A Statement from the NEAA

The Guardian recently published a report that a professor, Dr. Janet Monge, at Princeton has been displaying the burnt remains of a child killed by the police in the bombing of the African-American Move organization in Philadelphia in 1985. Dr. Monge did this without an attempt to repatriate the remains to her parents (there are surviving parents of all of the children who died in that bombing) or community and in direct conflict with the religious ideas of Move about the treatment of the dead.

We, the elected Board of the Northeastern Anthropological Association, recognize that this is a shameful treatment of the dead that conflicts with our national professional organization’s Code of Ethics. The American Anthropological Association and its sub-divisions have long argued for ethical and appropriate treatment of the dead, including repatriation to families and communities whenever possible. Dr. Janet Monge violated our well-established professional standards as well as the basic standards of human decency towards the dead applicable to everyone.

This case is especially egregious given the long history of abusive practices by anthropologists in the field, and the collection, teaching and display practices in museums and educational institutions of Black, colonized, indigenous and marginalized peoples, both living and dead. It is the responsibility of every anthropologist and museum professional to openly recognize these histories and actively work to ensure not only that such atrocities are not replicated among current practitioners but also that we take steps to heal the wounds of the past.

As the Board of an organization representing the field of anthropology in the northeast, we condemn the aforementioned treatment of the remains of the victims of the Move bombing, and stand in support of repatriation as a best practice and critical component of ethical practice in all sub-fields of anthropology. We encourage all anthropologists and all institutions that are stewards of human remains to regularly reexamine their collections using the latest tools and information with the constant goals of identification and repatriation whenever possible.