Indiana University repatriated human remains to the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island.
IU received the donated remains in the 1990s from a descendant of United States Navy Rear Adm. George Henry Cooke, said Jayne-Leigh Thomas, director of IU’s Office of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. A university spokesperson said the remains had not been used for research for many years. It's unclear how they were studied or used before then.
In the late 19th century, Cooke circumnavigated the world and later visited the Easter Islands to collect stone sculptures for the Smithsonian. The island, a territory of Chile, is known for large, stone statues called moai made by the Rapa Nui.
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The island’s society collapsed after contact with Europeans due to disease, conflict and enslavement, according to the Scientific American.
Thomas worked with Francisco Nahoe, a Catholic priest and the North American delegate of the Easter Island council of elders for recovery and repatriation. Nahoe is the great-great grandson of Pakomio Mā‘ori, a survivor of Peruvian slave raids mentioned in Cooke’s report. Thousands of people were abducted from Easter Island in the early 1860s.
Nahoe said modern descendants believe it’s their duty to recover the remains of their ancestors.
“Everyone knows the unique legacy of material culture that we inherited from our ancestors, whom we call tupuna,” Nahoe said. “The whole island is an outdoor museum of monumental statuary constructed on a scale unmatched anywhere. The Polynesians who carved the moai were themselves a tiny and completely isolated population. It is the crania of these neolithic sculptors that Euro-American collectors carried away.”
The Rapa Nui are working to find ancestor’s remains from New Zealand, Australia, Norway, Canada, Chile and the U.S., the release said.
Thomas visited the island in December and works with the Rapa Nui people on research projects on the ethics of repatriation.
“To be so warmly welcomed onto the island, to build relationships with Rapa Nui representatives, and to have the opportunity to see the rich cultural heritage and visit archaeological sites was simply incredible,” Thomas said.
Aubrey is our higher education reporter and a Report For America corps member. Contact her at aubmwrig@iu.edu or follow her on X @aubreymwright .
