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William & Mary professor: Future archaeological studies must obtain consent from descendants

A racist and supremacist past has led the archaeological and anthropological community to desecrate and loot graves in the name of science, according to a professor at William & Mary.

Professor Michael Blakey, who teaches anthropology, Africana studies and American studies, said the science community needs to meet with descendant communities of possible excavation sites before archaeological and anthropological work is done.

A new report by the American Anthropological Association and co-authored by Blakey details the wrongdoings of the past and how the science community can do better in the future.

Burial procedures are universal for humans, though they vary by culture, and the procedures are something that sets humans apart from other animals on the planet. “The collection of skeletons from archaeological sites, that are also cemeteries from the point of view of the people who buried their ancestors there, (constitutes) looting, desecration,” Blakey said in an interview with The Virginia Gazette.

“From now on, those descendant communities have the ultimate say as to whether we would touch their remains or not, so we say in our report that we find ourselves in a dilemma as anthropologists between the human need to know and the human need for dignity.”

“It is simply the right to be a human being.”

The report comes as Colonial Williamsburg has been working to make sure remains of descendants of the historic First Baptist Church are properly treated. At William & Mary, Blakey serves as founding director for the Institute for Historical Biology, which has engaged with descendant communities to work with Colonial Williamsburg archaeologists and the First Baptist Church community.

Blakey said past racism has largely influenced contemporary collection practices, and it’s time for needed change.

“Biological anthropologists have been corrupted by racism in their desire to know. The eugenical and racist ideas of anthropology were the purpose for the accumulation of tens of thousands of human remains in museums and universities as the evidence, the authority, behind eugenics and racist science that not only supported the Holocaust in Germany, but it was the reasoning behind Jim Crow segregation in Virginia and the United States.”

“The white scientists who were nearly the entirety of anthropology were biased by their racism,” he said. “And as they sought to understand the world that Europeans and that white people were colonizing, and a country, the U.S., that white people were segregating, these scientists were also just other white people. And they viewed the world … in a way that was consistent with those biases.”

Blakey said past white-supremacist ideals led to thinking by the scientific community that it could go where it wanted and do what it wanted in the name of science without consulting descendant communities.

“Go to a descendant community if you want to conduct research on their cemetery,” he said.

Blakey said informed consent is central to being able to ethically conduct excavations in the future, and obtaining informed consent is an involved process. It includes reaching out to community members and having gatherings that educate the local community on the history of the site and what scientific study could be done.

After informing the community and having them select their leaders and make democratic decisions, archaeologists and anthropologists need to respect the wishes of the descendant community when it comes to studying their ancestors, and those wishes may include not studying the community at all.

“If … you can’t get their permission, you don’t touch (the) remains,” he said.

Janice Canaday, vice chair of the directors board at First Baptist Church and the African American community engagement manager for The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, said informed consent from descendant communities is important.

“It starts with respect,” she said. “People haven’t always been treated like people. They’ve been used as property, they’ve been listed on inventories and tax records as someone’s property, but not as whole, feeling, thinking human beings.”

She explained that rather than scientists telling communities what they’ve found after completing archaeological projects, the descendant community needs to be involved in the process from planning to completion.

Colonial Williamsburg is in the process of rebuilding the historic First Baptist Church, which was one of the first church buildings to serve Black people. It was the worship site for free and enslaved people dating back to before the American Revolution, and Colonial Williamsburg is consulting the descendant community in Williamsburg on how to go about the process. They are also working to mark graves of church members who had previously been covered by a parking lot.

Canaday said she is pleased with Colonial Williamsburg’s efforts, and they are a good example of how to do better.

“It matters what we do moving forward,” she said.

Sam Schaffer, samuel.schaffer@virginiamedia.com