlives, Joan Acocella delves into the phenomenon of the Harry Potter series and analyzes the far-reaching themes of Philip Roths The Plot Against America. (In an eerie conversion, The Plot Against America transforms the piety-spouting, finger-shaking elders of the Roth oeuvre into prophets.) In Sympathy for the Devil, Kelefa Sanneh studies the shifting musical styles of the rapper Eminem. Finally, in Heartbreak Hotels, David Denby examines how Sofia Coppola captures the loneliness and humor of Bill Murrays faded movie-star character in Lost in Translation. Coppola doesnt punch up her scenes; shes not interested in tension leading to a climax but in moods and states of being, Denby writes. Not much happens, but Coppola is so gentle and witty an observer that the movie casts a spell.

Erin Overbey, archive editor

Ian McEwans semi-Austenesque novel, Atonement.

At twenty-three, the author has had the nerve to ignore her misgivings and produce her dbut novel, White Teeth.

Philip Roths The Plot Against America.

Brokeback Mountain and The Chronicles of Narnia.

Lost in Translation and Dirty Pretty Things.

Eminem pleads his case.

Harry Potter explained.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Mary J. Bliges chronic brilliance.

Read more here:

Sunday Reading: A Cultural Review of the Aughts - The New Yorker

Shortly after the Mexican Revolution, the countrys leaders believed the best way to create a healthy young generation was through campaigns and efforts to minimize disability. In their eyes, disability both physical and intellectual was the effect of unhygienic living conditions or poor parenting. Minimize the cause, they figured, and the effect is ultimately reduced.

Susan Antebi, an associate professor in the department of Spanish & Portuguese in the University of Torontos Faculty of Arts & Science, says she wanted to dive into this period of history and study the perceptions and attitudes toward human differences elements of which are still perpetuatedtoday.

One of the unique aspects of my work is disability studies, says Antebi. I focus on departures from notions of normalcy, and on the ways such differences reshape our perceptions of history, as well as the injustices disabled people are often subjected to, historically and in the present day.

In Mexicos case, the approach to people living with disabilities in the early part of the 20th centuryaligned with the countrys overarching goal of eugenics the promotion of desired characteristics in order to improve future generations. While Antebi says Mexicos version of eugenics wasnt as harsh as those adopted by other countriesfor example, there were no sterilization programs for people with disabilities such as those conducted in Nazi Germany or the United States in the 1930s and 1940s she notes Mexicos government leaders still believed disability could be minimized.

Antebi says the topic has received relatively little attention.

It's a time period of very rich cultural production, says Antebi. People have worked a lot on the Mexican Revolution because it's such a tumultuous cultural period. But disability has not really been emphasized, and I thought that was something important to bring to the forefront.

That led Antebi to bring together Mexican literature, history, disability studies and personal reflections in her book,Embodied Archive: Disability in Post-Revolutionary Mexican Cultural Production,which was awarded theTobin Siebers Prize for Disability Studies in the Humanitieslate last year.

The title of the book refers to the experience of witnessing written documents, embodying them, or making them new through our experience, says Antebi. This witnessing as reactivation of the past also allows for a space through which to denounce historical and ongoing injustices.

Conducting archival research for the book, Antebi spent five months in Mexico City in 2014. She divided her time between the Archivo General de la Nacin (National Archive) and the Archivo Histrico de la Secretara de Salud Pblica (Public Health Archive).

There were many things that struck me certainly it's very disturbing, says Antebi. But my interest in the book was not just to study the contents of these documents, but also to write about the experience of encountering them in our contemporary world to think about what they mean, and what they come to mean in the present day.

In the archives, Antebi discovered a great deal of scrutiny paid to children, including anthropometric measurements of their bodies lung capacity, height and weight as well as their IQs.

Its very closely tied to notions of race and racialization, says Antebi. There's a sense in which the ideal Mexican population is Mestizo a mix of Indigenous and European ancestry coming together to forge a new and powerful race. And so, part of those measurements and interest in gradually purging the nation of unwanted differences coincide with that racial imperative.

Rigorous measuring and monitoring extended to the state of school buildings, with an emphasis on air quality, more hygienic spaces, lighting and even school desk and textbook placement.

