DISTURBING

UC Berkeley Professor Had Excavated Remains of Dozens of Native Americans

While the university has issued a statement apologizing for its poor handling of repatriations, the professor accused the administration of “making false allegations.”

The University of California Berkeley still holds the remains of more than 9,000 Indigenous people in its museum of anthropology, even three decades after federally funded institutions were called to report and return any human remains believed to be Native American. Even more damning, an analysis reported in May, 2022, found that a longtime anthropology professor’s collection included the remains of at least 95 Native Americans, excavated from gravesites. The professor, Tim White, had long been a member of the university’s repatriation decisions. With the latest revelation, the university claims he’s no longer in that position. As advocates point out the “major moral, ethical and potentially legal violation,” the administration has apologized for their poor handling. “The campus privileged some kinds of scientific and scholarly evidence over tribal interests and evidence provided by tribes,” the university said in the statement. However, White—who retired last spring— isn’t apologizing. Rather, he’s called out the university for “making false allegations.”