RIO DE JANEIRO (The Thursday Times) — Two skulls believed to have belonged to enslaved Africans or Afro-Brazilians were returned to Brazil on Wednesday, more than 150 years after they were taken to the United States and used in racist eugenics research at Harvard University.
Brazilian diplomats carried the remains home in reinforced cases after a campaign of about four years to recover them from Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. They were received in subdued ceremonies in Salvador, the capital of Bahia state, and at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro.
A rebel called Arakunrin
One skull was taken from Salvador about 190 years ago and is believed to have belonged to a man who took part in the 1835 Malê revolt, when several hundred enslaved and freed African Muslims rose up in what was then one of Brazil’s most important cities. The uprising was crushed.
The Bahia Islamic Cultural Center, which campaigned for his return, has named him Arakunrin, a Yoruba word meaning brother.
Less is known about the second skull, which was exhumed in Rio in the 1860s. It is thought to have been taken during an expedition led by the Harvard naturalist Louis Agassiz, who travelled to Brazil to gather material for his theories of racial hierarchy. Brazilian officials said Harvard researchers had told them it might have belonged to a woman.
No display, no images
Brazilian forensic anthropologists will now try to learn more about the two people. The government has said the skulls will not be put on display, that no images of them will be released, and that they will be buried with funeral rites once the work is complete.
“It’s very important to restore the dignity of these people, which was taken from them in life and in death,” said Carolina Dias dos Reis, the government official who signed the agreement with Harvard in Boston.
The existence of the skulls became public in 2022, and researchers said the request moved slowly until Brazil’s government took it up in late 2024. Brazil received more enslaved Africans than any other country and was the last in the Americas to abolish slavery, in 1888.
