In fact, they must.

The archive is valuable precisely because it records a world that had been violently disrupted.

But researchers should never mistake the value of the archive for innocence in the process that created it.

This is a problem far larger than Ishi.

Museums throughout Europe and North America built collections during colonial expansion.

Objects entered institutions through purchase, trade, excavation, theft, coercion, military seizure, and unequal exchange.

Human remains were collected in the name of racial science.

Photographs were made for classification.

Sacred and funerary objects were removed from communities.

The modern museum inherited all of it.