As part of activities scheduled for the 90th anniversary of the La Pampa’s Provincial Museum of Natural History the Culture Secretariat invite to participate in a talk about ancestral bodies, aimed at the general public.
It be held tomorrow, October 7th at 7:00 PM, at the MPHN with free admission.
The activity will be led by Dr. Marina Sardi, an anthropologist and specialist in ancestral bodies (human remains), their study and restitution.
The existence of human remains in museums around the world is one of the most dynamic and complex current debates regarding museology, heritage policies, and the rights of Indigenous Peoples.
“This will be the last activity within the framework of the temporary exhibition on the beginnings of the Museum, where we address anthropology and archaeology from different perspectives such as native fauna and music, digital humanities, and now it is the turn of ancestral bodies. These disciplines marked the beginnings of the institution and for that reason, they are the protagonists of the exhibition. At that time, the museum presented the indigenous peoples of La Pampa as elements of the past, associated with the ‘wild and the natural’; and it claimed the military campaigns that attempted to exterminate indigenous societies at the end of the 19th century,” said director Daniel Pincén.
*“These museological practices are revealed even in the journalistic media of the time. For example, the day after the inauguration of the Museum, the newspaper Gobierno Propio proposes to unearth the bodies of the Lonkos Pihchiwinca and Tripailaf that were in the cemetery of General Acha.”
“The proposed activity will allow us to inform the public about the presence of ancestral bodies in the MPHN, engage in dialogue with specialists and indigenous people on the subject, analyze and reflect on the limits of scientific conservation; indigenous agency in restitution processes, their rituals and beliefs about death; and the scope and gaps of current legislation. We hope this will be the beginning of a path to manage restitutions alongside Indigenous Communities and achieve the return of those bodies to the land”, Pincén said.
Contact [Notaspampeanas](mailto: notaspampeanas@gmail.com)