Theres this biological metaphor that goes between the children who occupy the school and the health of the building, says Antebi. There were physicians who went into schools to monitor both the children and the buildings to make sure things were working properly.

In addition to frequent measurements and testing, there were also anti-alcohol campaigns, programs to eradicate syphilis, as well as efforts to enhance prenatal and postnatal care.

There were all kinds of social activities and programs to improve the health and robustness of the population, and ultimately create a positive impact and improve reproductive outcomes, says Antebi.

The efforts created a history of injustices for children with disabilities and their families.

The use of IQ tests, along with anthropometric testing, meant that schoolchildren were labeled as retrasados or delayed, and placed in different groups or sent to special schools, says Antebi.

Terminology such as idiots, imbeciles and feebleminded was used. Large sectors of the population were classified as abnormal because of their socioeconomic status, disability or appearance.

In some cases, the families of children with disabilities received public welfare. But many of them were kept in institutions against their will. Some children, either because of disabilities, behaviour or socioeconomic status, were sent to farm schools where they were expected to work to partially subsidize their cost of living.

One of the conclusions from my research is that eugenics, as a way of thinking,doesn't really end in the 1940s, says Antebi. Many of these ways of thinking about what constitutes a healthy child or a normal person continue and are perpetuated in different ways today.

Thats why she believes studying this history is so important.

The archive is not just a fixed repository in the past, its part of a disability genealogy through which we can go back and understand the connections and have a better understanding of how we conceive of differences today.

Original post:

U of T researcher explores perceptions of disability in post-revolutionary Mexico - News@UofT

Kathryn Paige Harden at Politics and Prose

Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality might sound like a book written by a 20th-century eugenicist, but its author, Kathryn Paige Harden, is far from that. A professor of clinical psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, director of the Developmental Behavior Genetics Lab, and co-director of the Texas Twin Project, Harden has spent years researching how DNA differences play a large role in educational and economic success to propose a new society where everyone thrives, regardless of how one fares in the genetic lottery. In her book, Harden chronicles the complicated history of genetics, sharing both her and other scientists findings, as well as personal experiences and analogies that help demonstrate how genetic inheritance can sometimes be sheer luck. Throughout Genetic Lottery, Harden challenges notions of racial superiority and eugenics to reclaim the field of genetics, arguing that we must acknowledge the importance (and power) of DNA to create a fairer world. On Jan. 24, at yet another Politics and Prose virtual event, Harden will be joined by Angela Duckworth, founder and the CEO of Character Lab, to discuss Genetic Lottery and how it can be applied to making real-life social change. The virtual talk starts at 6 p.m. on Jan. 24. Registration required. politics-prose.com. Free.

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City Lights: Professor and Author Kathryn Paige Harden at Politics and Prose - Washington City Paper

This weekends March for Life rally, the large anti-choice demonstration held annually in Washington DC to mark the anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision, has the exuberant quality of a victory lap. This, the 49th anniversary of Roe, is likely to be its last. The US supreme court is poised to overturn Roe in Dobbs v Jackson Womens Health, which is set to be decided this spring. For women in Texas, Roe has already been nullified: the court went out of its way to allow what Justice Sonia Sotomayor called a flagrantly unconstitutional abortion ban to go into effect there, depriving abortion rights to the one in 10 American women of reproductive age who live in the nations second largest state.

These victories have made visible a growing cohort within the anti-choice movement: the militias and explicitly white supremacist groups of the organized far right. Like last year, this years March for Life featured an appearance by Patriot Front, a white nationalist group that wears a uniform of balaclavas and khakis. The group, which also marched at a Chicago March for Life demonstration earlier this month, silently handed out cards to members of the press who tried to ask them questions. America belongs to its fathers, and it is owed to its sons, the cards read. The restoration of American sovereignty must follow the restoration of the American Family.

