Smithsonian returns Alaska woman’s brain to family 90 years after it was taken

SEATTLE — Ninety years after a physician took a young Alaska woman’s brain for a “racial brain collection” at the Smithsonian Institution, a museum official delivered her brain to her family for burial near the rest of her remains in Seattle.

When Mary Sara, an 18-year-old Sami woman, died of tuberculosis in a Seattle sanitarium in 1933, the doctor treating her removed her brain and mailed it to the curator of the division of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian, Ales Hrdlicka.

For decades, the National Museum of Natural History held her brain in storage, until The Washington Post learned of it earlier this year as part of its investigation into human remains held by the Smithsonian and informed Sara’s living relatives that it had been taken.

On Aug. 28, a Smithsonian employee flew from the D.C. area to Seattle with Sara’s brain, which was immersed in preservatives within a sealed container. The brain was later transferred to a cushioned wooden box.

During an overcast afternoon the next day, a small group of relatives and community members gathered at Evergreen Washelli, the northern Seattle cemetery where Sara’s body had been buried, to lower the box with her brain into a new spot near the top of her existing grave, which has no headstone.

Before the ceremony, Rachel Twitchell-Justiss, a distant cousin of Sara’s, knelt down to the burial plot. With tears in her eyes, she kissed her hand, held it to the ground and whispered a message. “I said, ‘I’m so sorry this happened to you and we’re going to take care of you now,’” said Twitchell-Justiss, who traveled from Spokane, Washington, for the ceremony.

Sara’s family petitioned the National Museum of Natural History for the return of her brain shortly after being informed about it by reporters in February. The Post found no documents indicating that Sara or her family had given consent for its removal at the time.

The Post investigation published last month revealed that the Natural History Museum held 255 brains, including Sara’s, in a Maryland storage facility. The vast majority were collected in the early 20th century at the behest of Hrdlicka, a prominent anthropologist who believed in the superiority of white people. The 254 brains that remain are just a fraction of at least 30,700 human remains still kept by the museum, the majority of which appear to have been taken without consent.

Smithsonian officials said they have returned or offered to return more than 6,300 sets of remains over the last three decades. Sara’s is the fifth brain from the collection to be returned to families or tribes. The other four brains were repatriated to Native American families or communities, because federal law requires the Smithsonian to notify Native American tribes of the remains in its possession. The last brain to be returned was sent to a Tlingit family in Sitka, Alaska, in 2007.

After the investigation, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III wrote an opinion piece published in The Post in which he apologized for the way the institution collected many of its human remains, calling it the Smithsonian’s “darkest history.”

“It was abhorrent and dehumanizing work, and it was carried out under the Smithsonian’s name,” wrote Bunch, who took charge of the institution in 2019. “I condemn these past actions and apologize for the pain caused by Hrdlicka and others at the institution who acted unethically in the name of science, regardless of the era in which their actions occurred.”

The museum had approved the return of Sara’s brain earlier this year, and shortly after The Post published its investigation in August, the director of the Natural History Museum, Kirk Johnson, called Sara’s cousin, Martha Sara Jack, to help arrange the burial. Johnson declined to comment through a spokesman.

Sara had traveled to Washington state in January 1933 from her Alaska hometown to accompany her mother for cataract surgery. Charles Firestone, the doctor who would later restore her mother’s eyesight, had invited the two women, who were Sami, or Indigenous people from areas including northern Scandinavia. Many Sami came to Alaska starting in the 1800s.

Sara became sick with tuberculosis and was sent to a nearby sanitarium, where she would spend her 18th birthday. She died in May while her mother was on a ship back to Alaska, and Firestone offered Sara’s brain to Hrdlicka on the same day. Hrdlicka told Firestone he was interested but only, he said, if she was “full-blood,” using a racist term to question whether both her parents were Sami. Firestone sent her brain to the museum.

At the ceremony for Sara last week, cemetery officials set up a small green table and two rows of chairs in front of the grave. On the table, Sara’s brain sat inside a wooden box placed atop a blue suede bag that Carol Butler, the Smithsonian employee who transported the remains, had sewn for the occasion. On behalf of the Natural History Museum, Butler attended the service as well as a breakfast with the family at a hotel that Sara once visited.

