Elizabeth Weiss

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A view from the shoulders of giants.

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Elizabeth Weiss is a physical anthropologist (and specifically a specialist in human remains). From tenure in 2004 until 2021 she had a conventional career as a professor at San José State University in California.^[1] Beginning in 2021 she came to public attention for complaining about an "alliance between Native American tribes and woke anthropologists" ^[2] and asking "Has Creationism Crept Back into Archaeology?"^[3][4] Specifically, she argued that anthropologists were too respectful of indigenous creation stories, and too willing to hand over human remains to people who might be their descendants.^[5] She took a fellowship with the Heterodox Academy in New York City in 2023/4,^[6] and early retirement from her university in 2024, though she remains an emeritus professor there. Afterwards she published a book and went on a media tour to say that she felt persecuted.^[7] By June 2024 she was also blaming trans people for cancelling her.^[8]

Context

It is important to know that many collections of indigenous human remains were acquired by grave robbing or simply collecting skulls after government troops or vigilantes had killed some indigenes.^[9] Many were collected by people with explicit agendas to show the inferiority of indigenous peoples or show human difference. The Smithsonian kept the brain of a Yana Native American man called Ishi despite strong indications that he had not wanted to be dissected, let alone stored in a jar.^[10][11] The skull of a Six Nations man was found in a depot in Germany where it had been donated by a visiting scholar and forgotten.^[12] Indigenous people have many reasons to be suspicious of doctors or anthropologists who want the remains of someone who might be their ancestor. Institutions in California have retained indigenous remains for decades after they were ordered to return them.^[13] Scientific and 'scientific' studies of human remains, whether phrenology or DNA, have often been used to argue that the people in an area when Europeans arrived had migrated there sometime in the past so were not really the original land owners. So, many indigenous people focus on getting anyone who might be their ancestor out of a museum and into a respectful burial, and don't have a lot of patience for quibbling or stalling. Nowadays, many physical anthropologists focus on building better relations with indigenous peoples, which can include listening to their stories about why they want their ancestors home and not in a cardboard box in another country.^[14]

Nazi doctor August Hirt saved time by collecting the skeletons of people sentenced to death camps. Like many Nazi atrocities, this was not so different from things done by the Anglo-Saxon powers, just bigger and more blatant. Harvard's Peabody Museum contained a collection of hair collected from Native American students who were forced to attend residential schools in the United States, where many of them were physically and sexually abused or died of neglect and where teachers tried to erase their cultures and languages.^[15] Students, like Marine Corps recruits, had their hair cut short to humble them and show them that they no longer had the right to choose how they looked. Just asking whether the hair has scientific value is not the only way to think about this collection!

Current laws and policies about the custody of human remains are a response to a long period in which anthropologists felt entitled to any human remains outside a Christian cemetery. Many anthropologists abused that power, so lawmakers and judges are more likely to side with indigenous people than in the past. Many anthropologists and archaeologists today are looking for ways to show remorse for the actions of their professional mentors, which can include saying "yes" when the descendants of the people they study ask them for something. Giving speeches about atheism and materialism is good clean fun but not the best way to get people to lend you a sacred object or dig up their cemetery.

Private life

Weiss' first husband was Canadian psychologist and race theorist J. Philippe Rushton (1943–2012), and her second husband is British UFO enthusiast Nick Pope.^[16][17]

Weiss attended Hereticon 2024.^[18]

References