AFRICAN REMAINS DISRESPECTED IN U.S.

Prestigious Ivy League universities, such as Princeton, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania, and the most prominent US museum, the Smithsonian, look in cahoots with gravediggers. These institutions of higher learning have warehoused the human remains, skeletons, and skulls of Indigenous and African people without obtaining the consent of formerly living or surviving family members.

For example, when the Philadelphia police air-bombed the MOVE organisation's home in 1985—destroying over 60 rowhomes as the ensuing fire spread—the burnt human remains of two of the 11 victims—14-year-old Tree Africa and 12-year-old Delisha Africa—wound up at the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Their surviving parents and relatives did not consent to the university showcasing their remains in a course. In 2021, public outcry forced the institution to suspend the course, terminate museum curator Janet Monge and return the girls' remains to their relatives.

'This is how they see Africa,' Burkina Faso President Ibrahim Traoré recently said about Western colonisers' relationship with Africans. 'For them, Africans belong to them.' If you examine this story, it is hard to disagree with his statement.