Explicit white nationalism, and an emphasis on conscripting white women into reproduction, is not a fringe element of the anti-choice movement. Associations between white supremacist groups and anti-abortion forces are robust and longstanding. In addition to Patriot Front, groups like the white nationalist Aryan Nations and the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party have also lent support to the anti-abortion movement. These groups see stopping abortion as part of a broader project to ensure white hegemony in addition to womens subordination. Tim Bishop, of the Aryan Nations, noted that Lots of our people join [anti-choice organizations] Its part of our Holy War for the pure Aryan race. That the growing white nationalist movement would be focused on attacking womens rights is maybe to be expected: research has long established that recruitment to the alt-right happens largely among men with grievances against feminism, and that misogyny is usually the first form of rightwing radicalization.

But the affinity goes both ways: just as the alt right loves the anti-choice movement, the anti-choice movement loves the alt right. In 2019, Kristen Hatten, a vice-president at the anti-choice group New Wave Feminists, shared racist content online and publicly identified herself as an ethnonationalist. In addition to sharing personnel, the groups share tactics. In 1985, the KKK began circulating Wanted posters featuring the photos and personal information of abortion providers. The posters were picked up by the anti-choice terrorist group Operation Rescue in the early 90s. Now, sharing names, photos, and addresses of abortion providers and clinic staff is standard practice in the mainline anti-choice movement, and the stalking and doxing of providers has become routine. More recently, anti-abortion activists have escalated their violence, returning to the murderous extremism that characterized the movement in the 1990s: In Knoxville, a fire that burned down a planned parenthood clinic on New Years Eve was ruled an arson. Maybe the anti-choice crowd is taking tips from their friends in the alt right.

Its not that the anti-abortion movements embrace of white nationalism is totally uncomplicated. When the Traditionalist Worker Party showed up at a Tennessee Right to Life march in 2018, the organizers shooed them off, and later issued a statement saying they condemned violence both from the right, and from left wing groups like antifa. Hatten was fired from her anti-choice job after a public outcry. The anti-choice movement has even started trying to appropriate the language of social justice. They posit equality between embryos and women, try to brand abortion bans as feminist, incessantly compare abortion to the Holocaust, and claim that abortion is an act rife with the potential for eugenic manipulation, in the words of supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas. Anti-choice groups are eager to claim the moral authority of historical struggles against oppression, even as they work to further the oppression of women.

But the link between the anti-choice movement and white supremacy is much older and more fundamental than this recent, superficial social justice branding effort. Before an influx of southern and eastern European immigrants to the United States in the latter half of the 19th century, abortion and contraception had only been partially and sporadically criminalized. This changed in the early 20th century, when an additional surge of migrants from Asia and Latin America calcified white American racial anxieties and led to white elites decrying the falling white birth rate as race suicide.

Abortion bans were quickly introduced nationwide. As the historian Leslie Raegan put it, White male patriotism demanded that maternity be enforced among white Protestant women. The emerging popular eugenics movement supported this campaign of forced birth for fit mothers, while at the same time implementing a widespread campaign of involuntary sterilization among the poor, particularly Black women and incarcerated women. Meanwhile, white women who sought out voluntary sterilization were discouraged or outright denied the procedure, a practice that is still mainstream in the medical field today.

In the current anti-choice and white supremacist alliance, the language of race suicide has been supplanted by a similar fear: the so-called Great Replacement, a racist conspiracy theory that posits that white Americans are being replaced by people of color. (Some antisemitic variations posit that this replacement is somehow being orchestrated by Jewish people.)

That the way to combat this, the right says, is to force childbearing among white people, to severely restrict immigration, and to punish, via criminalization and enforced poverty, women of color. These anxieties have always animated the anti-choice movement, and they have only become more fervent among the March for Lifes rank and file as conservatives become increasingly fixated on the demographic changes that will make America a minority-white country sometime in the coming decades. The white supremacist and anti-choice movements have always been closely linked. But more and more, they are becoming difficult to tell apart.

More here:

White nationalists are flocking to the US anti-abortion movement - The Guardian

Content warning: This article discusses ableism.

What if we could cure or eliminate all diseases? What if we could live forever?

For transhumanists, these philosophical questions are simply matters of engineering and scientific innovation. Put simply, transhumanism is a belief that human beings will evolve beyond species-typical levels of physical performance, cognitive ability, and sensory perception.

