As we protest statues that glorify racist ideology, we also need to think about the things that ended up inside of museums because of assumptions about white superiority. Here's one story - of meteorites, pandemic, and Minik, the boy who lost his parents and his whole world. 
This is the Ahnighito Meteorite, in the American Museum of Natural History (NYC). They invite visitors to touch this "object that is nearly as old as the Sun. Discovered in 1894 in Greenland, this iron meteorite slammed into Earth some 10,000 years ago." amnh.org/exhibitions/pe…
Only... it wan't "discovered in 1894." That's just the first time a white man, the explorer Robert Peary, laid eyes on it. He vowed to take Ahnighito and two other pieces of the same Cape York meteorite back to New York, for scientific study. So, who cares?
The Inughuit - the Inuit group living in Greenland. These meteorites had been their sole source of iron since the 12th century. They trekked for days to reach the site, bringing basalt stones heavy enough to hammer off flakes of metal to make blades.
Otherwise, they had to use less efficient blades made from bone or tooth. The Inughuit were so protective of their metal source that they refused to tell James Ross, the first European explorer who reached them (in 1818), where it was.
But Ross collected iron-bladed tools and wrote about how they must have come from a meteorite. That inspired Peary, who vowed in 1894 to find and take them. It took multiple expeditions, but he finally succeeded.
Peary promised a gun to an Inughuit man to show him where the meteorites were and then hired more to load them on his ships. Here's Ahnighito coming on board, draped in an American flag.
The Inughuit called this meteorite "Tent," but Peary renamed it "Ahnighito" - which both is and isn't an Inuit name. He named it after his daughter Marie's middle name - she was born during one of his expeditions, and a woman named Ahnighito sewed her a baby snowsuit.
Knud Rasmussen took the last remaining piece of the Cape York meteorite mined by the Inughuit to Copenhagen in 1925 (and another unworked piece, presumably unknown to the Inughuit, was taken to Copenhagen in 1967).
If the Inughuit wanted any more iron, they would have to get it from the south. Scientific collecting left this previously isolated, self-sufficient community dependent on Europeans.
But the meteorites weren't the only thing Peary took. He also took Inughuits.
But the meteorites weren't the only thing Peary took. He also took Inughuits.
In October 1897, 20,000 New Yorkers paid 25 cents each to come on board Peary's ship in the Brooklyn Naval Yard and see Ahnighito... and the 6 Inughuit Peary brought with it, including a 7 year old named Minik and his widowed father.
Peary promised he would bring them back to Greenland after a year. But only one man returned. Four others died of TB and other diseases unknown to them. Minik, orphaned, was adopted by William Wallace, the AMNH's superintendent. The Museum paid $40,000 for Ahnighito.
In 1907, Minik read newspaper reports claiming his father's funeral had been a sham. They said he had watched the burial of a log wrapped in a shroud on Museum grounds, while his father's body was dissected and preserved in its storerooms.
After trying unsuccessfully for years to get his father's body back, Minik returned to Greenland in 1909. In 1916, he returned to the US. He was working as a lumberjack in New Hampshire when he died of the Spanish flu in the 1918 pandemic.
G. LeMoine, View of the grave of Minik Wallace. Indian Creek Cemetery, Pittsburg, New Hampshire, 2018. Arctic Museum Collection.
Remember how the AMNH invites visitors to touch Ahnighito? Their signage explains it's ok to do that because the surface is already so damaged from centuries of hammering. In this scientific display, the history of the people who used and lost the meteorite doesn't matter.
Our museums are filled with objects that were taken from people who were considered not worthy of retaining them. Objects have hidden histories, and it's hard to find the Miniks under the Ahnighitos.
Some of my sources for this thread are the great @AllisonCMeier's @Narratively piece, narratively.com/minik-and-the-…, and also bowdoin.edu/arctic-museum/… and jsis.washington.edu/news/the-cape-….
