- Harvard University's student paper reported that the university is illegally holding onto human remains.
- Thousands of the remains belong to Native Americans and are held on campus.
- A 1990 law maintains that the remains should be returned to their descendants.
Harvard University has held onto the remains of thousands of Indigenous people despite a 1990 federal law requiring bodies to be returned to their descendants, the school's newspaper, The Crimson, reported, citing a leaked report draft.
Since the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was passed, the university has returned 3,000 of the 10,000 bodies it once held. It also holds the remains of 19 individuals belonging to people of African descent.
The draft report, written by the Steering Committee on Human Remains in Harvard Museum Collections which was formed last year, discussed a push to increase the speed at which bodies are returned to descendants of the deceased or the appropriate affinity groups.
"They were obtained under the violent and inhumane regimes of slavery and colonialism; they represent the University's engagement and complicity in these categorically immoral systems," the draft report, which details more than a dozen recommendations for handling the remains, says, per The Crimson. "Moreover, we know that skeletal remains were utilized to promote spurious and racist ideas of difference to confirm existing social hierarchies and structures."
Most remains are held in the institution's Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnography.
"Our collection of these particular human remains is a striking representation of structural and institutional racism and its long half-life," the draft reads, according to The Crimson.
In a statement to Insider, the University said: "It is deeply frustrating that the Harvard Crimson chose to release an initial and incomplete draft report of the Committee on Human Remains."
"Releasing this draft is irresponsible reporting and robs the Committee of finalizing its report and associated actions, and puts in jeopardy the thoughtful engagement of the Harvard community in its release," the statement continued. "Further, it shares an outdated version with the Harvard community that does not reflect weeks of additional information and Committee work."
The leak comes just over a month after a faculty committee published a 134-page report highlighting Harvard's role in advancing "race theory" and eugenics during the 19th and 20th centuries.
The April report, titled "Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery" and conducted by the faculty Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery, also highlighted that thousands of remains lingered on campus, but did not acknowledge the 1990 law.
"One aspect of the original mission of Harvard College was to educate (and convert) Native students alongside white classmates," the report reads, adding that the school also attempted to "civilize," enslave, and Christianize Indigenous people.
It then recommended the establishment of a steering committee and that the university engages descendants of enslaved individuals "through dialogue, programming, information sharing, relationship building, and educational support."
"For too long, these remains have been separated from their individuality, their history, and their communities," the draft report also reads.
Professor Evelynn Hammonds, the chair of the Steering Committee on Human Remains in Harvard Museum Collections, did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