According to transhumanists, we have the potential to evolve so radically that we can become posthuman, altering ourselves so successfully using technology and pharmacology that we would no longer be recognizably human. Transhumanism is a philosophy, and its adherents carry out a variety of practices to achieve their goal, including cryonics, lifestyle changes, cybernetic augmentation, neurofeedback, gene editing, and even cognitive enhancements with smart drugs.

Real research and development into transhumanism exists. The Alcor Life Extension Foundation produces leading research in cryonics. The Carboncopies Foundation accelerates neuroscience research in the hope of cracking Whole Brain Emulation simulating the human brain and its functions in order to reverse-engineer our biological brains to create artificial brains. The SENS Research Foundation is working on developing anti-aging therapies and educating people about them. Elon Musks Neuralink aims to create a way for human brains to interface with computers.

However, as fantastical and promising their pursuits may seem, transhumanist practices and innovations could lead to negative consequences to people with disabilities, going as far as suggesting that disabilities are flaws that need to be eliminated. This attitude is reminiscent of eugenics and suggests that the problem lies with people who have disabilities instead of the systemic inequities and inaccessibility that they have to deal with.

What is transhumanism?

Although its largely still a fringe belief, the internet has increased the dissemination of transhumanist thought. The World Transhumanist Association now called Humanity+ was established in 1998. Part of its stated mission is to enable humans to be better than well: that is, to be pinnacles of health.

Humans have strived to perfect ourselves for as long as we have existed. After Darwin introduced the theory of evolution, we began to imagine evolving beyond our current state. People adopt transhumanist beliefs for many different reasons; therefore, transhumanism is difficult to define because it often means something different for everyone.

Some people join the movement because they are sick and desperately want a cure. Some want to live forever. Others are frustrated by the limitations of the human body and want to use technology to fix humanity so that we can exert more control over ourselves. For some people, called biohackers, experimenting on themselves and encouraging public participation in scientific exploration is fulfilling.

Its not all fun though. Due to the cost of getting involved, most transhumanist practices are currently a largely individual pursuit, even though transhumanism was initially conceived as a way of uplifting the human species as a whole.

Science fiction or future science?

Transhumanism relies on the radical enhancement of human faculties, with the primary aim of extending human life.

In the cognitive domain, peoples expectations that cognitive enhancement drugs would work have exceeded the effects such drugs actually have. Moreover, there is little scientific evidence that smart drugs are effective or safe for long-term use by healthy people. An alternate approach, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), involves stimulating the brain by passing magnetic pulses through it. TMS is used as a treatment for depression and has been proven to have cognitive benefits, including improvements in working memory, motor tasks, and some linguistic tasks. However, its long-term effects on cognition are unknown, and side effects include a minimal risk of seizures.

Meanwhile, in 2015, Chinese scientist He Jiankui edited the genes of three babies using CRISPR to make them resistant to HIV. CRISPR is a gene editing tool that can alter human DNA with a relatively high level of precision. Evaluating whether Jiankui succeeded and whether his actions could cause mutations that affect the babies biological functioning will be challenging. The long-term effects of embryonic gene-editing in humans are unknown, and it could turn out to be highly beneficial or harmful.

Some proposed transhumanist innovations, however, seem to be clearly harmful. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned against the use of fecal transplants, which involve transferring fecal matter from the gut of a healthy person to that of an unhealthy person, to help replenish their gut bacteria after a recurrent infection. FDA guidelines state that individuals should consult a health professional before undergoing a fecal transplant.

The FDA has also condemned the idea of transfusing a young persons plasma into an older persons body to prevent aging. Although a rejuvenating effect was found when scientists stitched younger and older mice together so they shared the same circulatory system, there is no evidence that plasma transfusions are a legitimate anti-aging strategy for humans. Side effects of plasma transfusions include allergic reactions and circulatory overload.

Ethical consequences of transhumanism

There are plenty of ethical conundrums raised by transhumanism. Depending on the availability and cost of enhancement procedures across the world, a posthuman society could be even more unequal than our current one. Currently, many transhumanists are white men based in Western countries, and some of the procedures they undergo are prohibitively expensive. For instance, Silicon Valley millionaire Serge Faguet spent 250,000 USD on biohacking, including hearing implants he doesnt need, frequent biomarker tests, oestrogen blockers to boost his testosterone, and frequent consultations with Ivy League health professionals. Although the community is large and varied, to some extent being able to pursue transhumanism to move beyond mere survival to self-driven evolution reflects a level of privilege many can only dream of.

