The Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley holds one of the largest collections of Native American human remains and sacred artifacts in the country, on a scale approaching that of the Field Museum in Chicago or the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. By far the majority of the collection was taken from the Native people of the Bay Area, though there are also many ancestors and sacred belongings from other tribes in California and from across the United States. After decades of protest by Native people nationally and here in California, the University of California system and UC Berkeley have crafted a new policy oriented toward returning the ancestors to their descendants.
On May 7, 2001, Linda Haverty Rugg, Berkeley's Associate Vice Chancellor for Research, talked about the measures being taken to perform this critical repatriation work, and how it relates to the un-naming of Kroeber Hall.
Professor Rugg's talk is part of OLLI's America's Unfinished Work series featuring leading thinkers engaged in the examination and eradication of systemic racism to create a more humane, just and equal society.