The advancement of our understanding of the human body is a good thing, and a lot of people donate their bodies to science for this reason—to give the pro’s more stock to study and learn from. But it’s not all sunshine and roses.

Let’s use “George”, shown above, as an example:

George is a retired medical specimen from the Independent Order of Odd Fellows - a fraternal organization who used skeletons to represent morality to its members.

Studies indicate that most early medical specimens were essentially grave robbed from the disenfranchised. (Jaime K. Ginter Origins of the Odd Fellows Skeletal Collection: Exploring Links to Early Medical Training) This typically included the poor, immigrants, the enslaved, and our indigenous people.

Heinous enough as this is, one of many influences fueling the need for bones is far more grim: to compare the bones of various racial identities to those of the white man. In doing so, and with the help of some serious mental gymnastics and disproven pseudosciences, they aimed to justify their belief in racial superiority.

In Colonizing the Indigenous Dead, author Margaret M. Bruchac puts it best when she notes that, regarding this effect on our indigenous people in particular, “Skewed representations do more than merely distort the past; they interfere with human rights in the present, when the ‘archaeologizing’ of the dead is implicated in the political vanishing of the living.”

The moral of this story is that today, those in the human bone trade utilize the words “ethically sourced” to justify this trade through noting that the bones are retired medical specimens. But a look at this history will show you that even retired medical specimens can be far from ethical, having been grave robbed in pursuit of white supremacist agendas.

No one needs the human bones of the grave robbed in their collection. Under some circumstances, they can feasibly remain ethically on display (or safely stored away) in proper educational settings, with some of my own friends who own such remains having bought them at miscellaneous markets out of fear of someone else buying them with ill intent. (For example, human bone art has a market wherein artists turn bones into wearable accessories. I have thoughts on this I will save for another day.)

Debates are ongoing even among experts about what to do with such bones. Would labels stating their identity or true origin suffice? Is repatriation possible? Should they be reburied? I would argue yes for the latter two, with exceptions being made if they offer something truly historically or medically invaluable. Although there are certainly nuances here in need of further exploration.