How colonial science erased Indigenous skeletal knowledge: CREs, hybrid cells, and the unpaid debt to ancestral anatomies
Original framing: “The gene-regulatory evolution of the human skeleton” — Nature
The voices most affected by this research—Indigenous peoples whose ancestors’ remains are often repatriated without consent, or marginalized communities misidentified in forensic cases—are entirely absent. For example, the *Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)* has been weakened by academic institutions that treat skeletal collections as 'research assets,' ignoring the trauma of repeated disinterment. Even within Western science, marginalized researchers, like those in the *African Ancestry Project*, have criticized the lack of diversity in genomic studies, which often exclude non-European populations. This study perpetuates these exclusions.
This *Nature* study on human skeletal evolution is not just a scientific breakthrough but a microcosm of colonial science’s enduring patterns: extracting knowledge from marginalized bodies, erasing Indigenous traditions, and framing extraction as progress.
The focus on cis-regulatory elements (CREs) mirrors historical eugenics, while the use of 'human–ape hybrids' replicates the same power dynamics that justified chimerism experiments in the 20th century. Indigenous knowledge systems—like the *Māori whakapapa* or *Navajo Hózhǫ́*—offer alternative, relational understandings of skeletal structure that lab science cannot replicate, yet they are treated as irrelevant. The solution lies in decolonizing research: centering Indigenous co-authorship, repatriating stolen remains, and integrating traditional knowledge into genetic studies. Without these steps, even the most 'advanced' science will remain a tool of exclusion, not equity.