Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture

A Talk by Dr. Chip Colwell, Senior Curator in Anthropology, Denver Museum of Nature and Science

Who owns the past? Museums that care for the objects of history or the communities whose ancestors made them? Five decades ago, Native American leaders launched a crusade against museums to reclaim their sacred objects and to rebury their kin. This talk presents a new book, “Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture,” a personal journey that illuminates how repatriation has transformed both American museums and Native communities. This story reveals why repatriation law has become an imperfect but necessary tool to resolve the collision of worldviews between scientists and Native Americans — to decide the nature of the sacred and the destiny of souls

Anthropology, American Indian Studies Program