Even if large-scale augmentation was widely available at a lower cost, there is no guarantee that most people would submit to transhumanist procedures. Some of the procedures are highly invasive, and there are well-documented security risks associated when medical data is collected by electronic devices like implants. Furthermore, in a world with rising distrust in science and governments, society could perhaps be stratified into humans and posthumans, with both sides adamant that they made the right decision. Many science fiction novels have explored the perils of similar scenarios.

A slippery slope toward eugenics

A variety of devices and therapies that make the world easier to navigate for people with disabilities already exist. Some are implanted in the body, like cochlear implants, which improve hearing for those who are hard of hearing or are deaf, and have several settings for different environments. Some, like exoskeletons, are wearable devices that assist in limb movement, either for physical rehabilitation or restoring mobility. French medical device company Wandercraft recently unveiled its latest Atalante exoskeleton, which allows people with paraplegia to walk with a more natural gait. The exoskeleton is self-balancing and remote-controlled, but due to safety regulations, it must be suspended from the ceiling during use.

It can be argued that transhumanism is simply arguing for a more extensive use of such assistive devices. However, the rhetoric of transhumanists is implicitly an ableist one. It assumes that people with disabilities are in need of fixing, and that their lives would be improved by giving them the same abilities as abled people.

Take the example of Zoltan Istvan, the leader of the Transhumanist Party in the US, who caused an uproar in 2015 when he wrote an article that many considered horrifically ableist. In sum, he argued that the government does not need to spend money on making places more accessible; this money should instead go into scientific research to enhance people with disabilities. Transhumanism also advocates for genetic or embryonic screening, so that parents can choose whether to have children with disabilities.

This view is informed by a reductive focus on competition between individuals survival of the fittest as the fundamental organizing principle of society. This focus, based on how some people interpreted fitness, was the argument that was used to justify the emergence of eugenics in the nineteenth century. However, it has been argued that a crucial component of survival is social cooperation and support, which such rhetorics ignore.

Because transhumanism focuses on correcting human flaws, the movement evokes comparisons to eugenics the pseudoscientific and racist movement to improve humans through selective breeding and other physical enhancements. Some transhumanists claim that everyone has a disability, because human beings are flawed and unsuited to our environment. Others claim that no one would ever rationally choose disability, since it hampers a persons ability to live a good life.

This argument has been frequently disputed by disability activists: it is clearly possible to both have a disability and live a good life. Some people who have disabilities do experience a lower standard of living, but that is due to systemic inequities that reduce their access to things abled people take for granted. Instead of physical or mental conditions, it is societal attitudes and the resulting barriers that are disabling, because they make the world less accessible for people with certain characteristics.

The medicalization of disability turns a structural problem the problem of an inaccessible society into an individual one. Therefore, it is more prudent to remove barriers to accessibility than to try to eliminate disability itself. For instance, one of the guiding principles for the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is respect for difference and acceptance of persons with disabilities as part of human diversity and humanity.

The ethical considerations of widespread human enhancement, particularly regarding disability and unequal access, are complex. For now, transhumanism is largely not viable. However, if the scientific evidence changes, we will need to have difficult conversations to move the philosophy beyond the realm of science fiction to something that will legitimately transform human existence for the better.

See the article here:

Can we evolve on our own terms? - Varsity

DetailsBy Jenna KunzeJanuary 21, 2022

The controversial Theodore Roosevelt statue was quietly removed from its decades-long perch in front of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City Wednesday night by museum contractors.

The planned removal was completed around 1 a.m. Thursday morning, when a crane removed the bronze portion of the statue, museum spokesperson Scott Rohan wrote in an email to Native News Online. The remaining base of the statue will be removed throughout the week, and the restoration of the plaza will continue through the spring.

The statue, which depicts racial hierarchy, with Theodore Roosevelt on horseback flanked by a Native American man and an African-American man on either side below him, will be stored in New York as it is prepared for shipping, Rohan said. It is slated to be repurposed in a contextualized exhibit at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Mendora, North Dakota.