Jack’s husband, Fred, played recordings of Christian hymns on an iPad, and Julie Whitehorn, a local Sami community member, used her phone to play traditional Sami songs known as joiks. Jack, who was born 12 years after Sara died, told the small crowd that she had heard about her cousin through stories that were passed down to her. Sara had been close friends with Jack’s mother and planned to marry a childhood sweetheart when she returned from Seattle.

“Without the knowledge or consent from her family, Dr. Firestone maliciously desecrated Mary’s young body,” said Jack, who had traveled from Wasilla, Alaska. “Now, 90 years later, Mary’s body will be made whole and laid to rest until the Resurrection.”

Toward the end of the ceremony, a cemetery worker began to place the bag into the ground before Jack stopped him. “Can Rachel and I do that?” she asked. Jack and Twitchell-Justiss each took hold of one handle of the bag and lowered Sara’s remains into the small hole. The family then gathered around as Jack’s husband said a prayer to dedicate the site.

Twitchell-Justiss said she was hopeful the return of Sara’s brain could help the Smithsonian move faster in repatriating remains for other families and communities. “I hope the museum makes great strides to fulfill their promises to do better,” she said. “If they can do that in Mary’s honor, then all the better.”

In 2022, the Smithsonian, which includes 21 museums and the National Zoo, adopted a policy that formally authorized all of its museums to return items or remains in its collections that were collected without consent.

After The Post began reporting on the brain collection, Bunch issued a public apology this April in which he announced the creation of a task force to determine the next steps for the human remains still in Smithsonian custody. In his opinion piece, Bunch also said the institution was in talks with the government of the Philippines to determine what to do with the remains of Filipinos that had been collected by the institution.

As part of the investigation, The Post told the story of Maura, an Indigenous Filipino woman who died after she came to St. Louis to be put on display during the 1904 World’s Fair. Records suggest that her cerebellum was taken by Hrdlicka in an autopsy for his collection of human brains at the Smithsonian.

Museum officials said the cerebellum appeared to be cremated by the institution years later, and they could not confirm whether it belonged to Maura. Overall, there were at least 27 brains, including the cerebellum, taken from Filipinos.

Officials from the National Museum of the Philippines recently issued a statement in support of the repatriation of the Filipino remains. They said the museum was working with the Smithsonian to ensure the remains would be given to direct descendants or communities related to those whose organs were taken for the collection.

The museum “accepts and supports this effort of the Smithsonian (National Museum of Natural History) to do the right thing and facilitate the return of these Filipino remains home as a way of rectifying this unfortunate situation,” officials wrote.

Federal law requires the Smithsonian to notify only Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian communities about the remains in its possession so those communities can start the process of repatriation. An estimated 15,000 sets of remains held by the institution today are from these communities.

Sara’s brain and the 26 Filipino brains fall outside of current notification rules, which leave about another 15,000 sets of remains from more than 80 countries in limbo. Since creating a 2015 policy for the repatriation of human remains from other countries, the Natural History Museum has returned remains to New Zealand, Australia and Canada.

Officials have said the museum focused primarily on returning Native American remains in accordance with federal law, but it has more recently begun to focus on remains from other communities. In a statement, Jim Wood, a spokesman for the Natural History Museum, said the institution was honored to give Sara’s brain to her family.

“Our museum community remains committed to addressing the historical legacy bestowed upon us and will continue to work with descendants and descendant communities to return or appropriately honor the individuals now under our care,” Wood wrote.

When Sara and her mother went to Seattle in 1933, journalists followed the two Sami women around, taking a picture of Sara on top of the Roosevelt Hotel. The hotel, which is now called the Hotel Theodore, provided the family with free lodging for the burial, and Twitchell-Justiss visited the roof where Sara once stood.

Family members had asked the Natural History Museum to provide money for a burial and a headstone, but officials rejected the request, saying that prior repatriations had not covered such costs. The family started a GoFundMe to help raise money for a headstone for Sara and raised about a third of the overall cost.

The community stepped in: In Alaska, members of the Knik Tribal Council contacted the Jacks and said they would cover the funeral costs. After the service, an official with the cemetery approached Jack to tell her it would contribute a headstone to the family at no cost.

Jack’s mouth dropped open in surprise, and she called over Twitchell-Justiss to share the news. As the family began to leave the gravesite, a cemetery worker waited nearby to fill the hole and cover it with a patch of grass. After the family exchanged hugs, a soft rain began to fall.

“It’s a great burden lifted off,” Jack said. “There’s no loose end on this part now.”