Harvard Returns the Remains of 7 Ancestors to the Oneida Indian Nation

Harvard has repatriated the remains of seven Oneida Indian Nation ancestors and associated funerary objects that were held in the collection of the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, the Oneida Nation announced Wednesday.

The Peabody Museum invited Oneida Indian Nation leaders to the museum to mark the repatriation at a Tuesday event, which featured the museum’s director, Jane Pickering, and interim Harvard Law School Dean John C. P. Goldberg.

“Today’s repatriation is a moment in this ongoing effort to right past wrongs,” Goldberg said in his remarks at the event.

The return of these ancestral remains and objects caps off three years of engagement between the University and the Oneida Nation, an Indigenous nation located in central New York, about repatriating the remains, which were among thousands of Indigenous remains housed in the Peabody.

The repatriated remains and funerary objects were removed from Oneida burial sites in 1878 by Samuel W. Garman, then-assistant director of Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, according to the announcement. They were later added to the Peabody’s collection, which grew to be one of the largest collections of Native American remains in the nation.

Until representatives from the Oneida Nation reached out to the University in 2021, the remains and funerary objects sat in the collection with no indication of their origins, according to Joel Barkin, the vice president of strategic communications and community engagement for the Oneida Nation. Since then, the Oneida Nation and the University have been working together to verify the geographical and tribal affiliations of remains and cultural objects in the Museum’s collection, Barkin said.

At the Tuesday event, Oneida Indian Nation representative Arthur R. “Ray” Halbritter, a graduate of Harvard Law School, said the University needs to be at the forefront of repatriation efforts nationwide.

“Many institutions have been slow to respond to repatriation requests from tribal nations. Harvard University’s great reputation demands even greater leadership in these matters,” Halbritter said, according to the press release. “Educational and cultural institutions continue to look to Harvard to set the standard for repatriations and relationships with tribal nations.”

Since 1990, museum institutions in the U.S. have been required by the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act to return Native American ancestral remains and cultural items back to respective tribes.

Since The Crimson first reported in 2021 that the Peabody held the remains of nearly 7,000 Indigenous individuals, tribal leaders and advocates have called on Harvard to speed up its repatriation efforts — a process that University leaders have said is logistically difficult. As of June 30, the Peabody Museum had repatriated 4,589 ancestors and 11,094 funerary objects.

Barkin praised Harvard’s handling of the repatriation, saying that the process moved “pretty quickly.”

“The Peabody, they have been good partners on this and diligent,” Barkin said in an interview with The Crimson. “We think there’s a good model that has been created here.”

The return of these ancestral remains is part of a more than two decades-long relationship between the Oneida Nation and the University.

In 2003, Harvard Law School created its first endowed chair for American Indian Studies, established by a $3 million gift from the Oneida Nation. The endowment has been used to invite Oneida Indian Nation Visiting Professors of Law to Harvard Law School, although its eventual goal is to locate a candidate to fill the professorship permanently.

Halbritter added in his remarks that the successful repatriation of these remains and funerary objects is “a unique opportunity to forge a better future as partners.”

In their announcement, Oneida leaders wrote that they plan to continue working with Harvard to determine the origins of items in the Peabody’s collection. Barkin said the Nation has “reason to believe” that some are funerary objects from Oneida burial sites.

He added that “it is not implausible” that the Peabody Museum holds more Oneida ancestors, though they have yet to be identified.

Barkin said the Oneida Nation was able to be “proactive” in reaching out to the University by virtue of its staff and resources. He called on Harvard to “to work with urgency” with tribal nations who have less resources at their disposal.

“Not every tribal nation is in that position,” Barkin said. “The University has an obligation to invest its own resources to make sure that these historical injustices are addressed.”

—Staff writer Neeraja S. Kumar can be reached at neeraja.kumar@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @neerajasrikumar.

—Staff writer Annabel M. Yu can be reached at annabel.yu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @annabelmyu.