Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas

have had the opportunity to visit their Cultural Resources Center, where
many of these objects are housed out of view of the public, treated with
reverence and sensitivity as descendant communities advise curators on
their care and consult on repatriation. Although there is much more work
still to do, museum curation has come a long way from the 19th century,
thanks to advocacy by descendant communities and scholars, and changes
in how museums themselves view their roles.
ix This issue—in another context, but still quite relevant—was brilliantly
illustrated by the scene in the Marvel movie Black Panther, in which
Killmonger, the cousin and rival of T’Challa the Black Panther, challenges
a white curator on how her museum “acquired” priceless artifacts from
African countries during the 19th century. The scene is a pointed reminder
of both the history of museum formation and a call to address present-day
injustices.
x Approximately equivalent to $2,600 today.
xi A number of other funerary objects were missed in the initial
repatriation. The Stockbridge-Munsee tribe, Delaware Tribe, and Delaware
Nation are currently working on a claim to repatriate these objects and
intend to reunite them with the previous reburial.
xii These classifications were in place in the tenth (1758) edition of his
book, which categorized them as “subspecies.” In the first edition, these
taxa were the less-fixed “varieties”: Europaeus albus, Americanus
rubescens, Asiaticus fuscus, Africanus niger. These concepts seem to reflect
geography and skin color more than essential nature. He also described a
category called Monstrosus, which covered a variety of groups of people
shaped by their environment as well as mythological creatures, and a Ferus
category that included wild children. See
https://www.linnean.org/learning/who-was-linnaeus/linnaeus-and-race for
more details.
xiii So named because Noah’s ark must have landed in the Caucasus
Mountains, and because the people in that region were the most beautiful in
the world and the proportions of their crania the most balanced, according
to Blumenbach.
xiv Meaning anything nongenetic that influences a person’s phenotype:
everything from factors that influenced embryonic development to one’s
nutrition as an adolescent to one’s stress levels as an adult.