Craft an African American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

Dunnavant, Justin; Justinvil, Delande; Colwell, Chip

doi:10.1038/d41586-021-01320-4

COMMENT
19 May 2021

Craft an African American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

Universities and museums must catalogue the remains of Black Americans in their collections, and pause research pending consultation with descendant communities.

Justin Dunnavant⁰,
Delande Justinvil¹ &
Chip Colwell²

Justin Dunnavant
1. Justin Dunnavant is a postdoctoral fellow in historical archaeology in the Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
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Delande Justinvil
1. Delande Justinvil is a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology, American University, Washington DC; and an incoming predoctoral fellow at the National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC, USA.
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Chip Colwell
1. Chip Colwell is an anthropologist and editor-in-chief of SAPIENS magazine, New York City, New York, USA.
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Last month, shocking news reports revealed that what are thought to be the skeletal remains of Tree and Delisha Africa, two Black girls killed in a US police bombing in 1985, might have been studied for years by researchers at two US universities, without their families’ permission. The finding, involving the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Princeton University in New Jersey, is just the latest in a series of discoveries in university collections related to the mistreatment of African American human remains.

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Nature 593, 337-340 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01320-4

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