Woodbury Collection

WARNING: This webpage includes information about trauma endured by Native American children in U.S. Indian Boarding Schools and other Indigenous individuals and ancestors in contexts of exploitation. If you are feeling triggered, here is a list of resources from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.

"Addressing the Woodbury Collection: Reconnecting Relatives"

Overview

The Peabody Museum at Harvard stewards a collection of hair samples from Indigenous people around the world assembled by anthropologist George Edward Woodbury in the 1930s and donated to the Museum in 1935. The vast majority are from North America, including clippings of hair from approximately 700 Native American children attending U.S. Indian Boarding Schools. Many of those samples have the names of the individuals whose hair was taken.

To support the return of hair clippings to lineal descendants and Tribal Nations, this website makes available information on this collection, which includes the tribal affiliations of Native American individuals in the United States whose hair was taken, as well as the sites of collection, such as boarding schools, reservations, and museums.

This website shares a list of tribal affiliations and sites of collection. The Peabody Museum is in the process of repatriating hair clippings to lineal descendants and Tribal Nations through NAGPRA.

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Please note that the collection also includes hair collected from individuals at hospitals in Canada, as well as from individuals in Asia, Central America, South America, and Oceania. Further information will be shared as soon as possible together with any additional details about provenance that we learn. 

 

The Peabody Museum at Harvard University is committed to the return of hair to families and Tribal Nations.

See a November 2023 Message from Director Jane Pickering.

The first phase of fulfilling this commitment included communication with Tribal officials. The museum did not release details of the individuals to the public; however, this information was shared with Tribal officials.  

The second phase is the return of hair cllippings to lineal descendants and Tribal Nations. On November 30, 2022, after review, the Department of the Interior informed the Peabody Museum that the collection is subject to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).    

The current process for returns can be found under Returns through NAGPRA.

Acknowledgment

The Peabody Museum apologizes to Indigenous families, communities, and Tribal Nations for our complicity in the objectification of Native peoples and for our more than 80-year possession of hair taken from their relatives.

We recognize that for many Indigenous communities, hair holds cultural and spiritual significance. Hair is sacred and is filled with meaning and power. The dispossession of hair from Native Americans has caused spiritual and emotional harm to those individuals and their descendants.

It is impossible to talk about hair taken from Indigenous people and its possession by the Peabody Museum without acknowledging the ties between early anthropological practices and colonialism, imperialism, and scientific racism—the very same systems of dispossession and assimilation that led to the establishment of Indian boarding schools.

Collections such as this exemplify how physical anthropology has often turned people and ancestors into ‘study subjects’ and ‘specimens’; now, it is the Museum’s responsibility to address that difficult history and its legacies within and outside the museum by working with families, communities, and Tribal Nations.

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