The New York Department of Transportation required that the statues removal happen at night for safety reasons and to minimize disruption to traffic and pedestrians, Rohan wrote. These are the designated hours for this type of work.

But that hasnt historically been the case for statue removals. In April 2018, the city and the Museum of the City of New York removed a public statue of J. Marion Sims from 5th Avenue and East 103rd St. in East Harlem, during daylight hours as spectators watched and cheered. Sims was a 19th century surgeon who experimented on enslaved women, without anesthesia. He was also known as the father of gynecology.

This past November, New York City removed its Thomas Jefferson statue from City Hall, because of the former presidents history of owning slaves. According to reports at the time, work crews spent hours moving the statue, also during daytime hours.

The fate of the so-called "Equestrian Statue" has been in limbo since June 2020, when the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis begat nationwide protests against racism. But Indigenous, African American, and other people living in the City have long objected to the statue, for the racial hierarchy the statue portrays and for the land allotment system Roosevelt championed, at the cost of displacing Natives of more than 230 million acres of their land.

Roosevelt is also remembered for his support of eugenics, and his public address in 1886 where he said: I dont go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are. And I shouldnt like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.

Of African Americans, Roosevelt wrote, As a race and in the mass they are altogether inferior to the whites.

In response to last years protests, the City of New York, which owns the building and property housing the American Museum of Natural History and the steps where the statue sits, agreed to take it down. Mayor Bill de Blasio backed the decision, saying the problematic statue explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior.

Native Americans in North Dakota are wary of receiving it. United Tribes Technical College President Leander McDonald (Spirit Lake Tribe) previously told Native News Online that using the statue to portray the true history of Roosevelt could be educational.

If they're going to have something there that provides an accurate history of this president and how he felt towards tribal and Black people, then maybe theres an educational opportunity for the public, he said. If thats truly going to happen.

The truth about Indian Boarding Schools

This month, were asking our readers to help us raise $10,000 to fund our year-long journalism initiative called The Indian Boarding School Project: A Dark Chapter in History. Our mission is to shine a light on the dark era of forced assimilation of native American children by the U.S. government and churches. Youll be able to read stories each week and join us for Livestream events to understand what the Indian Boarding School era has meant to Native Americans and what it still means today.

This news will be provided free for everyone to read, but it is not free to produce. Thats why were asking you to make a donation this month to help support our efforts. Any contribution of any amount big or small gives us a better, stronger future and allows us to remain a force for change.Donate to Native News Online today and support independent Indigenous journalism. Thank you.

About The Author

Staff Writer

Jenna Kunze is a reporter for Native News Online and Tribal Business News. Her bylines have appeared in The Arctic Sounder, High Country News, Indian Country Today, Smithsonian Magazine and Anchorage Daily News. In 2020, she was one of 16 U.S. journalists selected by the Pulitzer Center to report on the effects of climate change in the Alaskan Arctic region. Prior to that, she served as lead reporter at the Chilkat Valley News in Haines, Alaska. Kunze is based in New York.

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Teddy Roosevelt Statue Removed from American Museum of Natural History--In the Middle of the Night - nativenewsonline.net

First Nations people please be advised this article speaks of racially discriminating moments in history, including the distress and death of First Nations people.

In early January, the prime minister and minister for Indigenous Australians announced their government would build a National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Precinct. The precinct will be known as Ngurra, a word meaning home, a place of belonging, inclusion.

The Ngurra precinct will encompass a new National Resting Place. The Resting Place will serve as a site for the care of Ancestral Remains returning from collections in Australia and around the globe whose cultural groups are unknown and are unable to make the journey home to Country.

The National Resting Place will be unique in the world, incorporating aspects of a memorial, repository, educational facility and research institute, but transcending all of these. For Indigenous people, it will provide an Indigenous-centred place to visit, care for and honour Ancestors.

The National Resting Place will also provide an opportunity for non-Indigenous Australians to reflect on the history and impact of their knowledge systems, laws, moral standards and practices in relation to Indigenous peoples.

The Ngurra Precinct has the potential to be transformative in assisting our nation to discover a new perspective on what it means to be Australian.

