Washington Post’s Smithsonian series is significant.

Washington Post's Smithsonian series is significant.

The Smithsonian’s Dark Secrets: Unearthing the Truth

In a jaw-dropping series, the intrepid journalists at the Washington Post have delved into the haunting archives of the Smithsonian, revealing a shocking collection of human remains. This macabre assortment includes mummies, skulls, and even brains! But hold on to your seats, folks, because there’s a twisted twist to this horror tale. These body parts were mostly snatched from Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, leaving a trail of expropriation and grave-robbing in its wake. Yikes!

Now, don’t be fooled, my friends. This isn’t just a local issue. It aligns with a global movement seeking justice for the victims of Indian boarding schools, preservation of forgotten slave burial grounds, and more. Ireland has been grappling with the horrors of Mother and Babies hospitals, while Canada was ahead of the U.S. in acknowledging the injustices of Indian schools. It’s a worldwide reckoning that cannot be ignored.

But here’s the kicker. As this movement gains momentum, there’s a political assault on true history happening right in American classrooms. You heard that right! Conservative legislators and governors, looking at you, Ron DeSantis, are trying to whitewash everything and rewrite the nation’s narrative. Well, not on our watch! The remarkable work of the Post team is an antidote to this deceit, shining a light on the hidden, obscured, and invisible chapters of our past. Take that, whitewashers!

The Smithsonian’s collection of human remains is one of the largest in the world. It includes mummies, skulls and teeth, representing an unknown number of people. It also has a collection of brains, which were taken mostly from Black, Indigenous people and other people of color. The remains are the unreconciled legacy of a grisly practice in which body parts were scavenged from graveyards, battlefields, hospitals and morgues in more than 80 countries. Most of the remains appear to have been gathered without consent from the individuals or their families, by researchers preying on people who were hospitalized, poor, or lacked immediate relatives to identify or bury them. In other cases, collectors, anthropologists, and scientists dug up burial grounds and looted graves.

Oh, but wait, there’s more to this dark tale! You see, the grave-robbing and body-snatching frenzy wasn’t just fueled by an insatiable thirst for collecting skulls. No, no, no! It was a good old-fashioned dash of American white supremacy that stirred up those shovels. Meet Ales Hrdlicka, also known as the Smithsonian’s “Bone Doctor.” This guy had a real charming outlook. Picture a stone racist who embraced eugenics and considered himself an expert on racial differences. Boy, oh boy!

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“There are differences of importance between the brains of the negro and European, to the general disadvantage of the former,” he wrote in a 1926 letter to a University of Vermont professor. “Brains of individual negroes may come up to or near the standard of some individual whites; but such primitive brains as found in some negroes … would be hard to duplicate in normal whites.”

Intrigued yet? Well, buckle up, my friends, because we have another fascinating story to unravel. Meet Maura, a native Filipino who embarked on one of the oddest entertainment spectacles in American history—the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis. Trust me; this event was stranger than fiction. These games lasted from July until November, challenging the very concept of time! And get this—the marathon had a Cuban participant named Felix Carbajal, who showed up in long pants and street shoes because he lost everything in a dice game. Can’t make this stuff up!

But the games’ wacky tales don’t end there. Way before reality TV staged elaborate plot twists, American runner Fred Lorz decided to grab a cab for 11 miles to the finish line. Meanwhile, poor Thomas Hicks, the actual leader, had his own outrageous journey. His trainers fed him a strychnine and egg white concoction—talk about a deadly cocktail! Hicks stumbled into the stadium, his feet cycling in the air like a cartoon coyote off a cliff. These games truly had it all!

Yet, amidst all the madness, there was a disturbing sideshow that took place at the World’s Fair—an event known as the “Anthropology Games.” Native peoples were plucked from their homes and exhibited as living museum objects, forced to participate in bizarre competitions. And that’s where Maura’s extraordinary journey begins.

She was Kankanaey, an Indigenous Igorot group that lives in the Cordillera mountains of Luzon. The term Igorot is used broadly to describe multiple ethnicities from this region. When Maura was around 13, the Philippines became a U.S. territory after more than three centuries of Spanish colonial rule. A three-year war for Philippine independence followed. At least 220,000 Filipinos died. After the United States claimed victory in 1902, William Howard Taft, then governor of the Philippines, was eager to use the World’s Fair to show off the new territory and justify the occupation.

Maura’s story takes a heartbreaking turn. During her time in America, she fell ill with pneumonia and tragically passed away before the Fair even started. Can you imagine the sorrow her fellow Filipinos felt? They held a traditional funeral, believing her body would be returned for burial. But life had other plans. Enter our dear “Bone Doctor,” Ales Hrdlicka himself. He showed up and, like a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein, took Maura’s cerebellum back to Washington. It took a relentless reporter to bring Maura’s full story to light—a true reckoning, indeed.

So there you have it, folks—the truth behind the Smithsonian’s dark secret collection and the bizarre events of the 1904 Olympic Games. Stories that prove history is stranger and more disturbing than any fiction could ever dream up. Hold on tight as we continue to dig deep, exposing history’s hidden wrinkles, and reminding those who seek to rewrite it that we won’t be fooled.

Keep those bobby pins and mascaras at the ready, my fashion-forward friends, as we venture deeper into the ever-surprising worlds of beauty and fashion. Stay tuned for more thrilling tales from yours truly—your friendly beauty and fashion expert!