As Ken Wyatt is the first Indigenous person to occupy the position of minister for Indigenous Australians, this is a significant legacy of his tenure. The National Resting Place is also a culmination of the work by generations of Indigenous peoples to stop the theft of bodies and advocate for the repatriation of thousands of remains stored in institutions around the world so they can be returned home.

Why a national resting place for ancestral remains?

Over a period spanning more than 200 years, Indigenous remains were collected as trophies of empire, in the interest of science and anthropology, and as curios of a supposedly dying race. Thousands of Ancestral Remains were exhumed without the consent of their descendants, in practices that went against the laws and moral codes for the treatment of deceased Europeans.

Historical reasoning for the collection of Ancestral Remains in Australia include:

Discovery

From 1770 onwards, the collection of Aboriginal remains was informed by ideas aligned with science and discovery. The collection and classification of people, plants and animals that occurred on expeditions of scientific discovery and empire expansion contributed to ideas of European superiority.

Imperialism

Aboriginal bodies also became trophies of empire. Leaders of First Nations resistance, such as the Pemulwuy and Yagan, were beheaded and their heads were sent to the United Kingdom. First Nations peoples Ancestral Remains were displayed by some frontier families on mantlepieces or used as cranial sugar bowls and ashtrays. The perception of Ancestral Remains as rare also contributed to their appeal to collectors and their market value in auction houses, where they were viewed as commodities.

Racial science

The increase in collecting First Nations peoples remains from the 1850s was also propelled by the rise in racial science. Overseas interest in Ancestral Remains stemmed largely from notions of a hierarchy of race, which perceived Indigenous Australians to be at or near the bottom of the racial order.

This mindset continued to cause harm throughout the 20th century. Despite growing condemnation of racial science, collecting of Ancestral Remains continued after the second world war.

The post-war era

In the wake of the second world war, atrocities committed in the name of science and eugenics reverberated throughout scientific institutions. Collections of Ancestral Remains had been carefully classified before. But after the war, they were bundled together in crates and boxes. This contributed to a further loss of the provenance and records of Ancestral Remains.

The DNA era

From around the late 1980s, Aboriginal remains held in collections were defended on the grounds they were of scientific interest. Breakthroughs in dating technologies offered the possibility of extracting scientific information about human evolution over longer timeframes, and the human genome project sought to provide a complete genetic blueprint of humanity.

Where earlier interest in Ancestral Remains sought to prove theories of evolution and racial hierarchy, scientists from the late 20th century argued their research would prove beneficial for the entire human race.

A key debate emerged in this period between some scientists and Indigenous people, who asserted their right to bury their ancestors.

Decolonisation and recognition

By the 1970s, Aboriginal people were organising locally and nationally for land and a rightful place in the political life of the nation.

Independent Aboriginal organisations such as the since-disbanded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action (FAIRA) were critical in advocating for the return of Ancestral Remains.

Calls for repatriation posed significant provocations to the history, role and purpose of collecting institutions. This led to the development of protocols and policies guiding repatriation in the 1980s.

The return of Ancestral Remains is now widespread, with many repatriations negotiated with community and family of origin. However, many remains are yet to find their way home. The precise number of Ancestral Remains in institutional and private collections has been difficult to determine.

Collections continue to be revealed, with recent information coming to light about Ancestral Remains in India and Russia, along with unknown numbers held in private collections around the world. Recent research commissioned by AIATSIS, and yet to be published, counted tens of thousand of remains awaiting return from public institutions in Australia and the world.

Ngurras National Resting Place will serve as an initial landing place for Ancestral Remains on their journey home. The National Resting Place will support community-led research to achieve the identification and repatriation of these remains, aiding their return to Country where possible.

Removed Ancestral Remains are powerful reminders of the historical dehumanisation, objectification and commodification of Indigenous peoples. The National Resting Place will enable this story to be more fully understood.

The story of the ideas and practices that informed the stealing of Indigenous bodies, as well as the long struggle by First Nations peoples to bring their Ancestors home, will finally gain national recognition through the Ngurra precinct.

Heidi Norman, professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney and Anne Maree Payne, Lecturer, Centre for the Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges, University of Technology Sydney.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Ancestral Remains of Australias First Nations Will Now Have a National Resting Place - The Wire